An independent overview of academic protest, labour actions, and teach-in movements since 2020.
Universities in Canada have always been places where ideas are tested, challenged, and argued over. What changed after 2020 is how often those debates spilled out of classrooms and faculty meetings and turned into public, collective action. Over the past five years, we’ve seen scholars, students, and academic workers use teach-ins, temporary labour refusals, and public statements as tools of protest. Not quietly. Not behind closed doors. But openly, online, and often in real time.
On this site, we document and analyze that shift. We’re not organizers, and we’re not speaking on behalf of any movement. Our role is closer to that of observers who care about how public education and protest intersect, and why this particular form of scholar-led action has mattered in Canada.
What is a scholar-led protest initiative?
In our analysis, a scholar-led protest initiative has a narrow definition. It isn’t enough that academics speak at an event or support a cause. The initiative must be organized by scholars or academic workers and must use education as the primary method of protest.
Across the cases we’ve reviewed, four elements usually appear together:
- Initiation by faculty members, researchers, or academic workers
- Teach-ins as the central activity, not an add-on
- A temporary refusal or disruption of normal academic labour
- Direct engagement with universities as institutions, not only as venues
This distinction matters. Canada has no shortage of student activism, NGO-led campaigns, or public panels hosted on campus. What differentiates scholar-led protest is the decision to pause routine academic work and replace it with public political education.
Why these initiatives are uncommon in Canada
One reason this format remains unusual is the structure of academic labour itself. Many instructors work on short-term contracts. Collective agreements often restrict job action outside formal strike processes. Early-career scholars face career risks when participating in actions that administrators may view as disruptive.
Professional bodies have noted this tension. The Canadian Association of University Teachers has published multiple reports since 2020 documenting pressures on academic freedom, particularly where campus speech intersects with contentious political issues. These reports provide context for why collective scholar-initiated refusals are difficult to sustain.
As a result, most campus activism in Canada remains either student-led or channelled through established unions and associations. When scholars themselves initiate a protest format centred on teach-ins, it tends to become a reference point rather than a recurring model.
Scholar Strike Canada as a defining case
The clearest example of this format is Scholar Strike Canada, which took place on September 9 and 10, 2020. Inspired by a call from U.S. scholar Anthea Butler and organized in Canada by Beverly Bain and Min Sook Lee, the action asked academic workers to pause teaching and administrative duties for two days.
Did you know
More than 3,000 university workers in Canada publicly signed on to the Scholar Strike Canada action in September 2020.
Digital teach-ins as the core format
Instead of regular classes, participants hosted public digital teach-ins that were open to students, scholars, and the wider public. These sessions were designed as collective learning spaces rather than lectures, combining scholarly analysis with community-based knowledge.
The use of digital teach-ins allowed the action to operate nationally despite geographic separation, setting a precedent for how academic protest could move online without losing political depth. This format is examined in detail on our Programme of Digital Teach-Ins page.
Programme structure and thematic scope
Across the two days, the programme followed a structured schedule of moderated sessions rather than a single continuous stream. Teach-ins addressed recurring themes such as anti-Black and anti-Indigenous police violence, colonial governance, treaty-breaking and land defence, migrant labour, gendered and racialized work in academia, and the growth of carceral systems.
Sessions included discussions on policing Indigenous lands, the conflict at 1492 Land Back Lane, unfree labour on stolen land, and the invisible labour of Black women in the academy. A full breakdown of sessions, speakers, and moderators is documented on the Program Summary (2020) page.
Speakers and participation
More than 3,000 university workers across Canada signed on to the action, making it one of the largest coordinated academic labour actions in recent Canadian history.
Speakers included journalists, scholars, artists, and organizers such as Desmond Cole, El Jones, Courtney Skye, Erica Violet Lee, Rinaldo Walcott, Andrea Davis, Sandy Hudson, Pam Palmater, Megan Scribe, Eve Tuck, and Min Sook Lee. Sessions were moderated to encourage dialogue and collective analysis rather than formal academic presentation.
Public reach and documentation
Archived materials from the time indicate that the teach-ins reached tens of thousands of viewers within 48 hours. Recordings and related materials were made publicly accessible, reinforcing the idea that the programme was meant to circulate beyond the moment of protest.
Coverage by outlets such as CBC, the Toronto Star, and University Affairs framed the action as a rare instance of coordinated academic labour refusal in Canada. A University Affairs report quoted one participant describing the strike as “less about walking away from work and more about refusing business as usual.” That framing continues to inform later scholar-led actions and digital teach-ins.
From Scholar Strike Canada to Scholars Strike for Liberation
After 2020, the original strike didn’t simply end.
By the mid-2020s, the platform operating under the name Scholars Strike for Liberation presented itself as a continuation rather than a restart. The language shifted toward international issues, but the methods remained familiar: digital teach-ins, public statements, and occasional calls for short labour actions tied to specific events.
The continuity is visible in several ways:
- The same core organizers and contributors appear across years.
- Statements often reference the 2020 action as a foundation.
- The emphasis on refusals, public pedagogy, and solidarity persists.
What changed is the scope. While Scholar Strike Canada was rooted in a national moment, later programming addressed global conflicts, academic repression, and transnational solidarity. As one organizer wrote in a public note archived on the site,
“The conditions that made the 2020 strike necessary didn’t disappear. They multiplied.”
Related campus-based protest formats
Scholar-led protest initiatives don’t exist in isolation. They intersect with other forms of campus activism, particularly during periods of heightened political tension.
Student encampments with faculty participation
In 2024 and 2025, pro-Palestinian student encampments emerged at universities such as McGill University, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Alberta. These encampments often functioned as spaces of informal education, featuring teach-ins, reading circles, and public discussions, sometimes with participation from faculty members.
Did you know
At least 7 major Canadian universities were directly referenced in student encampment and protest activity in 2024–2025.
Despite this overlap with educational practices, the encampments differed structurally from scholar-led protest initiatives. They were initiated and sustained by students, and did not involve a coordinated refusal of academic labour by faculty. As such, they are best understood as related protest-education formats, rather than direct analogues to initiatives like Scholar Strike Canada.
Academic freedom and labour context
Faculty associations and national bodies such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) have continued to document and respond to issues around academic freedom, disciplinary action, and campus protest since 2020. These statements and reports do not constitute protest initiatives themselves, but they shape the conditions under which scholar-led actions become possible or risky.
This broader labour and governance context helps explain why initiatives like Scholar Strike Canada remain uncommon within Canadian universities.
What our platform documents and what it doesn’t
Our portal exists to document and analyze these initiatives using publicly available information. We rely on archived websites, media reports, institutional documents, and official statements. We do not reproduce full programs, lists of demands, or proprietary materials.
We also don’t organize events or issue calls to action. Everything on this site is written from a third-person perspective, even when we use a collective editorial voice to explain our approach.
That distance is deliberate. It allows us to focus on patterns, structures, and long-term significance rather than moment-to-moment mobilization.