Student leadership is often misconceptualized as merely a pedagogical exercise revolving around simulated political arenas with little to no immediate real political consequence. Other scholarship normalizes students as political outsiders who have to resort to dangerous, exhausting activism tactics for even minute advocacy victories due to their…

This chapter explores how two student activists used their roles as student body presidents to lead their campuses to protest the Kent State Shootings in 1970. The administrative responses and their strategies for working with activists are also explored.

Building democracies in K-8 schools is a promising approach to increasing young people and educators' civic knowledge, skills and dispositions. The Rendell Center for Civics and Civics Engagement leveraged strategies and concepts from the fields of civic education, student voice, and distributed leadership to build a youth-adult school governance…

The transition from one-party rule and other forms of authoritarianism to multiparty democracy in the 1990s has had a profound impact on the organisation and role of student politics in Africa. Against the background of student involvement in African politics in the twentieth century, leading up to student participation in Africa's "second…

During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley--then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education--made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for…

A study of the Brazilian revolutionary socialist student movement focusing on attempts made by the United States Agency for International Development to restructure Brazilian higher education, and on the efforts of Brazilian students to resist American intervention in their educational system. (EH)

Leaders of student governments at the Big Ten universities have formed an organization to solve common problems and revitalize student activism on their campuses. Issues include: combating racism, sexism, and homophobia; pushing universities to establish better ways to recruit and retain minority faculty and students; etc. (MLW)

Traces the development of the NSA, places it in the context of the 1950s, in which it developed into a major national organization, evaluates its role on campus, and fills in some historical gaps in the growth of student activism and politics in the U.S., since NSA has received little analytic attention. (Author/JM)

In the Fall of 2004, after many years of discussion by adults in the City of Somerville, Massachusetts, the Somerville Youth Council started. For several months, a youth planning group met weekly to craft the mission of the council and the by-laws. There was a critical need to create a process to enable youth of the city to explore possible…