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College Insurrection Tag

This is an interesting concept. It seems to be all about getting people to innovate by thinking outside the box. More specifically, by disobeying existing rules and norms. It's also open to multiple disciplines which could make choosing the winner a bit difficult. The announcement was made this week on the MIT Media Lab website:
Rewarding Disobedience On July 21, 2016 we announced the creation of a $250K cash prize award for responsible disobedience. This idea came after a realization that there’s a widespread frustration from people trying to figure out how can we effectively harness responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging our norms, rules, or laws to benefit society...

Student and faculty activists at Barnard College have successfully pushed a measure to divest from companies that "deny" climate change. Oddly, they have yet to define what makes one a denier. Toni Airaksinen of Campus Reform reported:
Barnard College to divest from 'climate deniers' The move comes after years of activism by the student group Divest Barnard, which initially campaigned for Barnard to divest entirely from fossil fuel investments, according to The Columbia Spectator. Yet the college will not be divesting from fossil fuels in the traditional sense.

A conservative student group at the University of Lincoln in the UK criticized their students' union over a lack of free speech over criticism of an online magazine. In response, the students' union shut down the group's social media accounts, thus proving their point. A student paper called The Linc reported:
Conservative Society suspended from Twitter by SU after criticising their record on freedom of speech The University of Lincoln Conservative Society has been forced to hand over control of their twitter account to the Students’ Union. It follows a tweet sharing a report which said the University of Lincoln had a bad record on freedom of speech.

Two violent attacks campus speakers have gained widespread media attention in recent months -- the attack on Milo Yiannopoulos' appearance at UC-Berkeley, and Charles Murray at Middlebury. Less violent, but still disruptive, attempts were made to shut down Rick Santorum and Michael Johns at Cornell, Christina Hoff Sommers at Oberlin, Georgetown and elsewhere. and other conservative speakers. Finally, there is widespread condemnation even from the left, particularly after Middlebury.