About

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.