Dissenting Forces: A History of Abolition and Black Thought in Higher Learning

Winner, 2026 Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Robeson Award, given by the National Council for Black Studies

A history of enslaved people and abolitionists who fought racism on college campuses and reimagined higher learning

Since their inception in North America, universities have had symbiotic ties to racial slavery and settler colonialism and were incubators of racist thought. In Dissenting Forces, Michael E. Jirik offers a comprehensive study of an underrepresented history: the rise and development of Black thought and abolitionist resistance in American universities.

Jirik offers a rich scope of abolitionist protests at colleges, demonstrating how enslaved people, Black abolitionists, and student abolitionists resisted enslavement and racism within, and on the boundaries of, college campuses for centuries. Studying their history and experiences, Black people used intellectual work to advance their struggle for liberation. With the advent of a transformed abolition movement after 1830, Black and white student abolitionists intellectually fought colonizationists on campus to shape arguments for Black freedom and intellectuality that challenged dominant white-supremacist ideologies. In turn, they created a student movement for Black freedom and human equality, making demands for admissions into colleges, and creating the earliest Black colleges in the United States.

Demonstrating the ways Black people have resisted racism and forms of oppression in higher learning, Dissenting Forces sheds new light on the significance of Black self-determination and the continuity of Black knowledge traditions committed to creating a different world. Collectively, they developed an idea of Black education's liberatory potential.