The authors describe protest patterns at U.S. and Canadian universities in the 2010s. The research draws on a new dataset, the Higher Ed Protest Event Dataset, which combines machine learning and sociological hand coding of 16,069 campus newspaper articles. The sample consists of 5,553 higher ed protests involving 584 universities and colleges between 2012 and 2018. The dataset also includes university and police responses to a subset of protests. The authors find that protest frequency is patterned by the academic calendar. The top issue in both U.S. and Canadian higher education protests was university administration and governance. The comparative analysis reveals distinctive patterns in other issues raised and protest intensity. In the United States, the periods of greatest protest activity were waves of mass mobilization across the country on often racialized issues with a national dimension: racist police violence, racially hostile campus climates, and Donald Trump’s presidency. In Canada, protest activity was most intense during provincial or local campaigns led by formal student organizations and unions on issues of economic security: public tuition, austerity, and labor conditions. Across both countries, university administrations and police usually avoided extensive intervention during protests. The findings contribute to social movements research through methodological innovations and new empirical insights on movements in higher education.
more » « less- PAR ID:
- 10556215
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World
- Volume:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2378-0231
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
null (Ed.)The death of George Floyd has brought a new wave of 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests into U.S. cities. Protests happened in a few cities accompanied by reports of violence over the first few days. The protests appear to be related to rising crime. This study uses newly collected crime data in 50 U.S. cities/counties to explore the spatiotemporal crime changes under BLM protests and to estimate the driving factors of burglary induced by the BLM protest. Four spatial and statistic models were used, including the Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN), Hotspot Analysis, Least Absolute Shrinkage, and Selection Operator (LASSO), and Binary Logistic Regression. The results show that (1) crime, especially burglary, has risen sharply in a few cities/counties, yet heterogeneity exists across cities/counties; (2) the volume and spatial distribution of certain crime types changed under BLM protest, the activity of burglary clustered in certain regions during protests period; (3) education, race, demographic, and crime rate in 2019 are related with burglary changes during BLM protests. The findings from this study can provide valuable information for ensuring the capabilities of the police and governmental agencies to deal with the evolving crisis.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Scholarship on college choice largely focuses on how students search for colleges but less is known about how colleges recruit students. This article analyzes off-campus recruiting visits for 15 public research universities. We Web-scrape university admissions websites and issue public records requests to collect data on recruiting visits. Analyses explore the similarities and differences in off-campus recruiting patterns across universities in the study. Results reveal socioeconomic, racial, and geographic disparities in recruiting patterns. In particular, most universities made more out-of-state than in-state visits, and out-of-state visits systematically targeted affluent, predominantly White localities. We recommend that future research should exploit new data collection methodologies to develop a systematic literature on marketing and recruiting practices in higher education.more » « less
-
Abstract We analyze social media activity during one of the largest protest mobilizations in US history to examine ideological asymmetries in the posting of news content. Using an unprecedented combination of four datasets (tracking offline protests, social media activity, web browsing, and the reliability of news sources), we show that there is no evidence of unreliable sources having any prominent visibility during the protest period, but we do identify asymmetries in the ideological slant of the sources shared on social media, with a clear bias towards right-leaning domains. These results support the “amplification of the right” thesis, which points to the structural conditions (social and technological) that lead to higher visibility of content with a partisan bent towards the right. Our findings provide evidence that right-leaning sources gain more visibility on social media and reveal that ideological asymmetries manifest themselves even in the context of movements with progressive goals.
-
Social movements are constantly evolving. Protest activity waxes and wanes as movements suffer through prolonged periods of frustration, win occasional gains, and turn to new goals and issues. While theoretical models of protest activity are often sensitive to this reality, empirical models typically treat these explanations as time-invariant, rather than situated in specific moments in movements’ histories. Quite simply, we suspect that the effect of important predictors of movement activity, notably access to resources, political opportunities, repression, and competition, varies depending on the specific moment in the movement’s life course. We explore this possibility through a detailed analysis of three main periods of the American Civil Rights movement: (1) the movement’s initial success (1960–1968), its subsequent demobilization (1968–1977), and its institutionalization (1978–1995). Our analysis builds on limited work arguing for greater sensitivity to a movement’s life course when explaining protest activity. We find that the type of organizational resources that shape mobilization varies across periods, and support for prior work showing that the concurrent push and pull of institutionalization and radicalization led to demobilization. Finally, we find that coalition work motivated protest during its period of institutionalization. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and empirical implications of these findings.
-
Abstract Student-organized activism and obfuscation respond to intrusive surveillance in digital assessment within higher education. This article explores privacy surveillance disconnects and the emergence of protests against antinormative practices. Employing qualitative and quantitative methods, including content analysis of subreddits focused on higher education, student privacy, and specific university campus communities, the study considers multiple stakeholders’ perspectives. The findings illustrate the creative avenues students have adopted to counter online assessment tools. Emphasizing the significance of privacy and autonomy in higher education, this work sheds light on the challenges faced by students and provides insights into their strategies for addressing privacy concerns.