We link high-frequency geocoded protest data during Bangladesh’s 2024 Monsoon Revolution, Facebook measures of protest activity and social connectivity, university enrollment and demographics to establish: (1) campus protest precedes off-campus mobilization; (2) student concentration predicts both on- and off-campus protest, while non-student youth, educated adults, urbanization, and locations of “placebo” universities authorized but not yet operating do not; and (3) social connectivity to campus protests predicts off-campus diffusion one week later. Universities appear to incubate mass uprising by making dissent visible, coordinated, and capable of spreading beyond campus. Such patterns are also evident in U.S. Vietnam War protests and in global data. These results can rationalize why governments in Hungary, Turkey, Iran, India, Russia, Bangladesh, Israel, and the United States have targeted campuses to suppress dissent.