Still Shaking the Table – Activism, Unity, and Supporting Students

Still Shaking the Table: Activism, Unity, and Supporting Students is the second volume in the Shaking the Table series, which centers the voices of identity center practitioners navigating increasingly complex, politicized, and constrained higher education environments. As colleges and universities continue to struggle to meaningfully support students across marginalized identities―including race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, religion, and citizenship status―those working within identity-based centers remain at the forefront of advocacy, care, and institutional change, often at great personal and professional cost.

Building on the foundation of Shaking the Table, which focused on survival and healing, this volume moves more explicitly into the terrain of campus activism, coalition-building, and sustained support for students. Amid mounting resistance to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts nationwide, practitioners are increasingly asked to navigate competing institutional interests, political pressures, and shifting student needs, while showing up for the communities they serve. Through first-person narratives, contributors illuminate the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities that emerge when identity-centered work exists in opposition to institutional norms and state-level constraints.

Organized around three interconnected themes―Navigating Activism, Fostering Unity, and Supporting Students―this volume highlights how practitioners engage in advocacy within and beyond their institutions, wrestle with questions of privilege and intersectionality, and develop responsive practices to meet students’ evolving needs. Across the chapters, authors explore the labor of coalition-building, the emotional toll of identity-based work, and the critical importance of self-reflection, critical hope, and collective care as strategies for longevity.

Still Shaking the Table serves as both a mirror and a roadmap: a reflection of the lived realities of identity center practitioners and a guide for those committed to advancing justice-oriented work in higher education. It is a resource for practitioners, scholars, and graduate students, and a call to action for supervisors, senior leaders, and institutions to move beyond performative commitments toward meaningful, accountable support for identity centers and the people who lead them.

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, Ph.D. is a Boricua woman and race-gender, higher education scholar and educator. She is an assistant professor at Elon University (NC) in the Master of Arts in Higher Education Program, and the endowed Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education Emerging Professor.

Jonathan A. McElderry, Ph.D. is a dedicated scholar, educator, and higher education practitioner. Currently serving as the Dean of Student Inclusive Excellence and an Assistant Professor at Elon University (NC), Dr. McElderry is deeply committed to enhancing the academic and social experiences of historically marginalized students, particularly those at predominantly White institutions.