‘What you’re doing will only harm yourself’: understanding university students’ experiences of coercive repression

University students have long been leaders in movements for political and social change across the globe, campaigning for democracy, freedom, justice, social rights, and solidarity. Likewise, recent years have seen a marked surge of activism among university students across all regions of the globe. Such movements are often met with repression. Scholarly on this trend often focuses on the use of force by security forces. But repression also plays out in more subtle and coercive ways. This article explores coercive and subtle forms of repression that target university student activists and are increasingly widespread in a global context of declining levels of democracy and academic freedom and expanding neoliberal higher education policies. It draws on a survey and qualitative interviews conducted with more than 250 student activists across 36 countries, conducted as part of a study commissioned by the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH). Specifically, the article highlights three coercive forms of repression are particularly insidious for student activists: university lawfare, delegitimising rhetoric, and relational repression.