Reorientation Teaching Guide: Season 3 Episode 5
Learning Objectives
Students will understand how student organizations advocated against social injustices around the world.
Students will understand how different protest tactics and objectives raised awareness and led to direct action against the Shah of Iran and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Students will grapple with competing definitions and ideas about what constitutes a “successful” protest and the challenges of labeling protests and social action as “successful” or “it worked.”
Podcast Questions
What does it mean to you for a protest to “work” or be “successful”?
Why do students care about international issues?
How does the Iranian Student Association play a crucial part in the anti-Shia protests?
Why do you think the South African Divestment movement was “successful”?
What similarities and differences do you see between the examples with Iran and South Africa?
In reference to protests, UW Historian Mou Banerjee states, “Yes, it does work. But the way in which it might work is very, very different. Again, long-term successes cannot really be predicted, but any time there is a protest, it is worth doing solely for the fact that the government knows that there is social disaffection.” Do you agree or disagree with Banerjee’s claim and why?
Recommended Primary Sources
1968 Black African Students Union on South Africa memo: “Tell me who your friends are?”
Unaffiliated anti-apartheid activists memo.
Pamela Martin, “Students rally around Abe at morning UW teach in.” Daily Cardinal, April 25, 1985. UW Archives.
Recommended Secondary Sources
Voorhes, Meg. “The US divestment movement.” In How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa, pp. 129-144. Crawford, Neta C., and Audie Klotz, Eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1999.
Chapter 2 “1953” of Ansari, Ali. Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East. Basic books, 2007.
Additional Resources
Center for Campus History Teaching Guide: Nonviolent Protests at UW–Madison
Center for Campus History Teaching Guide: Divestment Campaigns at UW–Madison