In the past year, protests have erupted at top schools nationwide. Presidents of schools like Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were paraded in front of Congress, all of them interrogated in an attempt for lawmakers to show just how much they hated antisemitism. Even our neighboring school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, experienced encampments, frequent demonstrations and high media attention.
Yet Duke seemed to avoid the brunt of student activism. Duke students have yet to organize an encampment on campus. Only about 30 out of the 7,000 students in attendance during Jerry Seinfeld’s controversial commencement speech last spring walked out. The recent vigil for Gaza on BC Plaza only maintained 10 tents and even received ridicule on student-driven social media apps.
However, the lack of demonstrations doesn’t only apply to pro-Palestinian advocacy: Duke’s student body, despite being generally politically engaged, has a shocking lack of student activism relative to peer institutions. While almost 90% of Duke community members planned to vote in the 2024 election — and most nonvoters were non-citizens — after the election, a certain amount of political apathy has sprung up.
Why is Duke so immune to the nationwide trend of protests? What is unique about the Blue Devils’ campus and culture that seems to discourage students from activism? Duke’s career-driven focus, exacerbated by a clear administrative priority to limit disruption, significantly limits student-led protests.
As almost any Duke student knows, corporate culture exists within every facet of the university — whether it’s the business fraternities like Scale and Coin, the overwhelming focus on summer internships or the funneling of students to “profitable” fields like economics or computer science. However, Duke’s omnipresent pre-professional culture disincentivizes students from meaningful activism.
According to Inside Higher Ed, “nearly 30 percent of students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses say they have had a job offer rescinded in the last six months, and two-thirds believe that it likely had to do with their activism.” The risk of losing a professional opportunity is too significant for many students; in one of my Political Science seminars, we discussed how even ardently pro-Palestine students aren’t willing to give up job opportunities for a social cause.
As a side note, this feeling might not be completely accurate. Only 14% of employers said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about protests on college campuses and nearly 80% of employers have no plan to change hiring decisions due to increased unrest. However, this truth may not entirely matter: If the prevailing feeling is that any rock-the-boat activism will jeopardize your future career, why risk it?
Beyond fear, the corporate culture means students focus more on the money-making mindset than on making the world better. When your focus is on the next summer internship, the new connection you’re making at your second coffee chat this week or which pharmaceutical benefit manager stock to present to Investment Club, activism inevitably hits the backburner. One of my favorite conversations this year involved a self-described anarcho-communist in one of Duke’s business fraternities. When I asked about the apparent contradiction, she shrugged and admitted, “I’m a sellout.”
The influence of corporate culture isn’t a problem unique to Duke: in the Harvard Crimson, one student, taking a cue from Adam Smith, largely rejected the pursuit of “build[ing] value for society” by arguing that “be[ing] greedy” is all it takes to improve the world. However, it’s especially prevalent here, where a whopping 30% of students enter finance, business or consulting management after graduation.
At this point in the article, I’ll momentarily get off my high horse and acknowledge how easy it is for me to say this. My family pays full tuition for Duke. I’m a legacy. I don’t have outsized pressure to develop a generational wealth that never existed before. Historically, an Economic Journal paper found that lower-income individuals are less likely to participate in social activism: Is it fair for me to judge someone who just wants to achieve financial security for themselves or their family?
That question would exist at any university. However, the other part of that equation is Duke’s relatively high proportion of ultra-rich students, even among Ivy Plus colleges — almost 20% of Duke’s population comes from the top 1%. About as many students are from the top 0.1% as the bottom 20%. The same Economic Journal study found that wealthy individuals are just as unlikely to participate in social movements. These students tend to be more conservative and apathetic about political change — understandably, it’s easier to trust the system when you grow up affluent.
Duke’s administration further exacerbates this political apathy. As of October, the new picketing rules require that student groups register protests three weeks in advance. Under those bylaws, if, I don’t know, the U.S. was to send migrant flights to Guantanamo Bay or a North Carolina judicial candidate was suing to throw out 65,000 North Carolina votes, Duke students would have to wait 21 days before having any organized student response.
The irony of this approach lies in how much pride Duke takes in its historical student activism. Pictures of civil rights era campus protests hang proudly in Perkins, and searching “student activism” on any Duke website yields a proud memorial of events such as the Allen Building Takeover (1969). As recently as 2016, eight student activists occupied the same building to protest Duke’s unethical labor practices. Even though this protest forced Duke officials to relocate 35 classes for a week, the students faced no legal or disciplinary penalties. Yet I can’t imagine an event like that would exist within Duke’s current “pickets, protests, or demonstrations” guidelines, which ban any sort of “disruptive or disorderly conduct.”
None of this is to say that Duke doesn’t have protests. Recently, members of the emerging Duke Sunrise Movement chapter unfurled a massive banner over Abele Quad protesting the rise of fascism. But these are few and far between and have yet to experience significant student support.
For Duke to again realize its full potential for student activism, it will require a supportive administration and a motivated student body. Even with the unique limitations of Duke’s organizing culture, that second change is entirely within our control. Over the weekend, I attended a political organizing conference in Washington, D.C., where one student shared that her campus Democrats club was one of the largest organizations on her campus. Regardless of your personal political views, it’s almost mind-boggling to think that a non-business club could crack the top five. It starts with your friends — encourage them to attend protests, social advocacy events or even just educate themselves on a political cause. If not, we will continue a self-reinforcing cycle where a politically apathetic corporate culture breeds politically apathetic corporate students.
Adam Levin is a Trinity first-year. His pieces typically run on alternate Thursdays.
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