Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses

The newly released book Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses uses the history of the 26th Amendment and the ongoing fight to promote and defend youth voting rights as a prism through which to teach the history of the struggle for the fundamental right to vote in the United States. The book centers on case studies of four institutions – Tuskegee University, Prairie View A&M University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Bard College – which offer unique insights into the role of college communities in the fight for suffrage, and their contributions to the evolution of the right to vote.

You can view the Table of Contents or learn more about the authors. Available online through DeGruyterBrill and Amazon.

To learn more about the history of voting rights protection at U.S. colleges and universities, visit The Struggle for Voting Rights at Colleges, an Open Educational Resource that includes four short documentaries, written case studies, and a lecture series on the fight for voting rights on college campuses. This summer, Bard CCE is partnering with voting organizations across the US on the Summer Voting Rights Course and Democracy Training.

Inside Higher Ed, University World News, and others about the book

"At a moment of democratic peril, this desperately needed book arrives on the eve of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding—with promising insight and powerful analysis of young voters and the youth vote. If America is to celebrate future anniversaries as a democracy, it will be because we heed the rich scholarship, practical lessons, trenchant case studies, and inspired wisdom inscribed on these pages."
– Cornell William Brooks, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School, 18th President & CEO, NAACP

"This book is an essential look at the hard-fought and hard-won voting rights victories of young Americans. College students and young people have always been at the forefront of change in America. It's no wonder anti-democratic forces are cracking down on university campuses — where organizing, protest, and youth-led movements are born."
– David Hogg, President, Leaders We Deserve; Co-founder, March For Our Lives

“A compelling example of students and institutions working together to protect voting rights. An inspiring resource for anyone advancing civic engagement and access to the ballot.”
– Bobbie Laur, President, Campus Compact

“The struggle to secure the right to vote for college students and young people did not end with the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971. Youth Voting Rights shows with passion and detail that community organizing, savvy legal strategy, and perseverance are necessary to secure the promise of equal voting for young and old and for black, brown, and white.”
– Richard L. Hasen, UCLA Professor and author, A Real Right to Vote

“This is an exceptionally important book on the too-often dismissed problem of voter suppression laws aimed at young voters. I highly recommend.”
– Marc E. Elias, Partner, Elias Law Group LLP and Founder, Democracy Docket

“College and university campuses are essential and powerful sites for democracy that ensure students graduate with the knowledge, skills, and experiences necessary for informed participation and leadership in our communities — from our town halls to the ballot box. This book describes how higher education institutions have served to shape voting rights jurisprudence and continue to work toward a democracy that includes the voices of college students and others who face systemic barriers to participation.”
– Jennifer M. Domagal-Goldman, Executive Director, ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge

About the editors

Jonathan Becker is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Politics at Bard College where he is also the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement. He is also the Vice Chancellor of the Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century. He has published extensively on student voting rights, including the article, written with Bard Vice President for Civic Engagement Erin Cannan, Institution as Citizen: Colleges and Universities as Actors in Defense of Student Voting Rights, Rutgers University Law Review, Summer 2022.
Yael Bromberg is a constitutional rights and voting rights litigator who previously authored legal scholarship on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, dubbed by Slate as “groundbreaking” in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Rights, and in the Rutgers Law Review, where she served as faculty advisor for the first legal volume on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment since its ratification.