Student Protests Research Articles

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

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.

Echoes from the Global South: Reflections on the Student Public Intellectual, Hashtags and Neoliberal Themes in the #FeesMustFall Student Protests in South Africa (2015–2016)

The student protests in South Africa (2015–2016) reflected multiple dimensions of the crisis in higher education. These included epistemic, economic, political, psychological and social dimensions, raising serious concerns about the social compact in a post-1994 South Africa. What I examine through an eclectic approach which incorporates a first-person methodology and critical discourse analysis are the nuances and meanings that surfaced when students captured specific events and then articulated the events and the unfolding experiences in a vocabulary that provided a translation for their emotions and pain. This was done by the students by both linking and challenging protest hashtags or referencing texts that had only recently become accessible to them. As they learnt, they shared, and as they shared they realised that there were others experiencing similar challenges, such as the student protests in Chile (2011–2012). Sharing experiences is an act of solidarity and the benefits of solidarity strengthened the language needed to articulate what the students encountered in specific moments. I show that the South African students echoed issues that were found in the higher education protests in Chile, whilst also drawing lines in the sand with regards to the challenges in their own lived context. What is most significant for me is that in both the South African and Chilean protests an interesting phenomenon is evident that has not been acknowledged—this is the rise of the student-academic public intellectual. This paper highlights these developments to challenge the narrative of “uncivilised” and violent black students by contextualising and animating their articulations, questions and their understanding of the ideology and system that was suffocating them.

Disrupting normalcy. Artistic interventions and political mobilisation against the neoliberal city (Santiago, Chile, 2019)

ABSTRACT This article explores the role of art interventions in mobilisations unleashed in Chile in October 2019, situating them in the urban fabric of one of the most segregated cities in the world: Santiago. Understood as an uprising against the precarity of life imposed by the neoliberal state, this social explosion devised creative and expressive strategies to disrupt the daily flow of ingrained normative structures, and questioned its longstanding legitimacy in shaping the city’s neoliberal layout. In this text, we first focus on the ways this spring of protest overflowed the genealogies that cross art, politics and public space on the local scene, opening up vanishing points between a certain tradition of politicisation of public art with solid roots in Latin American territory, on the one hand, and a more recent history of aestheticisation of urban protest that finds a crucial milestone in the playful resources of the student protests of 2011, on the other. From an interdisciplinary approach, we examine diverse art interventions that vindicated the urban space as a territory of public expression and political imagination to conceive a new constituent process. In this work, we sustain that these exercises reclaiming citizenship operated as ‘strategies of estrangement’, shedding light on how the neoliberal infrastructure of the city has naturalised inequality, social insecurity and segregation. By way of conclusion, we cross-examine the possibilities that aesthetic experience can offer for social and political resistance against neoliberal normalcy, and a common ground to explore alternative visions of futurity.

Student online protests in Uzbekistan: democratization of higher education as concomitant to the COVID-19 crisis?

ABSTRACT The democratization of higher education (HE) has been interpreted from various perspectives in many country-specific case studies. Yet, it has been overlooked that in authoritarian regimes the democratization of HE may involve the development of freedom of expression, an element taken for granted in democratic societies. Growing research on the implications of COVID-19 on HE fails to cover the emergence of democratization of HE in the form of freedom of expression practiced by university students. This research examines post-Soviet Uzbekistan to analyse how the practising of freedom of expression emerged among the student body during the pandemic era in the country and how the Uzbek government responded to and resolved the matter. Based on this case, it is argued that in authoritarian states the HE democratization framework can include the development of freedom of expression in the form of student protests that, in this article’s case, emerge as concomitant to the pandemic.

1968 and the Fight for Democracy in Australia: Don Dunstan, Student Activism, and the End of the South Australian “Playmander”

The historiographical debate about the significance of 1968 — the year of transnational political protests and strikes — for Australia has centred on the questions of how derivative and imitative protests in Australia were, and whether 1968 was a singular year here in the longer period of activism. This article presents a fresh angle on the debate by looking at the vital role of students in turning the Dunstan Labor government's electoral loss (in terms of seats, despite winning 54 per cent of the vote) in South Australia into a constitutional struggle. The state's gerrymander (or egregious electorate malapportionment), and questions of electoral reform and democracy in Australia, were specific, local issues, distinct from issues that sparked student protests from Paris to Chicago. When Don Dunstan refused to step aside after the election on 2 March 1968 for six weeks, he created a space for political debate and protests. Blue‐collar unions and other concerned citizens were important participants, but arguably it was students who grabbed the most media attention with their noisy demonstrations. The article contends that the transnational protest moment added to Australian students' radicalisation by the National Service scheme, and that students' role in Dunstan's campaign for electoral reform proved a decisive factor.

La Movida Madrileña and ‘Paris Maquis’: A comparative history of Madrilenian and Parisian punk

As a cultural phenomenon, punk has had a global impact. Recent scholarship has expanded upon this by exploring examples of punk within different countries around the world. However, not enough attention has been given to these instances in a comparative context, especially with regards to European punk. This article will attempt to ameliorate this by comparing the first waves of both Madrilenian (Spanish) and Parisian (French) punk in terms of origins, ideologies and elements of representation in their contemporary contexts. Punk arrived in these countries at transformative periods in their nations’ histories. Spanish punk, as la Movida Madrileña, began almost immediately after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, whereas French punk came after the fallout of the May 1968 student protests. However, despite these politically volatile backgrounds, punk in these countries greatly varied in terms of cultural impact. Using these comparative contexts, this piece will illustrate how social, political and cultural differences vastly influence the success and development of punk movements and youth cultures in general. In doing so, this article aims to inspire other researchers to consider the comparative method when looking at punk movements, thereby interrogating how punk develops and how historical backgrounds can influence its development.

Lotta Continua and the Italian housing movement in the 1970s: Ancient history or present challenges?

The revolutionary group Lotta Continua (LC, Continuous Struggle) was founded in Turin in 1969, following the encounter between student protests and a labour movement fuelled by massive northward migration from southern Italy. One year later LC was growing into a nationwide movement and launched a programme aimed at unifying the proletariat, and the lumpenproletariat, whose protagonists were recent southern Italian immigrants who could hardly find accommodation worthy of the name. In contrast to left-wing organisations that prioritised factory-based struggle, LC made housing occupation the linchpin of its strategy between 1970 and 1971. Housing occupation was tied to the establishment of kindergartens, clinics and “red” markets; these were not intended to provide social services, however, but rather as sites of schooling for the proletariat. By investigating the main housing occupations between 1970 and 1975 through archival materials and the memories of former housing occupation movement tenants and activists, this article focuses on the link between projects of anti-capitalist transformation and concrete practices of solidarity and struggle, as well as how these struggles were repressed. It also reflects on the relationship between past and present housing struggles.

Blood Carnival and its Variations in Mexican and Soviet Subversive Satires by René Avilés and Fazil Iskander

Abstract This article examines blood carnival metaphors in order to understand how they reflect different interpretations of the nature of violence, the role of state actors and of the people in state violence, and the role of intellectuals in society. In Rabbits and Boa Constrictors (1982), the Soviet satirist Fazil Iskander uses the title's creatures as allegories for Joseph Stalin and his associates as well as the corrupt society that supported and transcended his rule. The satire The Great Solitaire of the Palace (1971) by René Avilés Fabila deals with the Tlatelolco Massacre (Mexico, 1968), in which hundreds of student protesters were shot by security forces and it confronts decades of authoritarianism under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Animal allegories play a key part in these novels’ condemnation of violence and their attempt to ridicule their leaders. These novels represent carnival on the diegetic and the extra-diegetic levels: The diegeses depict historical events as blood carnivals, and the narratives themselves adopt subversive, carnivalesque features. This study identifies three variations of the blood carnival metaphor: (a) the violent disruption of a festivity, (b) covert violence that takes place during a celebration, and (c) ritualized social action that involves violent excesses.

Decolonising legal education in South Africa: Is it time to press the reset button?

South Africa has, like many other African countries, inherited a foreign legal system. The democratic Constitution of 1996 altered the country’s legal framework such that it became reflective of societal change, while recognising plurality in South African legal culture(s). Owing to the 2015‒2016 #FeesMustFall student protests, another ideological shift in legal education is being precipitated by the changing socio‒political landscape of the country. This shift is framed as decolonisation, which entails shedding the colonial yoke of exclusive western ideologies and thinking, thereby requiring an inclusive educational approach. Such a transformed education would incorporate local African traditions, customs and ideologies that existed prior to colonial imposition. Legal thinking and culture is dependent on legal education, and legal education is consequently reliant on the legal framework. Considering this chain of influences, I argue that decolonisation cannot be achieved merely as a change in legal education alone: it requires an ideological shift in the country’s legal framework.

Teaching and inculcating (decolonised) legal skills in the LLB curriculum at the University of Pretoria?

‘Legal Skills’ was taught as a standalone first-year module in the LLB curriculum at the University of Pretoria from 1998 to 2012. In the 2013 curriculum, the teaching and inculcation of legal skills were integrated into a first-year “Jurisprudence” module. The 2015/6 student protests at the University of Pretoria led to the creation of three ‘transformation work streams’, one of which was tasked with curriculum transformation. The activities of the curriculum transformation work stream led to the adoption by the Senate of a Curriculum Transformation Framework Document (CTFD). All faculties have been asked to reconsider and fundamentally reshape their curricula with reference to the CTFD. This reflection-on-the-curriculum process at the Faculty of Law has arguably been dominated by an over-emphasis on the place and sequencing of modules instead of an overhaul of the content of law modules and the approach with which teaching should take place. There has also been a concerted push from some quarters in the Faculty to reintroduce a standalone Legal Skills module, rationalised by an argument along the lines of ‘legal skills cannot be transformed’ (never mind ‘decolonised’). In this article we will consider what it could mean to ask for the decolonising of the teaching and inculcation of legal skills in an LLB curriculum.

From protest to progress through partnership with students: Being human in STEM (HSTEM)

In Fall 2015, Amherst College students held a four-day sit-in in unity with student protests occurring all over the United States highlighting barriers to inclusion of underrepresented and marginalized students.Following appeals for action, students partnered with faculty and staff in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to develop the Being Human in STEM (HSTEM) Initiative. HSTEM involves exploring past diversity and inclusion efforts in STEM, sharing one’s own experiences in STEM with others, and developing student-driven projects to improve belonging in STEM. In this student, faculty, and staff co-authored paper, we describe the origin of HSTEM; share student, faculty and staff reflections on our experiences with HSTEM; and present two inquiry projects examining HSTEM impact. We discuss lessons learned and recommendations for diversity and inclusion efforts in higher education, both in and beyond STEM, emphasizing the power of an initiative that was originated by and remains driven by student partners.

Causes, consequences and control of student protests

This study investigated the causes, consequences and control of student protests, especially the EndSARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) protest. A descriptive survey was adopted for the study. A total of 600 undergraduates, selected by multi-stage sampling, participated in the study. Three research questions were raised and a questionnaire titled Causes, Consequences and Control of Youth Protest Questionnaire (CCCYPQ) was used to collect data. The findings showed that the protest was caused by extra-judicial killings, assaults, harassment, extortion, bad governance, and youth unemployment. In addition, the findings indicated that the consequences of the protest include destruction of lives and property, hacking of the websites of public ministries, departments, agencies and corporate organizations, destruction of public infrastructural facilities, and disruption of academic activities in schools. The various control measures include disbandment of SARS, compensation for victims of police brutality, and provision of skills acquisition programmes and employment opportunities for youths. There were no significant gender differences in the perceived causes, consequences and control of the protest. Based on the findings, it was recommended that dialogue and collaborative decision-making should be employed in controlling student protest.

Education in emergencies: Lessons from COVID-19 in South Africa.

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization upgraded the outbreak of COVID-19 to pandemic status. On 15 March 2020, the South African president declared a national state of disaster under the Disaster Management Act of 2002. On 26 March 2020, national lockdown, which included measures stipulated in guidelines for education in emergencies, was implemented in South Africa. The presidential declaration and subsequent lockdown came at a time when some of the universities in South Africa were already struggling either to commence the academic year, or to make up for time lost due to persistent student protests relating to several student demands. However, disaster management now entailed that all schools and institutions of higher education were forced to close immediately for extended periods, necessitating alternative ways of ensuring access to education. The qualitative case study presented in this article sought to document the intervention strategies developed by two universities located in remote parts of Eastern Cape Province to deliver education during the COVID-19 restrictions. A second aim was an examination of the challenges experienced by the two institutions’ largely rural student population. The authors collected data using a questionnaire completed by 15 educators and 30 students from the two universities. They also analysed official communications documents from the universities addressed to lecturers and students. The results indicate that access to online teaching and learning platforms and resources for students from poor rural communities in South Africa is challenging, and that there are gross inequalities in educational outcomes for learners from different socio-economic backgrounds. This affects the future plans of higher education institutions to provide teaching and learning through online-based platforms. The authors conclude their article by providing recommendations to support online learning in rural areas, which has the potential to expand higher education access post-COVID-19.

A Systemic Perspective

A Systemic Perspective

Democratising South African universities: From activism to advocacy

The segregation enforced during apartheid has not only ensured widely disparate South African university landscapes, but also framed constructions of activism in historical discourses of racial disenfranchisement and marginalisation. As a result, activism is implicitly and explicitly associated with disadvantaged universities; with black students; and specifically directed at an apartheid government. If there were expectations – certainly on the side of government – that the transition to a democratic state would allay student activism, this was not the case. Instead, student activism – still manifested in a critical mass of black students – has not only intensified but has degenerated into disturbing displays of destruction and violence. The recent spate of student protests, which centred on matters of access, free education and decolonisation, and more recently, gender-based violence, has provoked defensive, and at times, antagonistic and discouraging responses from universities – placing students firmly in an opposing discourse. Seemingly, while the political climate has shifted, universities have yet to reconceptualise their institutional, academic and spatial environments into contexts conducive to open and mutual deliberation. Current impressions from university responses suggest that activism, as symbolised through student protests, is out of place in democratic spaces. In considering the relational positioning of universities to activism and, hence, to students, the interest of this article resides, firstly, in how notions of activism might be reimagined within democratic contexts and, secondly, in how universities might reposition themselves from being sites of activism, to being advocates of social, economic and ethical reform.

Review Essay: Kent State at Fifty

Review Essay: Kent State at Fifty

Re-visiting the decolonising of South African higher education question: A systematic literature review

During and soon after the #feesmustfall and decolonisation student protests in South Africa, the decolonisation topic invaded the academic world in the country. There seems to exist a heterogeneity of viewpoints regarding what decolonising higher education entails. A search for systematic reviews on this topic did not yield any results. Such reviews can reveal what we currently know, what we do not know, and guide the knowledge production process going forward. This article analyses published research articles on decolonising higher education in South Africa through the lenses of soft reform, radical reform and “beyond-reform”. Findings show that some papers dwell on decolonising isolated aspects of the university such as a programme or qualification, some on decolonising the entire university curriculum, and others on transforming the entire university. The article concludes that seeking to decolonise isolated aspects of the university constitute sub-soft reform strategies which leave the colonial pillars intact and therefore not contributing significantly to the decolonial project. Works that seek to decolonise the entire university curriculum are moving in the right direction towards radical reform, however, the article argues that to dismantle the colonial character of the present university requires the struggle to stretch beyond that. The South African university has a double-barrelled role to decolonise itself and to inform the societal decolonial project.

(Individual) Responsibility in decolonising the university curriculum

Since the “#RhodesMustFall” and “#FeesMustFall” student protests of 2015 and 2016 there has been much written about decolonisation in South Africa, particularly in relation to the curriculum. However, not much has been written about individual responsibility in the process of decolonisation, which Fanon (1967) argued is a necessary condition for decolonisation. In this article I argue that the autobiographical method, currere is one form of decolonisation. I use currere to document my own journey of decolonisation. I conclude that taking individual responsibility in decolonising the university curriculum involves a lifelong affair of unlearning and relearning from which no one is exempt because even those leading the decolonial project take in coloniality on a daily basis. Such a lifelong affair will involve multiple cycles of currere’s four steps so that currere, as a form of decolonisation, becomes a spiral of multiple cycles.

Bleeding women and theology from below

Dishonour is heaped upon dishonour for those who have been deprived of material conditions for life, often due to historical legacies of racialized inequality and oppression. Rather than villainizing those engaged in protests that produce disorder and defacement, identifying and articulating the sacredness of seemingly profane aspects of such contemporary movements is a singular and imperative task of Christian theology today. Through a close reading of the narrative of the bleeding woman in Mark’s Gospel, this essay argues that the South African student protest movement of 2015-2016, which included regular eruptions of destructive physical force, is an example of activism that represents the Gospel’s injunctions towards the securing of dignity by the marginalized unheard and unhelped. First, the essay will discuss the milieu of honour/shame which pervaded the first-century Palestinian context of the Gospels. Following this, the essay undertakes a close reading of the biblical narrative of the bleeding woman in Mark’s Gospel. It will be demonstrated that the woman’s intentional transgression of the social order resulted in her approbation by Jesus.

Identity grafting for educational change in chinese school systems

This paper introduces and summarizes the articles in this Special Issue of the Journal of Educational Change on “Identity Grafting: Teacher and School Development in Chinese School Systems.” (Lee, Managing Chineseness: Identity and ethnic management in Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017). It begins with Fengqiao Yan’s key thoughts and alternative views on the modernization of China’s academic system. Next, it surveys Fei Yan et al.’s study, which examines Beijing teachers’ and students’ responses toward the recent history textbook reforms in mainland China to instill the Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Communist Party. Third, it examines Wing On Lee and Ji Qi’s study, which maps the identity journeys of migrant Chinese communities in Beijing. Fourth, it summarizes Koon Lin Wong et al.’s study, which revisits the dilemma Hong Kong teachers face because of the obligation to implement the national education agenda. Fifth, it extends insights from Maxwell Ho and Daphnee Lee’s study of student behaviors in financial literacy education to understand the underpinning identity influences of the recent waves of student protests in Hong Kong. Sixth, the paper introduces Daphnee Lee’s study of the group dynamics of Singaporean Chinese teachers who engage in professional learning communities to achieve change, and the cultural identity processes that explain why some teams of teachers resist educational change, while other teams of teachers can come to embrace it.