What Students and Professors Are Saying About Green Is the New Red…

by Will Potter on October 16, 2012

in News

I’ve received some wonderful feedback from college professors who have taught Green Is the New Red as part of their syllabus. As an author, I think one of the best compliments you can receive is that college students actually wanted to read your book and were excited about it in class. Or, that they were surprised to really enjoy it (as one student said on Amazon: “I picked up this book for my English 104 class and prepared for the worst semester yet. However, it turned out this book was simply awesome!”) Here are a few highlights of what folks are saying after they’ve used the book and invited me to speak to their students.

I assigned Will Potter’s book, Green Is The New Red, to my class, “The Politics of Terrorism and Political Violence,” last Spring at Georgetown University.  Despite many of the students’ unfamiliarity with the larger eco-justice and animal rights movements, the words of the text reached them, and many wrote a great deal about the book in their weekly journals and term papers.  The book served as the background for a series of discussions concerning the criminalization of dissent, the State’s domestic war on terrorism and how social movements are labeled within a security discourse.  During the course’s ‘wrap up’ session, when the students are tasked with evaluating the class, there was nothing but praise for Potter’s book as well as his in-class speaking.  I believe one student said it best when she said, that the book reads as it it was written by someone with heart, a careful storyteller who is able to balance journalistic integrity with compassionate humanism.  Having met the author and seen him speak, this describes Will Potter to a tee.

Prof. Michael Loadenthal
Georgetown University

 

I used Green is the New Red in a civil rights litigation class for third-year law students.  Even for students (and lawyers) who consider themselves well versed in the history of governmental intrusions and surveillance, this book serves as a wake-up call.  Whether students are interested in the animal rights movement or not, this book is a must read for any person interested in domestic terrorism laws and enforcement post-9/11.

Prof. Justin F. Marceau
University of Denver, Sturm College of Law

 

As a college professor, I seek to assign texts that will both inform and captivate my students. Will Potter’s Green is the New Red achieves both these goals and then some. I have adopted Green is the New Red as a required book for my upper-level sociology seminar “Environmental Social Movements,” which I will teach in spring 2013. I chose Potter’s book because it provides a riveting depiction and analysis of the opposition that environmental social movements face from government, corporations, as well as the culture in which they work. Potter’s meticulously cited—and often shocking—facts, combined with his fluid and engaging writing style, should appeal to college students at all levels, and it should be of use for sociology, political science, history, and other social science disciplines teaching about social movements and environmentalism.

Prof. Elizabeth Cherry
Manhattanville College

 

Green is the New Red was an integral text in my Environmental Justice course. Students found the book personally moving, informative on current political repression, and a necessary history of earth liberation in the U.S. The book was used in the course to bridge an intersectional discussion about environmental injustices with an advocacy for a critical and holistic environmental justice movement. My students pointed out that the book provided salient illustrations of the theoretical concepts we had been discussing all semester.

Prof. Jenny Grubbs
American University 

 

I have used Green is the New Red by Will Potter in two different courses on the Politics of Protest and have used excerpts from the book in environmental politics courses as well. His is the most accessible book I have found on government repression against activists in the United States and on the political usage of “terrorism” in post 9-11 America. In classes like these, its important to discuss the animal and earth liberation movements and I have found that students, from all over the political spectrum, appreciate the viewpoint and approach that Potter uses to examine these topics.

Prof. Sean Parson
Northern Arizona University

 

NYU_logoThis book is essential for any course about social movements. It tells a gripping story about the history of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act with clear implications about political repression of First Amendment activity more generally, and along the way it touches on a number of important topics ranging from the nature of terrorism to the role of objectivity in journalism. My students loved it and were equal parts terrified and inspired by it — which is, of course, exactly the right reaction for them to have to this information, though a lesser book might not have achieved this kind of balance. Very, very highly recommended.

Prof. Jeff Sebo
NYU

You can order a desk copy or an exam copy from Consortium.

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