Students United: Escalations of United States’ Campus Protests in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Since 7 October 2023, university campuses across the United States experience a surge in pro-Palestinian protests, causing significant media and academic attention. These protests are often compared to the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis critically examines the logic of such comparisons. It focuses on the dynamics of student protesters and the police across both periods and particularly analyzes how and why these protest movements escalated into violence. Using the framework of Political Opportunity Theory, the thesis explores both structure and agency dimensions of student protest. It compares the political contexts of the 1960s and 70s and 2024, exploring how opportunities and threats shaped protest movements. After this, it investigates the identities, strategies, and framing techniques of student activists. It analyzes how these interacted with political structures and influenced protest dynamics and escalation. Concepts such as identity framing, polarization, and state repression are central to this analysis. The research uses a comparative case study approach, examining four different universities, two from each period, to highlight the specific workings of protest escalation. These case studies are studied by a qualitative analysis of both primary and secondary sources. Archival materials and social media content offer insight into activist strategies and identity framing. Academic literature and records on university and governmental processes give contextual background on institutional responses and political opportunity structures. This thesis contributes to academic and societal debates in three key ways. First, it applies established theoretical frameworks like the Political Opportunity Theory and ideas on polarization to empirical cases, outlining to what extend they can explain real-life protest dynamics. Second, by applying a historical comparison, it shows the importance of context in understanding protest dynamics in different times. Finally, this research highlights how the interaction between protester identity, strategy, and institutional response can determine whether a protest remains peaceful or escalates, emphasizing that peaceful protests is not a given in democratic societies. Not now and not sixty years ago.