A professor at Dartmouth University lamented the lack of young people protesting President Donald Trump’s policies in a New York Times essay published Monday.
Dartmouth Professor of Government Brendan Nyhan wrote that Gen Z Americans have not taken to demonstrating against Trump the way their liberal boomers are, declaring it a problem as Trump has been subverting the rule of law and breaking constitutional constraints on his power.
“The absence of young people from conventional protests is both a problem and a warning. The opposition to Mr. Trump’s authoritarian speed run requires new strategies that will engage a wider swath of the population,” Nyman wrote.
Nyman detailed how there are fewer anti-Trump protesters now than there were during the president’s first term even though Trump’s threat to civilization is arguably worse than it has ever been.
“And while there has been pushback — most notably, the No Kings movement drew an estimated five million people to the streets in October — the scale of the protests is still not as large as one might expect, given the severity of the threat,” he wrote. “During President Trump’s first term, millions of people protested when the situation was far less dire.”
The professor provided data, revealing that despite the millions at the nationwide “No Kings” protest, only a small proportion were young people.
“Only 8 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they took part in the protests in October, compared with 13 percent of those age 65 and older, according to YouGov. Students are most conspicuous in their absence,” Nyman said.
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He added that this is a “sharp reversal” from the number of young people who accounted for 13 percent of the total George Floyd protesters.
The educator argued that a “persuasive” reason for why young people aren’t demonstrating is because they’re “demobilized and demoralized” due to many of the previous years’ mass protests getting little done.
“The racial justice movement that peaked in 2020 ended in disappointment and backlash. The Gaza protests provoked intense conflict without delivering clear political or policy victories for their organizers. Maybe most important, Mr. Trump himself is back in the White House,” Nyman added.
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He also noted that the Democratic Party doesn’t inspire much in young voters either, saying it is “dominated by a decadent gerontocracy whose elites were more likely to attend a wedding in the Hamptons than a No Kings protest on the same day.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
