Engaging Student Activists

Student activists include a dynamic, cross-cutting constituency of college and university students and are primarily defined by their political actions. As characterized by these actions, student activists differ from other student identity and status groups. For these reasons, student activists have a particular set of challenges, assets, and needs as they endeavor to transform their campus climates into more humanizing and life-affirming environments in which to live, work, and learn. These challenges, assets, and needs include threats to and opportunities for their socio-academic integration into college and university life. For educators to meaningfully respond—rather than reacting to these political realities—they should adopt new approaches for engaging student activists in ways that preserve activists’ political autonomy, dignity, and material safety and create pathways for institutional transformation away from the political status quo and toward more liberatory futures.