Social Movement Tactics, Organizational Change and the Spread of African-American Studies

Abstract

Social movement research suggests that protest is effective because it de-legitimizes existing policies and imposes costs on power holders. I test this hypothesis with data on African-American student protest and the creation of departments of African-American Studies. I find that non-disruptive protest, such as rallies and demonstrations, has a positive effect on the probability that a university will create a Department of African-American Studies. Disruptive protest, such as sit-ins and vandalism, has no significant effect. I argue that non-disruptive protests are successful because they allow sympathetic administrators to act on behalf of political challengers, while disruptive protests deprive administrators of the legitimacy needed to enact change. I also find limited evidence of intra-university mimicry as a factor in the creation of African-American Studies programs.Beginning in 1968, African-American students and their allies staged marches, demonstrations and sit-ins so that university administrators would create academic units dedicated to African-American culture and history (Bunzel ). For the next 30 years, 120 universities offered African-American Studies degrees and 100 more offered degree concentrations (College Board 2002). As of 2005, approximately 9 percent of all institutions of higher education in the United States have academic units offering African-American Studies degrees. Although black student activists demanded African-American Studies programs at many campuses, not all of these campuses established programs, even those with substantial black student populations and campus unrest. This outcome suggests that activists were not equally effective in pressing their demands.This study explores the effects of movement tactics on organizational change. The African-American Studies movement raises important questions about social movements and their impact on organizations because a university's response to the African-American Studies movement should depend on how student activists assert their demands. Although social movement researchers often discuss the link between tactics and outcomes (e.g.The subsequent sections review the literature and present hypotheses. Using longitudinal data on black student protests and universities, I estimate a discrete time logit model of African-American Studies program creation where African-American Studies program creation depends on protest events, national trends in African-American Studies program adoption and control variables, such as university size and student demography. The concluding section offers an explanation for the difference between disruptive and non-disruptive tactics, which is based on case studies of the black student movement.

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