Activism as a Form of Caring: Disabled Students’ Activism to Refuse Ableism in Higher Education Institutions.

Here I present some reflections from a project done at the onset of the pandemic when disabled students in the United Kingdom began to organise themselves in an umbrella organisation called 'Disabled Students UK' to fight against persistent marginalisation and endemic ableism in higher education. Disabled student officers, employed or volunteering in university student unions, describe to me and a colleague (Rille Raaper) their experiences and accounts of higher education, exposing the violence of neoliberal policies and the damage that its performative and economic aims were having on the disabled students’ population. While denouncing and actively fighting against ableism in institutional and individual practices, disabled students showed the importance of nurturing the relationship that exists between the individual and the community in constituting disability activism and disabled activists. Their activism lays the groundwork for a higher education system rooted in justice, care, and accessibility.