by Aldon Morris, Northwestern University

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

The historically important Highlander Research and Education Center was deliberately attacked. On March 29, 2019, an early morning fire destroyed its executive office building along with historic documents, speeches, artifacts and memorabilia stored there. Although an investigation of the arson continues, all indications point to a white supremacy group as the perpetrator.

by Amirhossein Teimouri, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

In late February 2018, I found myself joining fellow graduate students in a strike on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The strike at the UIUC was a rare opportunity for a student-led labor movement to rise against the corporatization of the public education. Although this was a campus-wide movement without nation-wide repercussions, participants and activists integrated the movement to a broader nation-wide public education unrest.

by Anson Au, University of Toronto

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Carol (name changed to protect her identity) ran for student president at one of the largest universities in Canada. Her platform was dressed up in the usual rhetoric for campaigns in student elections: fighting for more resources for students, ensuring students’ voices were heard and represented, and so on. But Carol was also vocal in advocating for the freedom of an ethnic group in China, making the controversial claim that the territory should be politically autonomous and separated from China and that the cultural history of this ethnic group was so distinct that they deserved independence.

by Didem Türkoğlu, UNC Chapel Hill

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

Students protest tuitions. Perhaps more so than ever. The photos from the protests in Chile, Canada, and South Africa come to mind quickly. Then there are less globally covered student protests in Germany and Turkey. What makes these student protests so significant? In a forthcoming special issue in Current Sociology, scholars focus on case studies from the global north and the global south to provide answers to this question.

by Emily H.A. Yen, Trinity College

from Critical Mass, Volume 44, Issue 1

The violent death of Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally lead by torch-carrying White nationalists protesting the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia shifted the national discourse around White supremacy and the public display of Confederate monuments. Confederate monuments are particularly controversial since the vast majority of them were built after the Supreme Court upheld the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision (Southern Poverty Law Center 2019) and were a way for White southerners to venerate an alternative narrative of the origins of the Civil War and assert racial dominance in the Jim Crow South. The United Daughters of the Confederacy’s fundraising of the 8-foot bronze statue on University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) campus and its dedication by Julian Carr, a UNC Trustee and Confederate veteran who supported the Ku Klux Klan, in 1913 reflects this larger movement (Farzan 2018). The statue known as “Silent Sam” has been a focal point of recent campus debates around racial justice, White supremacy, and free speech, but generations of UNC students have been protesting its presence on campus for over 50 years. The most recent wave of student activism led to the statue’s physical toppling in August 2018 and spurred an ongoing debate around the preservation of its symbolic legacy.

The Spring 2019 edition of the Critical Mass Bulletin is out, and features rich original analyses, reports, and more. Get your PDF copy here:

In this issue:

The summer 2018 Critical Mass newsletter is now online! This issue includes profiles of 2018 CBSM Junior Scholars Job Candidates.

Summer 2018 Critical Mass