The crowd assembled Monday morning listen to Erica Chenoweth delivering the keynote speech in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel during the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day events on the Lewiston campus.  Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — Martin Luther King Jr. preached that nonviolence is the path to attaining progressive social change, but many decades after the civil rights activist’s death, we’re learning there may be a little math on his side.

Dr. Erica Chenoweth, Harvard professor and a leading expert in nonviolent resistance and political violence, said in their keynote address to Bates students Monday that 125 years of maximalist campaigns — nonviolent and violent — teach us a lot about how humans have successfully brought about change.

“Movements that have civil society organizational bases in which there have been trainings and nonviolent action are more likely to be able to maintain nonviolent discipline,” Chenoweth said. “Mass nonviolent movements also can maintain political pressure and sometimes even build pressure by engaging in much less risky acts.”

Bates College students and visitors packed into Gomes Chapel on the college campus Monday morning to hear Chenoweth explain the context of nonviolent movements, both historically and contemporarily. Chenoweth’s address was part of a daylong schedule of events and workshops centered around MLK Jr. Day.

Erica Chenoweth delivers the keynote speech Monday morning in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel during the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day events on the Lewiston campus.  Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

While violent uprisings have had their place in political change, research shows that nonviolent campaigns tend to be more successful and more cost-effective. Chenoweth’s work as director of the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation focuses on how strategically planned and executed nonviolent resistance can change the political landscape.

Chenoweth said studies have revealed that nonviolent movements are more likely to lead to long-term political change than violent movements.

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“Nonviolent campaigns are more than twice as likely to succeed against opponents that use violence against them,” Chenoweth said. “Repression against unarmed campaigners globally seems to have more or less a universal impact, which is that it elicits sympathy for the protesters.”

Strategic advantage can be leveraged by applying nonviolent pressure to the “pillars of support” of an oppressive system, Chenoweth said.

“The best strategy in our computational model, by far, is the informed pillar strategy,” Chenoweth said. “Here, the movement has done its homework, it’s got some intelligence. It knows which of the pillars — whether they’re business elites or state media or security forces — are already a little shaky in their loyalty, and it goes for them first, and that activates the cascaded defections. They have over 80% success rates, even with very small numbers of participants.”

Chenoweth stressed the importance of adapting tactics to any situation at hand, explaining that nonviolent resistance is a spectrum, ranging from high-risk demonstrations to subtler actions like stay-at-home protests and economic boycotts.

“Mass nonviolent movements also can maintain political pressure and sometimes even build pressure by engaging in much less risky acts,” Chenoweth said. “There are methods of ‘commission’ where people are developing alternative institutions, mutual aid. And there are methods of ‘omission’ where people are … engaging in nonviolent resistance where they are (at).”

Bates College President Garry Jenkins reflected on Dr. King’s legacy, Bates’ history with King through late alumnus Dr. Banjamin Mays, mentor to King and his eulogist, and the continuing fight for equality.

Bates College visiting lecturer Andrew Allsup, holds his 8-month-old daughter Enid Monday morning while listening to Erica Chenoweth deliver the keynote speech in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel during the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day events on the Lewiston campus. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

“In that eulogy in 1968, (Mays) said, talking about King, that he gave people an ethical and moral way to engage in activities designed to perfect social change without bloodshed and violence,” Jenkins said. “We must interrogate what it means to have ethical and moral engagement. We must probe how any action, any press for change might either positively or negatively impact ourselves and others. We must work to understand the world through which we move the networks, the neighborhoods, the communities, the societies that we’re a part of, and take it as our personal and collective responsibility to affect essential social change.”

Student government co-presidents Ethan Chan and Dhruv Chandra also spoke to the crowd, noting that the work of advancing justice continues, both on campus and in the broader world.

“Bates’ MLK Day observance reminds us that dialogue and education are powerful tools for fostering empathy and driving collective action towards a more just and peaceful world,” Chandra said.

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