Networks of Resistance: How Intermediary Organizations Counter Civil Rights Rollbacks in Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 11:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Constructing and Contesting Equity in Education Policy

Abstract

This study examines how intermediary organizations (IOs) mobilized to counter civil rights rollbacks in education from 2020–2024. Drawing from a multi-method analysis of 55 IOs, we map an ecosystem of adaptive anti-discrimination (AAD) advocacy, highlighting networked collaboration, cross-scale partnerships, and varied strategies including legal, electoral, and research-based. Amid widespread racial justice commitments and intensifying backlash, IOs leveraged funding, litigation, and coalition-building to resist regressive policy shifts. Our findings reveal how IOs function as contemporary agents of racial justice, echoing historical modes of resistance, and demonstrate how organizational networks sustain race-conscious education advocacy under evolving political threats.

Authors

• Talia S. Leibovitz, University of California - Berkeley

• April Weber Hewko, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia

• Genevieve P. Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley

• Erica Frankenberg, Pennsylvania State University

• Sarah McCollum, University of Georgia

• Kathryn A. McDermott, University of Massachusetts - Amherst