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

The 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.

Editors:

Jonathan Becker is Professor of Political Studies, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College.
Yael Bromberg is a constitutional rights and voting rights litigator and leading legal scholar of the 26th Amendment. She teaches democracy law at American University Washington College of Law.

Available in hardcover and paperback on November 17, 2025.

"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