Often in US history, student movements have played a crucial role in helping spark movements for nationwide change. In the 1960s and early 1970s, for example, student demonstrations against the Vietnam War played a leading role in building a mass antiwar movement, which ultimately led politicians to withdraw US forces in 1973.
Last year, campus organizing drew national attention to bombing and military attacks by Israel in Gaza that have to date taken the lives of an estimated 55,000 Palestinians—and the role of the United States in sustaining those attacks by providing military hardware to the Israeli government. Most recently, students and faculty banded together to call on the federal government to account for revoking thousands of university community members’ visas, largely for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests, but with some for minor offenses like traffic violations.
Commenting on the scale and scope of demonstrations this year taking place across the nation, Akin Olla, a political strategist and organizer, told NPQ, “If you took the student protests away from the last couple of years, I’d be surprised if this was happening. People are mobilizing in such large numbers because they’ve already seen students not only stand up but create a sense that we could actually, and should, be doing things even when the odds feel stacked against us.”
Negotiating Trade-Offs
To some extent, organizers seeking to build movements face a trade-off: Do you go for a broad movement vision or focus on issue-specific demands?
“People are mobilizing in such large numbers because they’ve already seen students…stand up.”
Olla said that campus organizers often make very specific demands. For instance, pro-Palestinian students and faculty frequently call upon their colleges to divest from companies with ties to Israel, or to boycott Israeli academic institutions through rallies, letters to administrators, and other demonstrations. While this may make the movement sharper and better hold universities accountable, Olla said that the specificity risks alienating potential supporters who may back the broader movement, but not necessarily these particular demands.
Karma Chávez, a University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) professor who works with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine Network (FSJP), has been an active participant in efforts to preserve diversity, equity, and inclusion in Texas higher education. Chávez discussed with NPQ how UT Austin’s AAUP was successful in getting “really draconian” language about teaching related to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and political ideology removed from SB 37—recent state legislation on higher education governance and curriculum—before it passed.
Chávez credited AAUP’s success to its ethic of inclusion and broad coalition building, citing one conservative faculty member’s joining them to speak with the lawmakers “conservative-to-conservative” as an example of the value of this ‘big tent’ approach.
“Wanting to have an equitable approach to decision-making, wanting to ensure you have diverse representation among your constituency, holding meetings and having values that reflect a climate of inclusion,” Chávez told NPQ, are all part of organizing work. “We have to be a leader, organizations like AAUP, in still living by those principles—whether those are viewed as partisan or not.”
Know Your Community
Whether in campus or national protests, demonstrators must be educated about their local laws concerning protest activity. They should know the extent of their rights, but also about speech and actions that are not legally protected.
Whether in campus or national protests, demonstrators must be educated about local laws concerning protest activity.
Olla applauded students’ use of encampments last spring as a strategic method to draw attention and create an alternative society on campus, thus reconstructing power independent of existing power structures. However, he said that it was important that students knew when to disband these encampments as well, noting the amount of time and resources they require to maintain.
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“Students, especially in…a stratified society, are one of the few groups of people who actually spend time in close proximity to people who have something in common with themselves,” Olla said on colleges’ role in sparking nationwide movements. “It’s also their having access to such high levels of community—access to companionship, camaraderie—at a time where they’re also learning a lot and being exposed to different ideas. [They] have more clarity on reality.”
Chávez also said that students at UT Austin found unexpected security in local progressive churches, which served as a “headquarters” for them as they organized demonstrations since it was risky to do so on campus. She highlighted the value of public spaces, such as religious spaces or nonprofits, opening their doors as a safe haven for organizers and other activists.
Building with a Long-Term Frame of Mind
An inherent challenge in campus organizing is rapid turnover, which can easily result in uneven organizing. It’s hard for activists to continue building their movement when members graduate and are physically distant from their university community.
Moreover, school breaks like summer vacation famously can halt movement momentum. For instance, after a historic semester for student activism in the spring of 2024, the pro-Palestinian movement had notably less energy when students returned to campus for the fall semester.
“People are really confused about what’s happening around them and how this has been building over the last several years….People want a place to tap in.”
Regarding campus activism, Chávez said that it’s always a task to figure out the synergy between faculty, staff, and students, who may be pushing for the same demands but in uncoordinated groups. Olla said that generally, decentralized movements flourish in moments where people feel energized—for instance, nationwide mobilization moments like the recent No Kings Day, which inspired millions to flood the streets with signs, banners, and chants.
As Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society Marshall Ganz points out, mobilizing and organizing, while sometimes used interchangeably, are not at all the same concept. As Ganz previously explained to NPQ, “Mobilizing is a tactic. And social media has facilitated that by reducing the cost of information sharing. So, instead of building commitments to each other and building real organization, we engage in these transactions where we show up and then we go home, and nothing is built.”
How can movements avoid getting stuck in a cycle of mobilization and demobilization and instead build their capacity to organize for the long haul? Institutions that connect groups can help. For example, Olla emphasized the value of national organizations coordinating with one another, as well as communicating with individual chapters to connect them to nationwide movement organizing.
Another key is to focus on developing leaders. “People are really confused about what’s happening around them and how this has been building over the last several years,” Chávez said. “People want a place to tap in. They want someone to either lead them or to help them develop their own leadership—it’s actually a really good time for organizing.”
