How Columbia’s history with the student protest movement carries over to the present day

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NEW YORK (AP) — College students occupying spaces and demanding change. University administrators facing pressure to regain control of the situation. Police intervention to make arrests. At other universities, students sometimes take notes, and other times… take action.

Columbia University, 2024. And Columbia University, 1968.

The pro-Palestinian demonstration and subsequent arrests at Columbia that have sparked similar protests on campuses across the country, and even internationally, are not news to students at this Ivy League institution. They are the latest in a Columbia tradition that dates back more than five decades, one that also helped inspire the anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s and the Iraq War, among others.

“When you go to Columbia, you know you’re going to an institution that has a place of honor in the history of American protest,” said Mark Naison, a professor of history and African American and African Studies at Fordham University and a participant in the protests. 1968. “Whenever there is a movement, you know that Columbia is going to be part of it.”

STUDENTS ARE AWARE OF HISTORY

The students who participate in this month’s demonstrations assure that it is part of the Columbia tradition, which is recognized by the institution itself in the programming of commemorative events and that it is part of the teaching in the classrooms.

“Many students here are aware of what happened in 1968,” says Sofia Ongele, 23, one of the people who joined the camp in response to this month’s arrests.

In April of that year, the end of the school year was also approaching, when students took over five buildings on campus. There were several reasons. Some protested against the university’s relationship with an institute that did weapons research for the Vietnam War; Others objected to the way the elitist school treated black and other racial minority residents in the communities surrounding the institution, as well as the environment in which minority students experienced.

After several days, the president of Columbia allowed the entry of a thousand New York Police Department officers to clear most of the protesters. The 700 arrests that day were not carried out delicately. There were punches and blows. Dozens of students and more than a dozen police officers were injured.

It was never forgotten history. Nor is it now that pro-Palestinian students are asking the university to distance itself from any economic ties with Israel due to the war in Gaza and that earlier this month they set up a camp from which more than 100 people were arrested. This helped spark similar demonstrations on campuses across the country and in different places around the world.

The historic past of protests is one of the reasons Ongele chose to study at Columbia and came here from his native Santa Clarita, California. “I wanted to be in an environment where people were really socially conscious,” he said.

When it comes to protesting, “we not only have the privilege, but also the responsibility to follow in the footsteps of those before us,” Ongele said. The goal, he said, is to ensure “that we are able to maintain the integrity of this university as a socially conscious university, a university that has students who care deeply about what is happening in the world, about what is happening in our communities and for what happens in the lives of the students who are part of our community.”

Columbia University officials did not respond to an email asking about the school’s position on the legacy of the events of 1968. Those events, like the current protest, “triggered a huge surge in activism.” students throughout the country,” said Mark Rudd, one of the leaders of that protest, in an email sent to The Associated Press. “Myself and others traveled around the country for a year after April 1968 to spread the spirit of Columbia throughout the campuses.”

NOT EVERYONE SUPPORTS THE PROTESTS

But the echoes of the past are not only in the inspiration. Then, as now, the protest had its detractors. Naison said the disruption to university life, and the rule of law, angered many inside and outside Columbia.

“Student protesters are not popular in the United States,” he said. “We weren’t popular in the ’60s. We achieved a lot of things. But we also helped move the country to the right.”

That has a corollary these days among critics of the protests, who have condemned what they say is a descent into anti-Semitism. Some Jewish students have said they have felt attacked because of their identity and are afraid to be on campus, and university presidents have come under political pressure to impose restrictions and resort to methods such as police intervention.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik had just testified before a congressional panel that the setting up of the camp coincided with an investigation into concerns about anti-Semitism at elite schools. Although she requested police intervention the following day over what she called an “environment of harassment and intimidation,” congressional Republicans have called for her resignation.

“Freedom of expression is very important, but it is not above the right to security,” said Itai Dreifuss, 25, a third-year student who grew up in the United States and Israel. Last week he was near the camp, looking at the images taped to the wall of the people who were taken hostage by Hamas in the October 7 attack that sparked the current conflict.

The sense among some students that there is personal animosity against them is what distinguishes the current situation from the 1968 protests, Naison said. This conflict between the protesters and their detractors “is much more visceral,” he indicated, which, according to him, makes this moment much more tense.

“It is history that repeats itself, but it is also unknown territory,” he said. “What we have here is a whole group of people who see these protests as a natural extension of the fight for justice, and another whole group of people who see this as a deadly attack on them, their history and their tradition. And that makes it very difficult for university authorities to manage.”