Student Movements Against the Imperial University: Toward a Genealogy of Disability Justice in U.S. Higher Education

Abstract

This article explores insurgent knowledge created by student organizers who are collectively challenging institutional complicity with U.S. imperialism, racial capitalism, settler-colonialism, and disability injustice through social movements on U.S. college campuses. Taking Syracuse University as a case study of anti-imperialist student organizing from 1968-1970, I analyze student protest materials—primarily political education leaflets and literature opposing the Vietnam War and anti-Black racism—from the university archives. Following a lineage of anti-imperialist student organizing from the second half of the twentieth century to the present-day student movement for justice in Palestine, I highlight traces of disability within histories of student protest that have largely been framed as extraneous to disability issues and histories on U.S. campuses. My argument is twofold: 1. Student movements opposing Israeli apartheid, U.S. imperialism, and settler-colonialism are also movements for disability justice, and 2. Student movements for disability justice must actively oppose Israeli apartheid, U.S. imperialism, and settler-colonialism. Through collective labor and direct action aimed at transformation over inclusion, student protestors throughout history and today offer a different framing of what a university might do under other, non-white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, and settler-capitalist social relations and economic conditions that impede collective access. The visions put forth by student organizers can inform how we teach and labor at universities to bring our politics and practices in closer alignment with the principles of disability justice.