Columbia University protests look increasingly like those in 1968 as police storm campuses nationwide
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May 02, 2024
Stefan M. Bradley, Professor of Black Studies and History, Amherst College -
The Conversation
Columbia University has become the epicenter of student protests over the war in Gaza. In the following Q&A, Stefan Bradley, a history professor at Amherst College and author of the 2009 book “Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s,” touches on the similarities and differences between the protests of the 1960s and now.
How do protests now differ from those of 1968?
Similarities lie in students’ opposition to war, racism and prejudice.
A key difference is social media, which has contributed greatly to the ability of students to mobilize. News of various actions and protests spreads quickly.
Violence or the threat thereof is another difference. Initial demonstrations at Columbia University in April 1968 started with the threat of violence between radical students who wanted to end the university’s ties to war research during the Vietnam War and terminate a university gymnasium construction project and mostly white athletes who wanted to push forward with it. The gym had been designed for mostly Black and brown Harlem residents to enter one door and Columbia affiliates in another. Columbia affiliates also had greater access to various parts of the gym, leading residents to refer to the situation as “Gym Crow.”
Considering the institution’s history of expansion and the uprisings surrounding the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that took place just weeks earlier, tension was in the air. Taking the demonstration to the gym site, student activists then clashed with police in the park before returning to campus to take over Hamilton Hall, the same building where dozens of Columbia student activists in this year’s protests over Gaza were arrested on the night of April 30, 2024.
Until April 30, students were less disruptive than they’d been in the past. The encampments on the South Lawn did not prevent major functions of the university.
But after students took over Hamilton Hall, the calculus has changed. By breaking into the building and barricading themselves in, the campus activists provided administrators with even more justification to call on the police to remove them.
How so?
Officials in 1968 called city police to forcibly remove students, who had subsequently taken over four more buildings, and to make arrests. It quickly turned violent. Police charged into buildings and around campus to make arrests. In a building called Math Hall, activists, including Tom Hayden – author of the Port Huron Statement, a leftist manifesto that called on students to work against racism, imperialism and poverty – fought back. Police struck observers and activists alike with batons.
With long-standing critiques of the university in their minds, and the death of King in their hearts, Harlem residents were ready to support protesting students.
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