The Channels of Student Activism

How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today

Amy J. Binder,Jeffrey L. Kidder

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780226819860
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An eye-opening analysis of collegiate activism and its effects on the divisions in contemporary American politics. The past six years have been marked by a contentious political atmosphere that has touched every arena of public life, including higher education. Though most college campuses are considered ideologically progressive, how can it be that the right has been so successful in mobilizing young people even in these environments?As Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder show in this surprising analysis of the relationship between political activism on college campuses and the broader US political landscape, while liberal students often outnumber conservatives on college campuses, liberal campus organizing remains removed from national institutions that effectively engage students after graduation. And though they are usually in the minority, conservative student groups have strong ties to national right-leaning organizations, which provide funds and expertise, as well as job opportunities and avenues for involvement after graduation. Though the left is more prominent on campus, the right has built a much more effective system for mobilizing ongoing engagement. What's more, the conservative college ecosystem has worked to increase the number of political provocations on campus and lower the public's trust in higher education.In analyzing collegiate activism from the left, right, and center, The Channels of Student Activism shows exactly how politically engaged college students are channeled into two distinct forms of mobilization and why that has profound consequences for the future of American politics.

Chapter 1

The Channels of Student Activism

We met Georgia at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) in 2018. Georgia goes by the gender-neutral pronouns they/them/their. On the day of our interview, Georgia had on a colorful kerchief tied into a front-facing bun. Everything else was black: black sneakers, a black high-waisted miniskirt, and a black crop-top worn off-the-shoulder. The ensemble had a ’90s grunge rock vibe to it. As we talked, Georgia showed themself to be exuberant, self-aware, and very funny. Their major was a mind-bending mix of environmental studies, integrated physiology, and history. They discussed their plans to start a college radio show called “Woke in the Morning”—a show “directly tailored to calling out people on their bullshit and having some fun with it.”1

We had contacted Georgia because they were a leader of CU’s Black Student Association (BSA). During our conversation, we also learned that they were involved with UMAS y MEXA (a Latinx club on campus),2 the Middle Eastern Student Association, and the Muslim Student Association. Their ties to these clubs arose out of friendships Georgia had formed through their activism on campus. As Georgia explained, “I’m for people having rights, and being appreciated, and having a civil society where we share funds and resources, instead of just being crazy capitalists making a profit off of people’s bodies and labor.” To this end, Georgia and the clubs they associated with had protested CU purchasing furniture made by prisoners because it is a form of “slave labor.” These clubs also held actions at the school to raise awareness about minority students’ sense of marginalization—like chalking the words “White silence is violence” across campus and chanting that slogan from the bleachers during a university basketball game.

Georgia had run into a few right-leaning clubs at their school, most notably Turning Point USA. Turning Point is a national organization, with chapters in hundreds of high schools and colleges, promoting a populist vision of conservatism. Its members tend to be unwavering Trump supporters. Walking through campus one day, Georgia told us they were lured in by some of the group’s literature, without realizing who was distributing it—“because that’s how they get you.” Once Georgia figured out it was Turning Point, Georgia started to leave, but someone staffing the table tried to talk to them. Georgia’s response was deadpan and rhetorical: “Well, is it going to be productive?” Georgia was certain the answer was “no,” and so Georgia kept walking. When BSA, UMAS y MEXA, and several other clubs brought the former Black Panther Bobby Seale to CU, Georgia recounted, “There was a weird little counter-protest of losers from Turning Point USA.” When asked what, exactly, the club was protesting about Seale, Georgia dismissed the question. “I don’t know what their signs said, and I don’t care.” They then laughed about how “the anti-fascist people came to protect us. That was funny. They looked terrifying.”3 The Turning Point protesters, Georgia assured us, “just looked dorky.”

Over 1,600 miles away, at the University of Virginia (UVA), we met the clean-cut, all-American Tony—decked out in a fleece pullover, fashionable jeans, and dress shoes. Throughout the interview, Tony was eager to tell us his opinions, often excitedly jumping from issue to issue but still managing to circle back around to thoughtfully address our questions in the end. While students like Georgia wanted to discuss the “trauma” inflicted on Black and Brown communities by “climate chaos,” Tony wanted to talk about the US Constitution and free market policies. And Tony was deeply involved in Virginia’s Republican Party politics. He explained to us that he was not initially a Donald Trump supporter, but eventually decided to back the 45th president. “I think, overall, he’s been a little bit toward the net positive, and I think people just need to be objective.”

Around the 2016 election—a period in which social unrest on many college campuses seemed to be reaching a boiling point—segments of UVA’s student body began agitating for the removal of their school’s memorial to Thomas Jefferson. According to those on the left, Jefferson’s tolerance of slavery and his sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, which progressives consider inherently coercive (if not violent), does not warrant such commemoration. At one protest, the Jefferson statue was covered by a tarp, and a sign deriding the school’s founder as a “racist rapist” was hung on it. Tony was at this event, standing to the side (aghast), livestreaming what was happening to his sizable social media following. The Jefferson demonstrations—which students like Georgia see as fighting for “people having rights and being appreciated”—were considered to be sheer lunacy by Tony. “These crazy disrupters, they don’t want to be friends. They want to attack you.” As Tony viewed it, they are part of a left-wing mindset that wants to prevent people from being able to “cherish and celebrate the good things” in our nation’s history by only focusing on the “bad things.”

After the statue’s shrouding, which followed on the heels of the chaotic and deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,4 Tony tried to organize what he called a nonpartisan “unity rally” at his school. “I was like, ‘You know what guys? We’re getting over the line. Tensions are high. Everybody, just come out waving an American flag, and, for a second, put behind our political tensions and just have a conversation and talk about something that’s not politics.’” Tony told us he wanted to purchase flags to hand out to attendees, but the only organization he could find to help cover costs on short notice was the staunchly conservative American Legacy Center (ALC). Because of this sponsor, some left-leaning students and professors at UVA interpreted Tony’s plan as nothing more than another provocation from the far right. For his part, Tony seemed genuinely dumbfounded by the hostile reaction to his efforts. “Somebody said, ‘This looks like lots of White nationalist dog whistling.’ I was like, ‘What!?’” The basis of doing this rally, he insisted was, “Hey, we can be reasonable adults and stand next to each other, even if we don’t agree politically or feel the same way. But, no, I got called a White nationalist.”

On the Front Lines of Student Activism

Georgia and Tony were as far apart in terms of ideology as any two people we interviewed for this book. As student activists, though, they were remarkably similar. Both were seen by their peers as charismatic and impassioned leaders. Georgia helped direct the political focus of several progressive clubs at CU. Tony was not a formal member of any conservative club at UVA, but he knew all of their officers, and he provided counsel to many. Were Georgia and Tony enrolled at the same school, Tony would no doubt have lumped Georgia in with the “crazy disrupters” looking to “attack.” And even though Tony might have perceived his own actions as encouraging bipartisan dialogue on his campus, Georgia would probably have dismissed any chance at conversation with him as inevitably “unproductive.” Perhaps most importantly, neither saw social change at their university as the final goal post. Their ambitions were much grander, focused on change at the societal level. But the activism enabled through their schools’ political clubs provided a means for them to move forward in asserting their vision of what American democracy should look like. This is to say, petitioning CU to stop buying products made by prisoners was just a small part of Georgia’s critique of the carceral state. Likewise, standing up for the legacy of Jefferson at UVA was merely a starting point for how Tony wanted to protect a traditional version of national history.

In the course of their activism, both Georgia and Tony took part in events that drew the ire of the other side. BSA marching through the stadium (with their fists raised) as alumni, parents, and students watched a basketball game is an example of what right-leaning students at CU perceived as leftism run amok. And Turning Point members were clearly incensed by Bobby Seale’s talk. The Black Panthers, after all, were champions of Maoism, and Seale was indicted (but never convicted) for the murder of a fellow revolutionary.5 At UVA, attempting to squelch ongoing racial grievances with a banal celebration of patriotism set progressives on edge—especially after the Unite the Right rally (in which American flags were used as a preferred symbol by avowed racists) had taken place. Further, the fact that Tony eventually aligned himself with a pro-Trump organization moved his activism into unacceptable territory for those on the left. Even some of his compatriots on the right found this to be a step too far.

In different ways, Georgia’s and Tony’s activism also brought them into contact with school officials. CU administrators intermittently tap identity-based clubs like BSA and UMAS y MEXA to weigh in on pressing issues at the university. However, such efforts are often viewed cynically by club members. In Georgia’s words, “They like having us as tokens.” But “the second we try to do anything politically motivated, especially if we try to get athletes involved, that’s when the administration is like, ‘Oh no! This is a threat. This little game is over.’” Similarly, UVA’s administration occasionally consults the College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom, two conservative student-led groups Tony was connected with. Because students on the right assume, with good reason, that their schools are mainly staffed by liberals, the right-leaning activists we interviewed took great satisfaction in discovering conservatives in leadership positions.6 As Tony gleefully told us, one of UVA’s deans “calls himself a New England conservative.” And, Tony explained, he “seemed like he’d had problems” with “fringe radical” students too.

If social change is going to take place on their campuses, activists like Georgia and Tony need administrative buy-in on some level. Political clubs—along with the student leaders behind them—are one of the primary means by which universities are forced to address student-based issues.7 At times Georgia’s and Tony’s relations with school officials were congenial; on other occasions they were fraught or even hostile. As we will see throughout this book, progressive activists like Georgia were more embedded within their school’s institutions, but they were also highly frustrated by the slow pace of change. By contrast, conservatives like Tony were skeptical about the liberal underpinnings of higher education from the start, but they were generally satisfied with their one-on-one experiences with faculty and administrators.

Beyond bringing them into contact with university leaders, Georgia’s and Tony’s political engagements also helped them link up with outside entities looking to harness the energy of college students. Leaders of these organizations know that social change in the educational field can percolate through society at large. In many ways, collegians can be the tip of the spear for generational alterations of American life.8 In Georgia’s case, they attended the annual MEXA conference, enjoying the opportunity to meet other activists and share strategies for more effective organizing on their campuses. At the same time, Georgia also explained that, as a national organization, MEXA provided very little guidance or resources to CU’s chapter. As for BSA, members told us the group had no national organizations it could turn to for support. Whatever they did was cobbled together locally. Like Georgia, Tony had attended national conferences connected to his activism. But for him the cornerstone of this connection was the well-funded annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC); through his networking at events like this, Tony was able to quickly hook up with ALC for his aborted unity rally.9 Tony’s ties to outside entities did not stop with ALC either. He had a variety of national, state, and local organizations to which he turned to help out UVA’s conservative clubs.

A major difference, then, between Georgia and Tony’s activism was the guidance and resources available from inside and outside their universities. There was a plethora of extramural funding to help student-led groups on the right to host guest speakers, distribute literature, travel to conferences, and secure internships in political campaigns or government offices. In short, while some of Tony’s activism took place on UVA grounds, his political engagements were driven largely by organizations not associated with his school. By contrast, Georgia’s activism pushed them into the university structure. For example, at CU there is the Center for Inclusion and Social Change, and Georgia was in regular contact with its head, the Vice Chancellor for Inclusion and Student Achievement. As Georgia half-jokingly explained, “She’s in charge of us, basically. She’s in charge of all the angry Brown students.” Georgia was far from sanguine about how committed someone like the vice chancellor might be to social change, or how effective the Center would be at enacting it. Regardless, the Center provided a set of formal pathways through which student-led groups like BSA and UMAS y MEXA could work to air their grievances and demand action from administrators.10 Tony’s activism, on the other hand, fit less easily within the institutional environment of UVA. There was a “New England conservative” dean who griped about leftists, and a few identifiable professors who were known for their conservative views. But these individuals lacked the networks progressives had access to through multicultural centers and administrators on campus. Thus, Tony turned outward—to well-funded organizations that explicitly sought to encourage students to critique academia. These organizations have their own agendas and, through issuing harsh condemnations of universities as liberal indoctrination mills, are often committed to slashing the budgets of public institutions and weakening the influence of higher education in American civic life.11

Thinking about Campus Politics from the Outside In and the Inside Out

Previous studies by a variety of scholars confirm the general assumption that American colleges and universities are home to more leftist and liberal faculty than to conservative professors. On top of this, academic disciplines (particularly in the social sciences and humanities) reinforce progressive worldviews.12 And then there are the students themselves. Recent surveys of incoming freshman reveal that the number of collegians identifying as liberal or leftist is on the rise. Activism is also on their minds, with more students saying they are likely to take part in a protest compared to past cohorts. Finally, the formal policies of most colleges and universities, as laid out by administrators, promote the liberal goals of diversity and inclusion, even if the results of these efforts are disappointing to left-wing activists. From the inside out, then, progressive students—relative to conservatives—have staked out a position of greater power and comfort on their campuses.13

Yet, progressives’ taken-for-granted status at most schools has created openings for challenge from the right. The leaders of conservative organizations have been adept at employing a civil rights framing that uses the values of liberalism to promote their own causes. Following the lead of these outside groups, right-leaning students and faculty often position themselves as merely promoting free expression of undervalued viewpoints, for which they claim they are marginalized and silenced on campus.14 This strategy, first championed by the conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. in the 1950s, is well-funded and highly organized and has successfully chipped away at the progressive vision of academia.15 The result is that critiques of higher education as too liberal, too esoteric, and too expensive have become increasingly mainstream. Such critiques can be heard in congressional committee meetings and state offices. They fill hours upon hours of commentary on Fox News. They are then echoed through social media channels. Ultimately, such anti-progressive positions have not only created conditions for provocative forms of conservative student activism; they have also lowered the public’s trust in the academy, particularly among Republican voters.16

In this book we draw upon a culturally informed organizational perspective17 to understand the student activism that has rocked colleges and universities in recent years—from demonstrations and building occupations to shouting down invited speakers and even riots.18 In looking at these issues, many social scientists rely solely on data gleaned from large surveys to measure how students’ political engagement is impacted by their demographic characteristics.19 In contrast, we emphasize the importance of school institutions in shaping the experiences and perspectives of matriculants, and we examine the role that outside groups play in attempting to guide the content and direction of campus politics. Past sociological research has mostly looked at progressive activism.20 Fewer scholars have studied the conservative response to these leftward social movements, whether through student-led mobilization or concerted efforts to redefine the structures of higher education. Even more crucially, little scholarship tries to make sense of the left and the right at the same time, using a coherent framework to see the back-and-forth of these ideological forces.21 Ultimately, what we are able to show is a contested political arena, with progressives and conservatives building on their advantages (institutional embeddedness or outside insurgency) while also suffering from distinct deficits in relation to their opponents. Outsiders lack institutional influence, but compensate for their disadvantages by building up a powerful external ecosystem that lends considerable support to student followers and future conservative leaders. Insiders have greater institutional support, but can become disillusioned with existing arrangements, both within their universities and toward outside organizations that l...