Operation Metro Surge, State Violence, and Resistance at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus
310 Pillsbury Drive SE
Room 120 in Pillsbury Hall
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
How has Operation Metro Surge affected the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus?
This panel addressed this question by focusing not only on the Surge's impact, but also on the faculty, staff, and student responses and resistance to state violence, that is, governmental authority that causes unnecessary harm to individuals and/or groups. In doing so, it aimed to begin a conversation with alumni, students, staff, and faculty about how the Twin Cities campus has been impacted by and responded to state violence — contemporarily and historically.
Panelists reminded us that we work and teach on Dakota land, where Oceti Sakowin Nations were exiled and murdered by the federal government. Today, federal agents' occupation of the Twin Cities and their practice of racial profiling have led, once again, to violence against Native people as well as arrests. The irony that Native people are being arrested contemporarily on their homeland, on land that was taken from them in 1862, requires sustained investigation. Another panelist is doing important work to protect vulnerable students against state violence on campus, and still another panelist is training students to become “constitutional observers” to document arrests and abductions of vulnerable people for legal cases and hearings.
Our final panelists proffered another historical perspective, drawing striking parallels between the collective efforts of campus student movements of the past and student activists in the contemporary moment. Students have resisted social injustice collectively yesterday and today; the University administration has adopted an uncompromising, strict policy against their protests across time. As these panelists reminded us, it has been staff, students, and faculty that keep/have kept us safe.
Event Sponsors
Co-sponsored by the Department of African & African American Studies, Department of American Indian Studies, Department of Chicano & Latino Studies, and the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS)
About the speakers
Nick Estes is an enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, associate professor in the Department of American Indian Studies and author of the award-winning book "Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance," which places the indigenous-led movement to stop Dakota access into historical context.
Anna Freyberg Oertel is a public historian and recent alumna of the Masters of Heritage Studies and Public History Program at the University of Minnesota.
Jessica Lopez-Lyman is an interdisciplinary performance artist, assistant professor in the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies and a McKnight Land-Grant Professor. Her book "Place-Keepers: Latina/x Art, Performance, and Organizing in the Twin Cities" explores contemporary social movements.
Rahsaan Mahadeo is an assistant professor in the Department of African American & African Studies and the author of the award-winning book "Funk the Clock: Transgressing Time While Young, Perceptive, and Black."
Eva Peña received her BA from the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies in May 2026 and works for Communities Organized for Latine Power and Action (COPAL).
About the Moderators
Jennifer L. Pierce is a professor emerita of American studies and a Distinguished University Teaching Professor. She is the author or coauthor of seven books, among them "Queer Twin Cities: Twin Cities GLBT History Project" and "Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action."
Elliott Powell is a professor of American studies and Asian American studies and a University of Minnesota Distinguished Teaching Professor. He is the author of the multiple award-winning book, including "Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Popular Music."
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