Home / Lectures / Ellen Berrey, University of Toronto

U.S. and Canadian Higher Education Protest and University and Police Responses, 2012-2018

Berrey bio photo, 2022

Ellen Berrey, University of Toronto

Description

Semester:

  • Winter 2024

Speakers:

Ellen Berrey

Lecture Time:

Fri, April 19, 2024 @ 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm

Lecture Location:

R0220, Ross building

Speaker Webpage(s):

https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/sociology/people/ellen-berrey

Introduced By:

No introduction available.

Abstract

This paper describes the protest movements that roiled university and college
campuses in the United States and Canada in the 2010s and key strategies used by
university administrations and police to manage them. It draws on an innovative new
dataset, the Higher Ed Protest Dataset, which combines machine learning and
sociological hand-coding of more than 16,000 campus newspaper articles. We identify
5,488 distinct U.S. and Canadian higher ed protest events involving 585 universities and
colleges between 2012 and 2018. The goals of the paper are twofold: to characterize
major patterns in social movement activity in higher education and to develop a multi-
institutional framework of higher education politics that attends to both protest and
protest management. In both countries, much higher ed protest centers university
administration and governance. The frequency of protest is patterned by the academic
calendar, which facilitates an essential strategy university leaders use to manage
protest: wait until the summer. Other recurring higher ed protest issues differ by country:
in the United States, anti-racism, labor, and national politics of Trump and police
violence and, in Canada, public university tuition and labor conditions. A few issues are
the focus of major protest waves. Likewise, administrations and police tend to avoid
direct intervention during protest events, with some outlier cases such as the 2012
“Maple Spring” tuition protests in Montreal and protest-counterprotest encounters
involving Trump’s presidency and the far right. Findings contribute to the critical
sociological study of social movements at the intersection of higher education,
organizations, and policing.

Recording & Additional Notes

No additional notes available.