The Responsibility to Disrupt: Nonviolent Ethics and the Power of Protest

Climate activists are jailed for blocking roads. Students are denounced for setting up encampments. Antiracist demonstrators are publicly condemned as extremists. At a time marked by climate collapse, genocidal wars and widening inequality, those who interrupt business as usual are increasingly criminalized.

The Responsibility to Disrupt examines controversies surrounding political protest and asks what the backlash against disruption reveals about democracy today. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’...