Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT In the history of the Central America Solidarity movement, there is little more than passing reference to the role played by college students. This omission is in keeping with the dominant narrative around student protest in the Reagan era, which stresses rupture with past forms of activism. According to this account, in the Eighties apathy replaced activism as the dominant mood on campus. Excavating the history of such activism on the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts complicates this narrative, highlighting how CIA recruiting on campus provided students with an issue to rally around that targeted the secretive agency's role in Central American “dirty wars,” as well as the university's own complicity in the carnage. Besides situating anti‐CIA activism in the broader social and political context of the 1980s, this paper also explores how students borrowed from, expanded upon, and sometimes diverged from two key organizing strategies used by their activist forebears: anti‐recruiting protests and political trials.
Source: Peace & Change
DOI: 10.1111/pech.70045
Author: Seth Kershner
Institution: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: University of Massachusetts
OpenAlex ID: W4417520772
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