How Columbia University's Complex History with the Student Protest Movement Echoes into Today

New York: College students taking up space and making demands for change. University ministrators facing pressure to get things back under control. Police brought in to make arrests. At or schools: students taking note, and sometimes taking action. Columbia University, 2024. And Columbia University, 1968.

pro-Palestinian demonstration and subsequent arrests at Columbia that have set off similar protests at campuses nationwide se days and even internationally aren't new ground for students at Ivy League school. y're latest in a Columbia trition that dates back more than five deces — one that also helped provide inspiration for  anti-aparid protest of 1980s, Iraq war protests, and more.

“When you’re going to Columbia, you know you’re going to an institution which has an honoured place in history of American protest,” said Mark Naison, professor of history and African & African American Studies at Fordham University and himself a participant in 1968 demonstrations. “Whenever re is a movement, you know Columbia is going to be right re.”

Students are aware of history

It's part of Columbia's lore, students taking part in this month's demonstrations point out — recognised by school itself in commemorative anniversary programming and taught about in classes.

“A lot of students here are aware of what happened in 1968,” said Sofia Ongele, 23, among those who joined encampment in response to this month's arrests.

end of an acemic year was also approaching in April of that year when students took over five campus buildings. re were multiple reasons. Some were protesting university’s connection to an institute doing weapon research for Vietnam War; ors opposed how elite school treated Black and brown residents in community around school as well as atmosphere for minority students.

After several days, Columbia’s president allowed a thousand New York Police Department officers to be brought in to clear most demonstrators out. arrests, 700 of m, were not gentle. Fists were flying, clubs swinging. Dozens of students and more than a dozen officers were injured.

It’s never been forgotten history. That includes now when pro-Palestinian students calling on university to divest from any economic ties to Israel over war in Gaza set up a tent encampment earlier this month and more than 100 were arrested. It helped spark similar demonstrations at campuses around country and world.

storied protest past is one of reasons Ongele chose Columbia for college and came here from her native Santa Clarita, California. “I wanted to be in an environment where people were indeed socially conscious,” she said.

When it comes to protest, “We have not only privilege but responsibility to continue in shoes of those who came before us,” Ongele said.

goal, she said is to ensure "that we’re able to maintain integrity of this university as one that is indeed socially aware, one that does have students that do care deeply about what goes on in world, what goes on in our communities, and what goes on in lives of students that make up our community.”

Columbia University officials did not respond to an email asking about school’s position on legacy of 1968 events. Those events, like current protest, “sparked a huge increase in student activism around country,” Mark Rudd, a leer of that protest, said in an email to Associated Press. “I and ors spent entire year after April 1968 travelling country, spreing to campuses spirit of Columbia.”

Not everyone supports protests

But echoes of past aren’t only in inspiration. n, as now, protest h its detractors. Naison said disruption to campus life, and to law and order, angered many at Columbia and outside of it.

“Student protesters are not popular people in United States of America,” he said. “We weren’t popular in ’60s. We accomplished a tremendous amount. But we also helped drive country to right.”

That has a corollary se days with those critical of protests, who have condemned what y say is a descent into antisemitism. Some Jewish students have said y have felt targeted for ir identity and afraid to be on campus and university presidents have come under political pressure to clamp down and use methods like police intervention.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik h just testified in front of a congressional panel investigating concerns about antisemitism at elite schools when camp initially went up. Despite her requesting police action next day for what she called a “harassing and intimidating environment,” Republicans in Congress have called for her resignation.

“Freedom of speech is so important, but not beyond right to security,” said Itai Dreifuss, 25, a third-year student who grew up in United States and Israel. He was near encampment this past week, standing in front of posters taped to a wall of people who were taken hostage by Hamas in October 7 attack that set off current conflagration.

That feeling among some students that personal animosity is being directed against m is a difference between 1968 and now, Naison said. That conflict between demonstrators and ir decriers “is far more visceral,” Naison asserts, which he says makes this time even more fraught.

“It’s history repeating itself, but it’s also uncharted territory,” he said. “What we have here is a whole group of people who see se protests as a natural extension of fighting for justice, and a whole or group of people who see this as a dely attack on m and ir history and trition. And that makes it very difficult for university officials to manage.”