WHO’S ALLOWED TO PROTEST? is the essential guide for understanding why some political voices are amplified, others are silenced, and how the fight over “who’s too elite” to dissent will determine our democratic fates.
Why do charges of “privilege” haunt every new protest wave? In this electrifying blend of short history and manifesto, Columbia University professor Bruce Robbins picks apart the insult that demonstrators are merely elite status-seekers—and shows why the same complaints surfaced against Vietnam-era marchers, Iraq War protesters, and, most recently, the Gaza encampments that shook campuses nationwide.
Robbins spars with contemporary critics, like David Brooks and Musa al-Gharbi, who insist that campus activists are secretly angling for elite credentials. Along the way, he recounts his own run-ins with university discipline boards and offers a reckoning with what it really costs—financially, socially, and personally—to stand against abuses of power.
Bruce Robbins is an American literary scholar, author and an academic. He is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of several books published by academic publishers, including, most recent Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction (2022) and Atrocity: A Literary History (2025). He lives in New York City.
WHO’S ALLOWED TO PROTEST? is the essential guide for understanding why some political voices are amplified, others are silenced, and how the fight over “who’s too elite” to dissent will determine our democratic fates.
Why do charges of “privilege” haunt every new protest wave? In this electrifying blend of short history and manifesto, Columbia University professor Bruce Robbins picks apart the insult that demonstrators are merely elite status-seekers—and shows why the same complaints surfaced against Vietnam-era marchers, Iraq War protesters, and, most recently, the Gaza encampments that shook campuses nationwide.
Robbins spars with contemporary critics, like David Brooks and Musa al-Gharbi, who insist that campus activists are secretly angling for elite credentials. Along the way, he recounts his own run-ins with university discipline boards and offers a reckoning with what it really costs—financially, socially, and personally—to stand against abuses of power.
Author
Bruce Robbins is an American literary scholar, author and an academic. He is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of several books published by academic publishers, including, most recent Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction (2022) and Atrocity: A Literary History (2025). He lives in New York City.
