Class Action

Background

Class Action, also known as Class Action Network, is a left-of-center advocacy group and public pressure campaign that criticizes elite universities for practices such as legacy admissions and steering graduates toward corporate careers. ²

Class Action was established in 2023 following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The group was co-founded by Ryan Cieslikowski, a then-senior at Stanford University, who founded the group with Evan Mandery, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, after attending one of Mandery’s talks on elitism in higher education. Cieslikowski had conducted a “listening tour” to gather student concerns about preferential treatment for applicants from high-status backgrounds and the channeling of students into the private sector, particularly finance, technology, and consulting as opposed to “public interest” work. ^{1 2 3}

Mandery, who has taught in underserved areas, has long argued that elite institutions exacerbate societal divides by failing to return educated talent to rural or low-income communities, and further has stated that he “believes that leading universities like Stanford have laid the groundwork for Trump and Maga ‘to foment such gross mistrust of elites.’” By late 2025, the group claimed involvement with students on 76 campuses and had formal chapters on several of them, focusing on grassroots efforts to mount pressure campaigns against elite private universities. ^{1 2 3}

The group received tax-exempt status in 2025 under the name Class Action Network. The group is headquartered in Montclair, New Jersey, and is unrelated to a nonprofit of the same name, Class Action Network Inc., headquartered in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. ^{4 5}

Activities

Class Action has conducted campaigns to eliminate “legacy” and donor preferences in admissions to benefit the children of alumni and institutional donors, respectively. The group has supported legislation in California prohibiting such practices at state-funded schools, and supported similar measures in other states, including Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. At Amherst College, Class Action worked with local student groups to lobby for expanded career services promoting public-interest careers, which the group defines as health, public service, government, and education, over business recruiting. The group states on its website that it has supported and organized protests urging universities to distance themselves from business recruiting. ^{6 7}

In November 2025, Class Action co-organized the “Reimagining Elite Higher Education” conference at Yale University, drawing approximately 200 to 300 participants from over 50 campuses, including students, alumni, and professors. The event, co-hosted with Yale’s Graduate and Professional Student Senate, featured panels on university policies and led to the drafting of an “Academic Social Contract for our Time,” a document critiquing universities for functioning as “factories” that recycle elites and proposing measures like increasing class sizes, abolishing legacy admissions, and investing endowments in left-of-center priorities such as affordable housing. ³

In 2024, Class Action reported $69,000 in revenue, of which $49,000 was paid to lead organizer Ryan Cieslikowski in salary, the only notable expense for the organization that year. ⁸