School of Law Associate Professor Rachel Moran is back at the University of St. Thomas after spending four months as a Fulbright Scholar researching protests and policing in Chile. Moran was selected to travel to South America in fall 2024 as part of the prestigious academic exchange program.

Hosted by the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Moran conducted research to compare and contrast the responses of Chilean police to mass political protests in the fall of 2019 with responses of U.S. police to mass political protests in the summer of 2020.
A highly sought-after expert in police accountability and policing reform, she is the first law school faculty member to be selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar.
The Newsroom recently interviewed Moran about her time in Chile researching mass political protests. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: You spent an entire semester in Chile. What was it like being immersed in a different country and culture?
I think any time you spend significant time in another culture, particularly surrounded by people from that other culture, you learn a lot from it. And so independent of the research, I was very grateful for the chance to spend a full semester in an environment that I was unfamiliar with. It was also really fun to be able to use Spanish most of the day for four months, because my Spanish is conversationally strong, but I’m not fluent.
Q: Why did you want to research mass protests and police accountability in Chile?
In late 2019, Chile experienced two months of almost uninterrupted mass protests. They call it the Estallido Social, which means social explosion. This happened very close in time to the uprisings in the U.S. in 2020. I didn’t know a ton about the Chilean protests before I went, but what I did know suggested that they’d experienced some similar problems with the policing response. Those concerns included police using unnecessary force for some protesters. There were also worries that the police didn’t have any idea how to delineate between the small percentage of people who were engaged in property damage or violence and the very large percentage of people who were perhaps creating disturbances but were doing so in a nonviolent way by, for example, blocking access to certain streets or buildings.
Q: What differences did you find in the responses from Chilean police compared to U.S. police?
What I found was a mix of discouraging and heartening. It was a reminder that the U.S. is not the only country that is struggling to figure out an appropriate balance between protecting the right to protest and protecting public safety and order. For example, the police in Chile used rubber bullets and other forms of less-lethal force way too much – they caused serious injuries to hundreds of protesters, including more than 100 who were completely or partially blinded. So that’s discouraging, and we have that problem in the U.S., too. We’re not alone there.

There were two things that stood out to me that I think they’re doing better in Chile. One is just a lot more thoughtful reflection on what went wrong and how it can be fixed. I was in Chile over the five-year anniversary of their protests and I went to conferences that were focused on asking questions like ‘What should we be doing better? Where have we still not improved?’ I was impressed with the way Chile is trying to grapple with problems rather than just move on from them.
The second thing, at one of the conferences I attended, a police officer from the Netherlands said that they train their officers to perceive of themselves as facilitating protest, not as stopping it. That’s a pretty simple concept, but very different than how a lot of officers are trained in the U.S. If you’re envisioning yourself as someone whose job is to make sure protests can happen as much as peacefully possible, you probably react a little bit differently to things that are on the border of disorder.
Q: How do you plan to incorporate what you learned as a Fulbright Scholar into your teaching at St. Thomas?
One of my biggest takeaways will be the idea of coaching students through discomfort. When I’m at the law school, I run a clinic where students are representing people in court, and sometimes it’s their first time ever representing clients or their first time appearing in court. That’s not something that’s easy or comfortable for students to be doing, but it’s really important for their growth. I know that, of course, intellectually, and I’ve experienced that for myself. But it’s been some time since I personally felt uncomfortable in a courtroom. I think the experience of being in a setting where I wasn’t fluent in the language and needing to adapt to different cultural practices was a great reminder of how my students might feel when they’re going into court for the first time. It makes me more empathetic, and I think that’ll be a really positive thing in the way I teach.
Q: Do you plan to publish your research or findings in the future?

I wrote a forthcoming scholarly piece on the policing of protests that is going to be published in the Columbia Law Review. I presented that draft at a conference at Columbia in November, and while that is not specifically about Chile, I wrote a lot of it while I was in Chile, and it’s informed by the research I did there.
Q: Any favorite memories from while you were on the road in Chile?
Chile is incredibly beautiful. I went to the driest desert in the world. I saw the most unbelievable set of stars I could ever have imagined. I went down to southern Chile and got to see penguins. I hiked in the Andes. It was great to have some time on weekends to just explore the country.
Q: Would you recommend the Fulbright Program to your fellow colleagues and students at St. Thomas?
I was very on the fence about whether to even apply for this, because it was a lot of work to do the application. One of my takeaways is, this was very worth it, and I’m really glad I did it. It was a great experience, and to my fellow Tommies, I would encourage you to do this if you get a chance to apply, because the reward is significant.