Ask Not What Your University Can Do for You: Student of Color Political Learning and Engagement at Minority-Serving and Emerging Campuses

In an era of CRT bans and university neutrality, democracy demands active civic engagement among college students. Scholars have called for a deliberate approach to political learning in higher education, focusing on how campus environments shape it. However, our understanding of how campus environments influence the political engagement of students of color, particularly during this turbulent political moment, is limited. Therefore, this study examined how a culturally engaging campus environment affects the political learning and engagement of students of color at four Minority Serving or Emerging Institutions. Findings were organized by the servingness typology of producing and serving, as all campuses had high voting rates, a proxy for political engagement, but may not have had high cultural reflection. The themes point to the importance of faculty of color in role modeling how to engage in civil discourse about contentious topics, students’ motivation to become politically engaged through cultural familiarity, and how feelings of disregard by the administration led students at producing campuses to go off campus to learn and engage politically, whereas students at serving institutions engaged with their administration and as part of the student government.