Universities And Hegemoney

On attending the Oxford student protests

Me filming the cops filming me, at Oxford

Read me directly on www.indi.ca, Medium is shady.

I went to the student protests in Oxford (just visiting). The Vice-Chancellor had called the cops on 16 students who entered the admin building and protestors were trying to protect their fellow students (which should be the Vice-Chancellor’s job). We were on one side road, to prevent the prisoners being taken out the back, but the cops just kettled the students out front and forced their way out. One student was taken out on a stretcher. Oxford certainly taught me a lesson that day. Universities are not centers of learning, but places where learning is institutionalized.

Later I sat outside the Pitt-Rivers Museum — where Oxford still keeps the stolen bodies of animals and human beings — and listened to a free lecture at the encampment. A man drove by and yelled ‘Rule Britannia!’ out the window. I thought it was a good comment on the unbroken nature of White Empire, how Rule Britannia became Rule Americana, especially in ‘Israel’. My Oxford friend had simpler thoughts and made a ‘small penis’ sign to the man with his index and thumb.

Before I left, I went to a vigil outside the Radcliffe. Led by a Palestinian woman, people sang Palestinian songs and mourned Palestinian names in silence. Everyone tried (and…