Students under the siege: Student activism in Egypt after 2013

Student activism in Egypt is rooted in its history as one of the main actors in the contemporary politics of Egypt through history. This Research Project aims to deconstruct Student activism in Egypt after the 2013 military coup, focusing on how the different patterns of the student activism faced the extreme repression of the political Regime that came with A bloody military coup. Student activism cannot be studied in the present without reference to its past, as this paper argues that the student activism in Egypt characterized by continuity. Its differences played very important roles in organizing movements at the campus resisting the British colonization (1882_ 1956), especially after the popular revolution of 1919, and even after the 1952 radical change to the political environment of Egypt. Egypt's student activism used to rise in the times when the open political spheres allow them to resist and fall in the hard times of high repression and narrowed political opportunities. Simply, Student Activism remained a reflection of the Egyptian Political Environment. This paper is shedding the light on student activism after the military coup of 2013, and it raises the main question of (How the regime's extreme repression affected the different patterns of student activism? And how Student Activism patterns resisted the extreme repression?) Theoretically, this paper uses the social movement theory as the theoretical framework, also for understanding the formulation of student activism in an exceptional period (post-unstable bloody military coup) followed by revolutionary resisting waves from different political actors, and extreme repression, also this paper tries to answer the main research question by using the approach of the Political Opportunity Structure (POS), which allows understanding the dialectical relationship between regime repression and protest. Eventually, this paper argues that the reasons why activism falls are not only due to repression, but also internal factors of the different patterns. The paper is built on 3 methodological tools: 1. Semi-structured interviews with the activism leaders. 2. CDA of their weekly statement and some unpublished meeting notes. 3. Direct observation of the activism strategies and tactics. In this paper, we embrace the classification of student activism into 3 patterns, 1. Revolutionary, 2. Opportunities, 3. cross-Idealogical. we also define every Pattern by its strategy. Taking into consideration that activism is not isolated from the off-campus political environment, On the contrary, we argue that activism is highly affected by the public sphere, especially after the 2013 military coup, we also argue that the gradual extreme repression held by the regime was not equal on the different patterns of the activism. So, their resistance strategies were vastly different.