The school is being sued by the student club for censoring its pro-Palestinian views
The 1968 Student Encampment at Columbia University: Students and a Demonstration against Antisemitism in the War in Gaza
The society of Afro-American Students (SAS), which was upset about Columbia University moving ahead with the plans to take over a public park in Harlem to build a gym, was not the only one.
“They were building it in Morningside Park, one of the few green spaces in Harlem,” former Columbia student and current SUNY law professor Eleanor Stein told NPR’s Michel Martin. “And we felt that it couldn’t be business as usual, that the university itself was engaging in an indefensible takeover of Harlem land and an indefensible participation and complicity with the Vietnam War effort.”
White and Black students coordinated a protest against the gym — and then hundreds of students moved from there to take over office and classroom buildings, enforcing a strike against the school.
Pro-Palestinian students set up tents to hold a demonstration on campus on the same day that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik testified in Congress about reports of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus — a session that school newspaper the Columbia Spectator followed with live coverage.
Her testimony was related to the debate over free speech on campus. The school’s response to antisemitism is the subject of an investigation by the House Education Committee.
The radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) also opposed Columbia’s links to the Institute for Defense Analyses — a think tank researching and analyzing weapons and strategies to use in Vietnam. They also wanted the CIA and military services barred from on-campus recruiting.
It is being compared to the time in 1968 when police had to clear protesting students from the campus.
In the past year, there have been parallels between the two events, most notably the increase in protests around the country by students who want an end to the war in Gaza.
Last week, I asked the New York Police Department to remove the protesters one day after due to the danger they pose to the University.
“All University students participating in the encampment have been informed they are suspended. At this time, the participants in the encampment are not authorized to be on University property and are trespassing,” Shafik said.
When the police were called onto campus in 1968, officers were blamed for violently arresting hundreds of students, using nightsticks and horses in a chaotic scene.
In contrast police and city officials said last week that the removal of the demonstrators from Columbia’s campus was peaceful, and no injuries were reported.
First Black Students in the Lobby of Hamilton Hall During the 1965 Vietnam War: Students Against the Anti-Palestinian Speech of the Arab Student Union
Reporters for Columbia’s college radio station WKCR (including longtime NPR host Robert Siegel), were present when Henry Coleman, acting dean of Columbia College, sought to confirm his status as he stood among a crowd of students in the lobby of Hamilton Hall.
According to an online history exhibit, the Black students’ goals for racial justice and equity were interfered with by theSAS leadership because of their less-defined politics.
The library’s exhibit says that when the police entered the barricaded Hamilton Hall early in the morning of April 30, the occupying students calmly walked out of the main entrance to the vans waiting on College Walk.
Black students asked white students to leave a building because of their different approach and focus. And women who were part of both groups cited their disillusionment with being left out of positions of power, spurring their embrace of the feminist movement.
Students at a Washington, D.C., public school are suing their principal and the school district over the administration’s censorship of the Arab Student Union’s pro-Palestinian speech, according to the federal lawsuit filed by the the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.
The students were prevented from having the Palestinian Culture Night that they wanted because the club was not allowed to give out face paint or distribute pro-Palestine stickers.
It was clear in the United States Supreme Court in 1968 that students had a right to peacefully express their views about the war.
In 1965, a group of students in Des Moines decided to wear black arm bands to show their support for a truce in the Vietnam war. School administrators created a policy stating any student refusing to remove the armband would be suspended. On Dec. 16, 1965, two students, Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt, wore their armbands to school and were sent home. The Supreme Court decided that students did not lose their right to freedom of speech when they stepped onto school property.
The program was still not what students would have wanted, but the students were able to host it this Thursday. They say the school required them to submit information regarding their plans to display books, symbols and items on a table.
The students want to host a documentary screening before the school ends for seniors in June so they can get a federal judge to tackle this case quickly.
