1968 Columbia protests still stir passion [audio 8min]
Forty years ago, Columbia University was a frequent scene of demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the university's relationship with its surrounding New York neighborhoods. Now, scholars and many involved in those protests disagree about their impact.
One source of contention was a university gym under construction in nearby Morningside Park. Black Harlem community activists, along with both black and white Columbia students, opposed it because they believed neighborhood residents would get only limited access to the facility being built on public land. On April 23, 1968, about 150 students and community members marched to the construction site and tore down a section of fencing. Then they moved on to Hamilton Hall, taking over the building and taking as hostage Columbia's acting dean, Henry Coleman. Meanwhile, another issue drew some students' ire. Members of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society opposed Columbia's ties to a think tank involved in weapons research for the Vietnam War.
Mark Rudd, then-chairman of Columbia's SDS chapter, tied the two issues together, saying at the time that students would not attend a university that exploited black people and developed weapons to kill them and murder the Vietnamese. Rudd, who lived underground as a revolutionary for seven years, says: "I see it as part of the enormous part of the anti-Vietnam War movement involving millions of people." He claims: "We stopped a war of aggression." However, Rudd's perception of the movement's impact is not shared by Allen Silver, a sociology professor who has taught at Columbia since 1964: "The army of North Vietnam stopped the war, because it imposed costs on the American polity and society that it was not prepared to bear."
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One source of contention was a university gym under construction in nearby Morningside Park. Black Harlem community activists, along with both black and white Columbia students, opposed it because they believed neighborhood residents would get only limited access to the facility being built on public land. On April 23, 1968, about 150 students and community members marched to the construction site and tore down a section of fencing. Then they moved on to Hamilton Hall, taking over the building and taking as hostage Columbia's acting dean, Henry Coleman. Meanwhile, another issue drew some students' ire. Members of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society opposed Columbia's ties to a think tank involved in weapons research for the Vietnam War.
Mark Rudd, then-chairman of Columbia's SDS chapter, tied the two issues together, saying at the time that students would not attend a university that exploited black people and developed weapons to kill them and murder the Vietnamese. Rudd, who lived underground as a revolutionary for seven years, says: "I see it as part of the enormous part of the anti-Vietnam War movement involving millions of people." He claims: "We stopped a war of aggression." However, Rudd's perception of the movement's impact is not shared by Allen Silver, a sociology professor who has taught at Columbia since 1964: "The army of North Vietnam stopped the war, because it imposed costs on the American polity and society that it was not prepared to bear."