Student Activism and Curricular Change in Higher Education

Arthur, Mikaila Mariel Lemonik

doi:10.4324/9781315611129

Cited by 29 publications

(27 citation statements)

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“…If not, their potential to accumulate and use any broader cultural power may be severely hampered. However, research also suggests that movements within organizations like colleges, are more likely to achieve their goals when they tailor their strategies to their specific institution (Arthur, ). With this in mind, which stakeholders matter for college campus‐based movements?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

College campus activism: Distinguishing between liberal reformers and conservative crusaders

2018

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This article reviews scholarship on college campus activism in the U.S. We use ideology as a lens with which to examine and discuss college protest. Specifically, we distinguish between right‐wing and left‐wing college campus movements and examine recent developments. We begin with a discussion of basic concepts from social movement theory and provide an overview of the theoretical differences between right‐ and left‐wing movements. Then, we provide a historical overview of college protest and discuss future directions for sociological inquiry into contemporary campus activism. Our discussion is motivated by recent examples of progressive movements such as the “Mizzou protests” and the campus chapters of Black Lives Matter, and alt‐right groups such as Identity Evropa.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

College campus activism: Distinguishing between liberal reformers and conservative crusaders

2018

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“…Campus activism can also endure across generations because of existing subcultures of activism (Van Dyke, ), which can affect tactical trajectories as well (Binder & Wood, ). Its endurance is doubly beneficial because colleges are obvious, often sympathetic, targets for protest (Walker, Martin, & McCarthy, ), and student movements have won significant concessions through demonstrations and rallies (Arthur, ; Rojas, ).…”

Section: Campus Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth, activism, and social movements

2017

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There has been considerable debate over the extent and role of young people's political participation. Whether considering popular hand-wringing over concerns about declines in young people's institutional political participation or dismissals of young people's use of online activism, many frame youth engagement through a "youth deficit" model that assumes that adults need to politically socialize young people. However, others argue that young people are politically active and actively involved in their own political socialization, which is evident when examining youth participation in protest, participatory politics, and other forms of noninstitutionalized political participation. Moreover, social movement scholars have long documented the importance of youth to major social movements.In this article, we bring far flung literatures about youth activism together to review work on campus activism; young people's political socialization, their involvement in social movement organizations, their choice of tactics; and the context in which youth activism takes place. This context includes the growth of movement societies, the rise of fan activism, and pervasive Internet use. We argue that social movement scholars have already created important concepts (e.g., biographical availability) and questions (e.g., biographical consequences of activism) from studying young people and urge additional future research.

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“…To summarize, as states have a greater capacity for repression, facilitation, and routinization and as they are more open and less vulnerable to de-legitimation and non-participation, as a consequence one expects that events that target non-state institutions 'should be significantly more radical and disruptive than those that target the state' to be effective (Walker et al, 2008: 43-44, see also King, 2016). A mobilization within a university is more likely to produce effects and set in motion the reaction of other actors, when it generates disruption (Arthur, 2011). The students who occupy a department by preventing it from performing its daily seminars and classes, or researchers who refuse to run assigned courses are two instances of action that put in crisis the core institutional activities of the university.…”

Section: Influencing Non-state Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 Primary among them is the consideration of how assertive tactics should be. More specifically, literature on social movements traditionally distinguish between conventional and unconventional repertories of action (Tarrow, 1998), assertive and non-assertive tactics of contention (Arthur, 2011). Some movements, such as the pacifist movement, mostly adopted non-assertive strategies of influence, while others, such as the youth movement, preferred assertive ones.…”

Section: Activist Strategies Within Non-state Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successful student activism in contemporary Italian universities

Cini

2017

Riv. Ital. Sci. Polit.

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This article assesses the strategies that the Italian student activists adopted in order to influence the revision process of the governance structure of their universities in 2011. Which kind of strategy has enabled these activists to influence more successfully this process? I argue that the joint pressure of insiders and outsiders allows student activists to get their voice more effectively heard from the university leaders than when one of the two forms of pressure is absent. The ‘power of the streets’ exerted by the ‘outsiders’, combined with the institutional power of the ‘insiders’, produces a significant amplifying effect in the governing bodies. University leaders fear this kind of alliance, as they perceive that insiders with a strong tie with other actors are the expression of a collective voice that is difficult to neutralize. On the other hand, the outsiders are also aware that their collective strength is more likely to be translated into institutional power and action from their allies and/or representatives. To empirically probe this proposition, I have singled out three Italian universities (University of Turin, Sapienza of Rome, and Federico II of Naples), which witnessed high levels of student mobilization in the past years (2008–13), and where student activists and their organizations adopted the most different array of strategies. More specifically, while at the University of Turin the student activists were able to deploy simultaneously both forms of pressure, at the Federico II of Naples and Sapienza of Rome one of the two forms was lacking.

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Student Activism and Curricular Change in Higher Education

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

College campus activism: Distinguishing between liberal reformers and conservative crusaders

College campus activism: Distinguishing between liberal reformers and conservative crusaders

Youth, activism, and social movements

Successful student activism in contemporary Italian universities

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