Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson

Sam Pufek: You're listening to the World of Higher Education Podcast, Season 3, Episode 21.
Alex Usher: Hi everyone, I'm Alex Usher, and this is the World of Higher Education podcast. If I say the word Serbia, chances are your mind goes to things like the NATO air attacks of 1999 and the associated Kosovo War, to the breakup of Yugoslavia, or maybe to Marshal Tito, or perhaps, if you're more historically minded, to the origins of World War I. Probably doesn't go to higher education, or to radical student politics. But that's kind of unfortunate because actually Serbia's recent history has had plenty of instances where youth or student based movements have had a massive effect on the country's politics, most notably with respect to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in 2000.
And that's very relevant today because for the last 18 weeks, Serbia's students have been on a campaign to rid the country of the governing Serbian progressive party on grounds of corruption. They formed some extraordinary alliances across civil society, leading to regular marches involving tens of thousands of people, as well as a series of rotating strikes.
The movement hasn't yet reached its ultimate objective, but it has claimed some notable victories along the way, most importantly when Prime Minister Miloš Vučević was forced to resign in January.
With me today to analyze all of this is Jim Dickinson. He's an associate editor at Wonkhe in London, one of the most remarkable higher education websites in existence, and also, to my mind, absolutely the best informed person on the European student politics scene. Jim wrote an excellent summary of the situation in Serbia around the time of the Vučevič resignation. We thought it was high time to finally bring Jim on the show. Jim talks about the origins of the current protests, their growth and metastasis into a genuinely national popular protest movement, and the prospects for the movement's future success. Will Serbia end up being like Bangladesh with students actually forcing the regime to change? Future is never certain. But what I liked about Jim's perspective on this is the way that he takes account of the interplay between official student unions and an unofficial student movement and explains why you need to take both into account to understand the current situation. But enough from me, let's turn it over to Jim.
Jim, before we get to current day events tell me what student politics are normally like in Serbia. Are our students unions more about service delivery or activism? Is it just one national student union or are there multiple ones? Are they done on a party political basis? Tell me how it all works in a normal year.
Jim Dickinson: Um, Do you know, we were there about uh, about 14, 15 months ago and we were quite impressed. So, students unions.
Alex Usher: Student unions.
Jim Dickinson: took a group, of UK students unions on a little bus tour and um, as I do each year to different bits of Europe and it's quite impressive. So, student representation is guaranteed both at faculty and university level. Broadly, what is guaranteed is a student union. So there's a responsibility for extracurricular activities, a responsibility for kind of student voice and representing the voice of students and what they then feed into is this thing called the Student Conference of the Universities of Serbia. And what's interesting about that is, and a few countries in Europe have done this, is that they've kind of put the National Union on a statutory footing. So it's mentioned in the legislation, and broadly what they've done is they've taken The National Conference of Rectors, the University's Association, they've added the letter S onto the front of it, and so they've kind of set it up as a kind of statutory body that will listen to students in terms of their views on higher education and so on and so on. So in theory, in the legislation, you've got that sort of, faculty, university and countrywide level. You know, the opportunity for students to elect other students to organize their student activities and and be the voice of students, which is broadly the kind of two, the two activities that you would expect to see when you hear the phrase student union. Perhaps not in the US but pretty much everywhere around the world.
Alex Usher: Right. And is there a party political involvement in, student unions there?
Jim Dickinson: I mean, this is really interesting. So some people would say there is. But one of the things that's kind of, I guess kind of moderately characteristic of the former Yugoslavian and the Eastern European countries is there's not much talk of politics. So, sometimes students will, you know, stand with particular political views and so on. But this isn't like, uh, we might see, for instance, in Austria or Germany, where, and even in Finland, where in huge groups of you know, uh, factional or party political groups of students will stand in the election for the council. This is kind of framed as pure of and, distant from kind of formal politics.
Now, of course, what actually happens then depending on who you listen to and who you believe is that the student versions of the youth versions of the political parties that exist, then do stand in those elections and depending on who you believe, and so on, the government and certainly the current government is accused of pumping in money and candidates and so on to make sure that, you know, there's a level of control in these bodies, perhaps in the same way that must exist across other bits of civil society in the country.
But officially, you don't see that and quite often, actually, in some of these countries, they won't even, they will sign pieces of paper to say they're completely independent of party politics as a kind of performative, we're not about that, we're about the students sort of thing.
Alex Usher: Got it. Okay. So tell me about the history of student unions getting involved in national politics. And I know you know, there's a history going back to the 1960s in Bulgaria about student involvement in politics. You know, I guess after the, fall of the Berlin wall, you had too big instances here, so 96, 97 students led the protests against what were seen as rigged elections in favor of Slobodan Milosevic.
And then in 2000, it was a youth led, but not student union led movement called Otpor, which was the central organizing group, which actually got rid of Milosevic after the 2000 elections. So we're seeing, you know, obviously there's a big mobilization today. What's the line between those events of the late 90s, early 2000s and today?
Jim Dickinson: So, I mean, look, ahead of the sort of putting student unions both locally and nationally on a, on a kind of statutory footing, there have always been, student groups, student associations, often based around faculties, often based around whole universities. And because they were quite kind of loose and voluntary they would kind of wax and wane in terms of their level of kind of political interest and influence. And they were quite often caught up in the kind of events that you described both in the kind of late 80s and then throughout the 90s and that is kind of relatively common actually. So, where there's quite a kind of where there's quite a loose, non statutory, you know, lots of student associations and student groups floating around, when big politics comes, many of them will then find themselves kind of caught up in that and will get involved in that.
And, you know, while you're right to say that technically Otpor was a, was a youth movement, it was pretty much dominated by students in terms of that. But that group of people that were widely credited with kind of the overthrow of Milosevic. And we've, you know, we've actually visited some of the student accommodation where they were kind of organizing and you can kind of, you can see it in terms of how that must have worked and how students will have been kind of talking to each other and so on. Beyond then, it gets slightly more complicated, I think.
Alex Usher: Right. So student led, Otpor was student led, but not student union led. I guess that's the distinction here.
Jim Dickinson: Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Usher: Okay, so let's, okay, now let's get to the current events. It's November 1st, 2024. We're at the railway station in Novi Sad, which is Serbia's second largest city. What happens next?
Jim Dickinson: So a canopy collapses, kills 15 people by the time they'd sort of, completed the, you know, 24 hours later, I think the death toll was up to 15. And pretty quickly, the sort of rumor went around that this must be linked to corruption. So there's been a series of you know, complex, complicated, controversial deals that were linked to some Chinese companies and and so on that related to kind of infrastructure projects in different bits of the country. And so, so the view was, this is negligence. This is corruption. This is another example on our doorstep in this big student city of the corruption of the Serbian government causing harm and, causing death. And, you know, I mean, social media videos of the, canopy collapsing on young people were pretty heartbreaking, went pretty, you know, went viral very quickly.
What was interesting then at that point was this sort of, this student group that had been based in the Faculty of Philosophy that had already been sort of upset about the formal student union elections in their faculty and they were not very happy with the formal student union elections in the University of Novi Sad, then kind of switched their attention from occupying the faculty building over student union election politics, and suddenly turned their attention to this and quite quickly organized a blockade of the railway station a blockade of the faculty, and then it swept on from there really.
Alex Usher: I get the, so that's interesting because, you know, there's uh, it's understandable why you know, the collapse of a public building might spur people to be upset about corruption. But why is it youth leading this charge? I mean, that's not natural, it's not, it's unnatural, but it's not a given that it would be students that would lead this. Why was it them and not some other group in society? Or indeed opposition parties, why a small group of disaffected philosophy students.
Jim Dickinson: Well, I mean, that, I mean, in many ways that is the killer question. I mean, I'm sure that if you know, the Serbian Progressive Party knew the answer to that question, Alex, they'd they'd have stopped it by now. I think that you know, the reality is that all of those people involved in the kind of formal mechanisms of politics to some extent are discredited generally in all sorts of kind of political systems, right?
I mean, you know, there's a kind of general distrust of politicians, general distrust of kind of formal politics and you see that both on the right and on the left both in North America and across Europe. What's interesting about this group of students is in many ways, there's probably this type of group of students in pretty much every relatively elite, fairly academic, large university in the world that, you know, the kind of you, you've got those people that get elected into official positions and they wear suits and they sit down with the rector or the vice chancellor or the president and then there's this kind of, you know, fairly, you know, rough looking other bunch of people who like to think about bigger politics and, you know, we'll blockade a building or we'll go on a protest and we'll go on a demo. And what happened was this group of people were there, they've probably always been there, probably normally complaining about student union elections. And then suddenly this, you know, huge tragedy happens in the city, and then they kind of find their big issue to then, you know, build their movement around and I guess, you know, often they will talk about, you know, build this social movement, and it's quite hard to do on the issues they will often pick, but this was not a hard issue to, you know, build unrest over and away they went off the back of that off the back of the tragedy.
Alex Usher: We're going to take a short break, we'll be right back. And we're back. Okay. So that's the beginning of November. The protests build and by early December, they've got the resignation of the minister of construction and you know, so what were the student movements aims at this point? So what do I, so I get you're upset about corruption, but what's the ask in all these demonstrations? And you know, who's deciding what those asks are given that it's such an informal structure.
Jim Dickinson: It's really interesting because the asks haven't really changed since that point. So some related specifically to the tragedy, some bit broader, and some about higher education. And actually, you know, quite often some of the pro Palestinian blockades and demonstrations and so on have got an interesting kind of mix of demands too, if you kind of look at them over the past couple of years in all sorts of countries.
So there was stuff about publishing all of the documents related to the reconstruction of the station. There was some stuff in there about making sure that people taking part in the protests would all be, you know, no criminal proceedings against them and so on. A dismissal of all the public officials who assaulted students and professors, and there were quite a few of those the dismissal of criminal charges and so on. And then and some stuff relating to higher education, like an increase in the budget for higher education by 20%. And what's fascinating is those, that list of demands hasn't changed. The other thing, though, that, you know, to answer your question about leadership, you know, one of the classic characteristics of, you know, that type of activism, which some people will regard as very old fashioned, is quite decentralized. You know, lots of people sat in circles making decisions, no single figurehead, you know, really trying to kind of stick to those rules, and often, you know, that kind of stuff will go wrong depending on which allegorical novel you will read. But they've kind of broadly stuck to that and the result is that although the media have done their best to identify particular ringleaders or particular intellects inside the protest that are involved in the kind of protest movement, pretty much, it's quite hard to pin down, you know, a kind of single bad guy, a single bogeyman a single leader. In marked contrast to, of course, the formal student movement, which is like a kind of, you know, a classic house of cards, pyramid of a representative that elects representatives and so on and so on.
Alex Usher: So it's a little bit like the Occupy movement.
Jim Dickinson: Yeah very, very similar, very similar.
Alex Usher: Okay. Okay. So then, you know, the movement builds up over the course of December and January to the point where eventually the prime minister resigns, which was not one of the demands, I guess, but it happened anyway on the 28th of January. How did the, I mean, to do that, you need to build a coalition, not just within the student movement, and that's, you know, doable, but actually making links across civil society to other you know, to other groups, to, you know, legal groups or unions or teachers unions, those kinds of things. How did a group of students manage this, particularly one with such a decentralized power structure?
Jim Dickinson: So part of it was, is about peaceful protest. And again, you know, if you look at the Pragues, you look at the Velvet Revolution, for example, you know, always very deliberately a peaceful protest, despite, you know, some allegations that are often thrown at them. So, so, so, you know, kind of good framing, absolutely sticking to those rules. And then on each of the kind of nights, each of the days, each of the protests, slowly, very slowly, building support from wider society, as wider society started to kind of, they captured the imagination of kind of wider society. So, you know, there's musicians, then there's lawyers, and then there's farmers, and then there's taxi drivers. And what happens each time a kind of new group joins and more people express sympathy is, and again, this historical precedent for this in the late 80s and early 90s. You get a sense that, what they were starting to voice was deeper concerns about corruption, about the way the government was going, about the way citizens are treated, about the distance between citizens and you know, the public politicians, all with fairly simple, fairly, you know, visually, you know, arresting uh, imagery, you know, the kind of red hands thing that you might have seen in some of the photos, blood on their hands, really has kind of captured the imagination of a whole bunch of people.
And because these are countries that have sort of been through this kind of thing before, where both students themselves have led it, and then wider society has got in behind them, you get a sense that both the students leading it, and wider society experiencing problems with their government have got the hand of history on their shoulders, really. And so it's kind of slowly built from there. And you know, you turn the TV on, turn on YouTube, as I was doing over Christmas. One night it was 10, 000, the next night it was 12, 000, the next night it was 15, 000. And it just kept building. And every time the government attempted to use traditional authoritarianism, every single time, they held their nerve, held their kind of dignity and were able to paint an authoritarian government as being authoritarian on on, you know, perfectly reasonable asks.
Alex Usher: Okay. So that's what's going on in the streets. What's going on on the campuses? Are they Are they shut down? Is there a strike? Is there a prospect of losing the school year? And how do university administrations deal with this? I mean, presumably they're—
Jim Dickinson: I mean, quite often, and I guess this is probably true certainly true in the UK, certainly true, you know, probably true uh, in Canada, in in the U S and so on. When there's a kind of blockade of a building or an occupation or a big protest quite often, you will get this, you'll get a teaching. You will get efforts to still make sure that education is happening, albeit that it might not be the same curriculum that a university might have thought about, and it will have a particular political edge to it. So what they've been doing is they've been blockading the kind of faculty buildings and blockading university buildings and stopping some of the administration from happening. But some teaching has been happening. Now you know, depending on the campus, whether or not that is then manifesting in exams actually happening or students actually getting certificates at the end of the year, that's very different from faculty to faculty, from university to university. And that's partly about the level of support.
So depends what you mean by write off because, plenty of evidence that students are still getting their education, but if you're that kind of student who doesn't care for all of this and, you know, wants your piece of paper at the end of the year, it's probably disastrous.
Alex Usher: Yeah. Okay. Well, look, we're just so listeners and viewers know we're recording this on February 11th so nine days before the air date. This is the 101st day of the protests. What do you think the end game is here? What would it take at this point for students to achieve those aims you talked about earlier, or are they going to have to settle for half a loaf?
Jim Dickinson: Well, I mean, it is really interesting. So, you know, this week or maybe it was right at the end of last week, I'll lose track, but this week they got the 20 percent budget increase, for example, nobody expected that to happen a fortnight ago. So slowly, pretty much everything other than the dismissal of all of the public officials, you know, are being achieved. The problem of course is that if they achieve all of those things, they won't have achieved their wider political aims, which is they think this is a pretty rotten government, and although they don't express it in party political terms, they think this populist, you know, government needs to go. So, so the end game starts to become tricky for them. They've already achieved a hell of a lot more than most people thought they would. And it may well be, and there's certainly, you know, there's, again, there's historical precedents for this, you know, there were, there were lots of student uprisings in the sixties in the, in, in Eastern Europe, and uh, that, that, that, that, capture the imagination of the public, but didn't actually in the end then lead to a change. So, so whether or not once most of the demands are achieved and we start to get towards the end of the academic year, it starts to kind of break up. Who knows? But in many ways, many of the people involved will be thinking, well, we've achieved a hell of a lot more than we thought we were gonna achieve, and certainly a lot more than perhaps the official student movement was ever going to achieve in relation to kind of this set of concerns.
Alex Usher: Yeah, well, that brings me to my last question, which is, you know, this is a success for the student movement, if you can call it that, but not a success for student unions necessarily. So what do you think the impact is on student organizations of the more official sort, like going forward, are unions likely to be supplanted by something a little more anarchist or, I mean, do they just go back to doing you know, the service that they always did?
Jim Dickinson: I mean, look right across the world, the bigger, more sophisticated, more statutory and more access to decision makers that student unions have, the more that both the textbooks and the reality would tell us that levels of mistrust kick in because people think that those people are too close to decision makers. You know, they start to spend too much time with people that aren't students and so on. So, you know, this is absolutely classic. This exists in every student movement all around the world. The, you know, we both have um, the, the, the real question, I think, for that system, which establishes it in, you know, the country's constitution, which, you know, mirrors the conference of rectors, the conference of presidents, the conference of vice chancellors, is whether on reflection, that is just too close. And really the question about whether it's too close is based on one of two concerns. If it's not the case that the official student movement has been properly sort of controlled by the government, and it's just that it looks quite close, then there's some reflection for all sorts of people to do about the overall position. If on the other hand, it is absolutely the case that it's been deliberately set up so that, you know, a corrupt national government can kind of control it and puppet master it, there are other implications, but kind of either way you'd have to assume that to the extent to which there is energy available, and one of the things that I often say is, there's only so much student energy available. The big problem they've got right now is that the bulk of student energy has not gone into electing people to run the, you know, the social committee or to be the vice president of the faculty to go and have a chit chat with the dean about the curriculum. The bulk of the energy this year has gone into something bigger and they've won, and a bunch of people will have to respond to that one way or the other, in terms of the kind of stability of the sector and indeed by the looks of it, the stability of the country.
Alex Usher: Jim has been a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us today. And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers for joining us. If you have any questions about today's episode, please don't hesitate to get in contact with us at podcast at higher ed strategy. com. Never miss an episode of the world of higher education podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube channel today.
We're on break next week, but join us two weeks from today when our guests will be Israeli scholar, Maya Wind. She's a postdoctoral fellow at the university of California, Riverside, and the author of the book, Towers of Ivory and Steel, how Israeli universities deny Palestinian freedom.
Bye for now.