University Policing in the Age of Protest and Mass Incarceration, 1960-1990

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

University Policing in the Age of Protest and Mass Incarceration, 1960-1990

My research brings together two seemingly divergent trends: the first is the expansion of higher education and opportunity, particularly at public universities, to include for the very first time Black and Latinx students. The second trend is the massive expansion in prison construction and disproportionate policing of Black and Latinx populations. My research finds that public universities, which have traditionally been seen as sources of social mobility, have been profoundly transformed by the nation’s impulse toward ‘law and order’. This is seen in several ways: primarily the construction of university police forces in the 1970s and the shifting approaches to discipline by university administrators. My poster will highlight how university police forces came into existence and the implications this had on student protests and the policing of university space in the aftermaths of the murders at Kent State and Jackson State.

Author

• Yalile Suriel, Stony Brook University - SUNY