Beyond the Incident: Institutional Predictors of Student Collective Action

• In Event: 56.081 - Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: 56.081-11 - Sociopolitical Economic Understandings of Higher Education

Abstract

Since the original unveiling of the I, Too, Am Harvard campaign, which highlighted students’ experiences with racially-based microaggressions on Harvard’s campus, more than 40 other student-led initiatives have developed their own similar campaigns. We use data on four-year not-for-profit institutions over a five-year period from IPEDS in order to investigate: what I, Too, Am movements have mobilized and what are the institutional characteristics that predict the birth of an I, Too, Am initiative? We do not find evidence that the racial diversity of institutions of higher education is predictive of their propensity to have an I, Too, Am campaign. Instead, the general states of institutions’ selectivity, size, prestige, and percentage of Pell grant recipients are more predictive.

Authors

• Dominique Baker, Southern Methodist University

• Richard Blissett, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College