How Columbia University’s complex history with the student protest movement resonates today

NEW YORK (AP) – Students are taking on space and demanding change. University administrators under pressure to regain control. Police brought in to make arrests. In other schools: students concentrate and sometimes take motion.

Columbia University, 2024. And Columbia University, 1968.

The pro-Palestinian demonstration and subsequent arrests in Colombia, which have now sparked similar protests on campuses across the country and even internationally, are nothing latest for college kids at the Ivy League school. They are the latest in a Colombian tradition that dates back greater than fifty years – which also helped encourage anti-apartheid protests in the Eighties, protests during the Iraq War, and more.

“When you go to Columbia, you know you’re going to an institution that holds a proud place in the history of American protests,” said Mark Naison, a professor of history and African-American studies at Fordham University, who was himself a participant in the 1968 demonstrations. “Whenever there is a movement , you know Columbia will be there.”

Students are aware of history

Students collaborating on this month’s demonstrations emphasize that it is a component of Colombia’s tradition – something recognized by the school itself in a program marking the anniversary and taught in classes.

“Many of the students here are aware of what happened in 1968,” said Sofia Ongele, 23, who was amongst those that joined the camp in response to this month’s arrests.

The end of the academic yr was also approaching in April this yr, when students took over five campus buildings. There were many reasons. Some protested against the university’s affiliation with an institute that researched weapons for the Vietnam War; others objected to the elite school’s treatment of black and brown residents in the communities around the school, in addition to the atmosphere amongst minority students.

After a couple of days, the president of Colombia authorized the arrival of a thousand New York law enforcement officials who were to remove most of the demonstrators. The arrests, which numbered 700, weren’t lenient. Fists were flying and batons were swinging. Dozens of scholars and a number of other officers were injured.

History has never been forgotten. This includes when pro-Palestinian students calling on the university to chop all economic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza arrange a tent camp earlier this month and greater than 100 people were arrested. This helped spark similar demonstrations on campuses across the country and the world.

The long history of protests is one in every of the reasons Ongele selected Columbia for school and got here here from her hometown of Santa Clarita, California. “I wanted to be in an environment where people were actually socially aware,” she said.

As for the protest, “We have not only the privilege, but the responsibility to continue to follow those who came before us,” Onngele said. The goal, she said: to be certain that “we’re able to take care of the integrity of this university as a very socially conscious university, one where students truly care about what is occurring in the world, what is occurring in our communities and what is occurring in the lives of the students who make up our community.”

Columbia University officials didn’t reply to an e-mail asking about the university’s position on the aftermath of the 1968 events. Those events, like the current protest, “sparked a huge surge in student activism across the country,” Mark Rudd, a protest leader, said in an email to The Associated Press. “I and others spent the entire year after April 1968 traveling around the country spreading the spirit of Colombia on campuses.”

Not everyone supports the protests

But the echoes of the past should not only an inspiration. Then, as now, the protest had its detractors. Naison said the disruption to campus life and law and order has angered many individuals at Columbia and beyond.

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“Student protesters are not popular in the United States,” he said. “We weren’t popular in the 1960s. We have achieved a huge amount. But we also helped move the country to the right.”

This is now having repercussions amongst those critical of the protests, who’re decrying what they see as a descent into anti-Semitism. Some Jewish students said they felt targeted due to their identity and were afraid to be on campus, and university presidents got here under political pressure to make use of other methods, corresponding to police intervention.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik had just testified before a congressional panel investigating concerns about anti-Semitism at elite schools when the camp began. Even though she demanded police motion the next day due to what she called a “harassing and intimidating environment,” congressional Republicans called on her to resign.

“Freedom of speech is very important, but it does not go beyond the right to be safe,” said Itai Dreifuss, 25, a third-year student who grew up in the United States and Israel. He was near the camp last week, standing in front of posters taped to the wall depicting people taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the current conflagration.

Naison said the feeling amongst some students that there may be personal animosity against them is the difference between 1968 and today. The conflict between demonstrators and their condemners “is much more emotional,” Naison says, which he says makes this an excellent more tense time.

“It’s history repeating itself, but it’s also uncharted territory,” he said. “Here we have a whole group of people who see these protests as a natural extension of the fight for justice, and a whole other group of people who see this as a deadly attack on themselves, on their history and tradition. And this makes management very difficult for university authorities.”