As the 40th anniversary of the April 1968 protests approaches, alumni and administrators are collaborating to organize a three-day event to commemorate and promote intergenerational dialogue on the historic episode that shook Columbia University and the nation.
In March 2007, a group of four alumni wrote to University President Lee Bollinger proposing a gathering that would engage current and former students, administrators, and faculty through a variety of media. Nearly a year later, plans are taking shape as more veterans—including Barnard alums who participated in the demonstrations—join the effort. Speakers have been confirmed, and University officials set aside April 24 through 27 for 1968 commemorations.
Those spearheading the plans emphasized the need to convey a personal and multi-angled image of the events that forever altered the University.
“It’s not only Columbia that has neglected to confront the legacy of those times but also many on the left, as well as those on the right,” the four alumni wrote in their letter to Bollinger. “Others, who were born since, have at best a hazy understanding of the period.”
The 1968 demonstrations at Columbia were the culmination of a student response to several events that occurred earlier in the year. Televised occurrences such as the Tet Offensive and My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, the Prague Spring invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. shocked and horrified the nation while infuriating college students nationwide.
Further fueled by overwhelming resistance to the construction of a de facto segregated University gym in Morningside Park, the year’s events roused Columbia students and local residents to occupy multiple academic and administrative buildings for six days. As a turbulent and sleepless week reached its peak, the University made headlines with the arrest of more than 700 students by New York City Police.
This April, 1968 veterans will once again storm campus—this time with memorial speeches, moderated discussions, and oral accounts of their experiences. Scheduled events include a talk between current student activists and their 1968 predecessors, a series of memoirs by alumni chronicling their lives since 1968, and a conversation on the issues of ethics, legacy, and race.
According to a report written after a breakfast with Bollinger, the president seemed “to have embraced” the group’s suggestions. Turning to his staff and others in the University community for support, Bollinger has enlisted the aid of Gregory Mosher, director of the Columbia University Arts Initiative, to supervise programming for the commemorations.
The alumni coordinating committee, now in touch with over 150 people involved in the protests, met separately with student and faculty groups in November for further input. In a report on the meeting, the committee cited the students’ resentment toward the fading college activism in today’s world: “They [the students] deeply felt the lack of continuity with and institutional memory of ’68, and wondered why the way they feel now seems so different from the way we did then.”
As it attempts to contact police officers, University personnel, and “uninvolved” students who witnessed the protests, the coordinating group summarized its goals for the event in a recently released statement: “It promises to be both painful and joyful—fitting for a commemoration of 1968—and a unique encounter between generations.”
scott.levi@columbiaspectator.com