Columbia University protests of 1968

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The Columbia University protests of 1968 were among the many student demonstrations that occurred around the world in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the Spring of that year after students discovered links between the university and the institutional apparatus supporting the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as their concern over an allegedly segregatory gymnasium to be constructed in a local park. The protests resulted in the student occupation of many university buildings and their eventual violent removal by the New York City Police Department.[1]

Contents

[edit] Origins

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In early March 1967, a Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society activist named Bob Feldman discovered documents in the International Law Library detailing Columbia's institutional affiliation with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a weapons research think-tank affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. The nature of the association had not been, to that point, publicly announced by the University.

Prior to March 1967, IDA had rarely been mentioned in the U.S. media or in the left, underground or campus press. A few magazine articles on IDA had appeared between 1956 and 1967 and IDA had been mentioned in a few books for academic specialists published by university presses. The RAND Corporation, not the Institute for Defense Analyses, was the military-oriented think-tank that had received most of the publicity prior to March 1967. But after Feldman's name appeared in some leftist publications in reference to the Columbia-IDA revelation, the FBI opened a file on him and started to investigate him, according to Feldman's de-classified FBI files.

The discovery of the IDA documents touched off a Columbia SDS anti-war campaign between April 1967 and April 1968, which demanded that the Columbia University administration resign its institutional membership in the Institute for Defense Analyses. Following a peaceful demonstration inside the Low Library administration building on March 27, 1968, the Columbia Administration placed on probation six anti-war Columbia student activists, who were collectively nicknamed "The IDA Six," for violating its ban on indoor demonstrations.

[edit] Morningside Park gymnasium

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Columbia's plan to construct a gymnasium in city-owned Morningside Park also touched off negative sentiment on campus. One of the causes for dispute was the gym's proposed design, which would have included access for residents of Harlem to a dedicated community facility on its lower level. This design was a solution to the gym's sitting on the park's highly-inclined slope, on the bottom of which is Harlem and on the top of which is Morningside Heights, where Columbia's campus is situated. By 1968, 7 years after the gym's proposal had been hailed as mutually beneficent, the civil rights movement cast things in a different light. The previously pragmatic design was now interpreted as segregationist and therefore discriminatory, and labeled "Gym Crow". In addition, others were concerned with the appropriation of land from a public park.

[edit] Protests

[edit] April student strike and occupations

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The first protest occurred eight days before Martin Luther King's assassination. In response to the Columbia Administration's attempts to suppress anti-IDA student protest on its campus, and Columbia's plans for the Morningside Park gymnasium, Columbia SDS activists and the student activists who led Columbia's Student Afro Society (SAS) held a second, confrontational demonstration on April 23, 1968. After the protesting Columbia and Barnard students were prevented from protesting inside Low Library by Columbia security guards, most of the student protesters marched down to the Columbia gymnasium construction site in Morningside Park, attempted to stop construction of the gymnasium and began to scuffle with the New York City Police officers who were guarding the construction site.

The NYPD arrested one protester at the gym site. Columbia SDS chairman Mark Rudd then led the protesting students from Morningside Park back to Columbia's campus, where students took over Hamilton Hall, a building housing both classrooms and the offices of the Columbia College Administration. During the takeover of Hamilton Hall, the 60 African American Students at Columbia involved with the protest then stated that the White students were not wanted in Hamilton Hall. As part of a Black Power Movement, the African American students claimed that the European-American students could not understand the protest of the gymnasium as deeply as its architectural plans were developed in a segregationist fashion. Respecting the SAS' decision, Rudd then led the White students to other sections of campus; mainly the Low Library and other such buildings surrounding the campus. Over the next few days, the University President's office in Low Library (but not the remainder of the building, which housed the school switchboard in the basement, and offices elsewhere, but no actual library) and three other buildings (including the School of Architecture, whose students began an occupation after being ordered to leave the building while preparing for final examinations) which contained classrooms were also occupied by the student protesters. The students who occupied the buildings demanded an end to Columbia University's involvement with the IDA, an end to the gym construction project in Morningside Park and amnesty for all participants in the demonstrations.

Based upon statistics gathered at the time by neutral campus organizations such as WKCR and Spectator (see URL "Columbia 68", Professor R. McCaughey), the majority of Columbia students did not support the demonstration, although there was sympathy for some of the stated goals. A group of 300 undergraduates calling themselves the "Majority Coalition" organized after several days of the building occupation, in response to what they perceived as administration inaction. This group was made up of student athletes, fraternity members and members of the general undergraduate population, led by Richard Waselewsky and Richard Forzani. These students were not necessarily opposed to the spectrum of goals enunciated by the demonstrators, but were adamant in their opposition to the occupation of University buildings. They formed a human blockade around the primary building, Low Library. Their stated mission was to allow anyone who wished to leave Low to do so, with no consequence. However, they also prevented anyone or any supplies from entering the building. After 3 consecutive days of blockade, a group of protesters attempted on the afternoon of April 29 to forcibly penetrate the line but were repulsed in a quick and violent confrontation. This was the administration's greatest fear; student on student violence. At 5:00 PM that evening the Coalition abandoned the blockade at the request of the faculty committee, who advised its leaders that the situation would be resolved by the next morning.

The protests came to a conclusion in the early morning hours of April 30, 1968, when the NYPD violently quashed the demonstrations. Hamilton Hall was cleared peacefully as African American lawyers were outside ready to represent SAS members in court and a tactical squad of African American police officers with the NYPD led by Detective Sanford Garelick (the same investigator of the Malcolm X homicide) had cleared the African American students out of Hamilton Hall. The buildings occupied by Whites however were cleared violently as approximately 150 students were injured and taken to hospitals, while over 700 protesters were arrested.


[edit] Second round of protests

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More protesting Columbia and Barnard students were arrested and/or injured by New York City police during a second round of protests May 17-18, 1968, when community residents occupied a Columbia University-owned partially vacant apartment building at 618 West 114 Street to protest Columbia's expansion policies, and later when students re-occupied Hamilton Hall to protest Columbia's suspension of "The IDA Six." (It might be noted that in the police arrest of 113 people at 618 West 114 Street, they also arrested four people watching events from the lobby of 622 West 114 Street, an apartment building not owned by Columbia. These four later had their trespassing charges dismissed. None had been directly involved in the demonstrations, although two were Columbia alumni and one a Barnard student. The Barnard student and one alumnus lived in 622, and this alumnus was covering the events for Liberation News Service.)

[edit] Fallout

The protests achieved two of their stated goals. Columbia disaffiliated from the IDA and scrapped the plans for the controversial gym, building a subterranean physical fitness center under the north end of campus instead. The gym's plans were eventually used by Princeton University for the expansion of its athletic facilities.

At least 30 Columbia students were suspended by the administration as a result of the protests.[2]

[edit] In books and films

  • Confrontation On Campus - The Columbia Pattern for the New Protest - by Joanne Grant. Back cover: "... a definitive study of the New Protest--how it happens, why it happens, why it is happening again and again."
  • The Strawberry Statement - by James Simon Kunen. This book details the particulars of the protest.
  • The Strawberry Statement - film version of the above with less analysis.
  • Up Against The Ivy Wall - by Jerry Avorn. Avorn was an editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator and covered far more of the events than did The Strawberry Statement, though it got a few names wrong.
  • Columbia Revolt 1968 documentary about the incident made by a collective of independent filmmakers.
  • The Fall 1969 documentary by Peter Whitehead about violence, revolution and the turbulence within late-60s America.
  • Across the Universe (film) - by Julie Taymor.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Columbia’s Radicals of 1968 Hold a Bittersweet Reunion", NY Times, April 28, 2008
  2. ^ Columbia University - 1968

[edit] External links