A Decade of Mass Campus Protests
an archive of U.S. and Canadian higher ed activism in the 2010s
- Protests
- 5,572
- Universities
- 543
- Campaigns
- 393
- News articles coded
- 16,069
Milan Ilnyckyj · CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 · Flickr — We Are U of T pool
“You can’t pay your rent with prestige”
Tactics, trade-offs, and long-term leverage on the picket lines of the 2015 CUPE strike at the University of Toronto
Also in the archiveAll stories ›
Inside a campus occupation, linking past and present
How Brandeis students drew on a long legacy of anti-racist student activism
“Black students on this campus feel uncomfortable every day.”
How students confronted historic symbols of white supremacy on their campuses
"Red anger rises": Art and revolt in the 2012 Québec student strike
How performance, poetry, and red squares animated the largest student strike in Canada's history
How Black students in Missouri called out a toxic campus climate - and inspired a wave of solidarity activism
Tracing an anti-racist movement from the streets of Ferguson to Mizzou to campuses across the U.S. and Canada
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About this website
This website is designed for campus activists working on left and liberatory organizing. It is an archive of higher ed protest in the 2010s in the U.S. and Canada — a crucial period of left activist resurgence. This website also is a toolkit that makes movement histories relevant to activism now.
Protests are the most visible actions by social movements. While campus organizing involves many behind-the-scenes activities, such as meetings, recruitment, and strategizing, protests bring an issue into the public spotlight. They show numbers. They provide visuals. They disrupt. They advance demands. They put pressure on targets. Protests are essential for participatory democracy. At universities and colleges, left and liberatory protests can challenge oppressive conditions and impact decision-making by elevating the priorities of students, faculty, and staff.
Most data on this site comes from HiPED, the Higher Ed Protest Event Dataset. HiPED was built by a research team at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and University of Toronto. We created the dataset by analyzing English-language student newspaper articles for higher ed protests (organized on campus and off) in the U.S. and Canada between January 2012 and June 2018. We developed this website with guidance from an advisory collective of current and former campus organizers.