Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    AI and Microcredentials
Sign In
Technology and Politics

That Video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Dancing Actually Has a Lot to Do With Higher Ed

By Brock Read and Andy Thomason January 4, 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman member of Congress from New York, dances in 2010 in a video produced at Boston University while she was an undergraduate there.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman member of Congress from New York, dances in 2010 in a video produced at Boston University while she was an undergraduate there.YouTube

As an attempted gotcha, it was a flop. A video that circulated this week on Twitter, showing the newly minted U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing on a rooftop during her college days, was meant to be a black mark of some sort. Instead, most of the internet found it charming.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman member of Congress from New York, dances in 2010 in a video produced at Boston University while she was an undergraduate there.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman member of Congress from New York, dances in 2010 in a video produced at Boston University while she was an undergraduate there.YouTube

As an attempted gotcha, it was a flop. A video that circulated this week on Twitter, showing the newly minted U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing on a rooftop during her college days, was meant to be a black mark of some sort. Instead, most of the internet found it charming.

As a history lesson in miniature, though, the video was more revealing — a reminder of an era when video mash-ups not only ruled the earth (and college campuses), but also struck both wonks and cultural critics as a big deal.

Although the tweet that started it all (now deleted) claimed the video was a “high school” clip of Ocasio-Cortez, the video was actually produced by a center at Boston University while the New York Democrat was an undergraduate there.

According to a 2010 university news release, the video was the brainchild of Raúl Fernandez, assistant director of the Howard Thurman Center. At the time, a YouTube mash-up of famous dancing scenes from The Breakfast Club and some other Brat Pack movies with “Lisztomania,” a song by the French pop-rock band Phoenix, was ubiquitous.

Fernandez thought a university-made video, paying homage to the viral hit, would express institutional values like diversity and connection. So he asked a couple of students to run with the idea. With an assist from the university’s assistant dean of students, they found the perfect stage: the roof of the College of Arts and Sciences.

One Saturday about 20 students got up before dawn to film. “Most people didn’t understand why we had to gather so early,” said one of them, Julian Jensen, “but we shot them and immediately replayed the footage, and they saw how beautiful the light was.”

The beautiful light was augmented by some jokey touches that are at least halfway clever. Rhett, the university’s costumed terrier mascot, re-enacted a scene from Pretty in Pink, taking on the role of Jon Cryer serenading Molly Ringwald in a record store.

The video is goofy and earnest. That’s true now, and it was true back when it was created. But at the time, even the silliest viral phenomena could be seen as heady stuff. Digital technology had opened up new pathways for creating and disseminating derivative art and cultural commentary, while scholars and advocates argued that intellectual-property law hadn’t caught up to that new reality.

Perhaps the most eloquent spokesman for that view was Lawrence Lessig, the professor at Stanford and Harvard who had become an influential guru on technology, law, and culture. For years Lessig had championed what he called “read/write culture,” in which everyday people felt empowered to generate their own creative product, over “read-only culture,” in which hard-line enforcement of copyright and corporate control of the internet discouraged those people from doing so. “We need to celebrate (and support) the rebirth of a remix culture,” wrote Lessig in 2008, introducing Remix, his book-length statement of intent.

ADVERTISEMENT

To Lessig, the Brat-Pack-meets-Phoenix craze was a demonstration of the fecundity of remix culture. One enterprising creator had thought to mash together a song from 2009 with film clips from the 1980s. A group of enterprising Brooklynites had then turned the concept into their own live-action video. Soon homages had proliferated across the globe — in Riga, in Nairobi, in Rio de Janeiro, and on a Boston University rooftop, where a future congresswoman tried on some of Ally Sheedy’s old moves. The professor incorporated scenes from some of those videos into an online presentation on fair-use doctrine, a much-invoked but erratically understood pillar of copyright law. (For the uninitiated: Fair-use doctrine allows for limited reproduction of copyrighted material in “transformative” cases, like commentary or parody.)

Parker Higgins was the longtime director of copyright activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital-rights advocacy group of which Lessig was once a board member. On Twitter, he picked up the story from there.

The delightful dancing video of AOC that is being circulated right now* is actually part of a pretty storied, if now mostly forgotten, remix culture phenomenon. If you’ll allow me...

--
* apparently by numbskulls incapable of joy

— Parker Higgins (@xor) January 3, 2019

As Higgins recalls, Phoenix’s Australian record company, Liberation Music, sued Lessig for distributing “Lisztomania” in his lecture. Lessig, joining forces with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued back. His lecture on fair use had now turned into a lawsuit in which he asserted his own right to fair use.

ADVERTISEMENT

Lessig’s settlement with the company amounted to a win for the professor. Liberation Music paid the scholar an undisclosed sum, and the record label adopted “new policies that respect fair use,” according to a foundation press release.

Lessig’s days as a copyright crusader are largely over; he’s moved on to fighting against corruption in American politics. In October he published an essay arguing that the Electoral College is itself a form of corruption — “a shadow of slavery’s power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic.” Those words weren’t his own. He was approvingly quoting a rare national politician who had criticized the body. That politician’s name: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Brock Read is assistant managing editor at The Chronicle. He directs a team of editors and reporters who cover policy, research, labor, and academic trends, among other things. Follow him on Twitter @bhread, or drop him a line at brock.read@chronicle.com.

Andy Thomason is a senior editor at The Chronicle. Send him a tip at andy.thomason@chronicle.com. And follow him on Twitter @arthomason.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Technology
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
Read_Brock.jpg
About the Author
Brock Read
What I Do
Thomason_Andy.jpg
About the Author
Andy Thomason
Andy Thomason is an assistant managing editor at The Chronicle and the author of the book Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics’ Amateur Ideal.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Photo illustration showing internal email text snippets over a photo of a University of Iowa campus quad
Red-state reticence
Facing Research Cuts, Officials at U. of Iowa Spoke of a ‘Limited Ability to Publicly Fight This’
Photo illustration showing Santa Ono seated, places small in the corner of a dark space
'Unrelentingly Sad'
Santa Ono Wanted a Presidency. He Became a Pariah.
Illustration of a rushing crowd carrying HSI letters
Seeking precedent
Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Is Discriminatory and Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Argues
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through paper that is a photo of an idyllic liberal arts college campus on one side and money on the other
Finance
Small Colleges Are Banding Together Against a Higher Endowment Tax. This Is Why.

From The Review

Football game between UCLA and Colorado University, at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colo., Sept. 24, 2022.
The Review | Opinion
My University Values Football More Than Education
By Sigman Byrd
Photo- and type-based illustration depicting the acronym AAUP with the second A as the arrow of a compass and facing not north but southeast.
The Review | Essay
The Unraveling of the AAUP
By Matthew W. Finkin
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome propped on a stick attached to a string, like a trap.
The Review | Opinion
Colleges Can’t Trust the Federal Government. What Now?
By Brian Rosenberg

Upcoming Events

Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Warwick_Leadership_Javi.png
University Transformation: a Global Leadership Perspective
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin