Forty years ago this week, Columbia made its mark on the national scene with legendary protests that shaped the University's history. Now former activists are reuniting for a look back.
Spurred on by the liberal campus group Students for a Democratic Society, activists rallied against the University’s proposed gymnasium in Morningside Park, the school’s connection with a think tank conducting research for the Department of Defense, and an autocratic disciplinary code. On April 23, 1968, SDS members gathered at the Sundial in protest, and by the end of the week, students occupied Hamilton Hall, Low Library, Fayerweather, Avery, and Mathematics. In the early morning hours of April 30, 1,000 New York police officers descended upon Morningside Heights—arresting over 700 and injuring 100.
By the end of the school year, the University’s gym construction was indefinitely suspended, classes were canceled for the rest of the term, and members of the graduating class of 1968 walked out on their commencement ceremony to start their own counter-commencement.
Now, those activists, alumni, and others who were present for the controversy are gathering together once more to commemorate the experience. A committee of six alumni organized a series of discussion panels and social activities that will start at the end of this week to reflect upon the significance and impact of the events that transpired during that infamous April.
The University is not officially supporting the events, but will be providing free space for the events.
When asked why Columbia is not hosting an official program to look back on the 1968 demonstrations, journalism professor Todd Gitlin said, “I just thought, since Columbia was so profoundly shaken and one might say traumatized by those events, it did behoove the University, I believe, to bring 40 years of reflective thought to bear on this central event in its history.”
Yet as Gitlin remarked, the profound emotional and political charge of the 1968 campus protests elicits its own philosophical dilemma about the appropriate means by which to pay tribute.
“I do know that there is a range of feelings about this. But my involvement has been that there is some kind of University—even if modest—marking of this in an academic, intellectual way,” University President Lee Bollinger said. He later added of rallying against the gym, “There continues to be a division of opinion about how to think about that, and part of the motivation of these events that are coming up is driven by the feeling that we still have work to do for a generation of people who feel that this has not been resolved.”
The alumni-organized conference will last four days, April 24-27, although many former student activists are arriving sooner to reunite and remember.
“Well, number one, don’t forget that the ’60s were sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Number two, the ’60s was fucking Vietnam,” Neal Hurwitz, CC ’68, said and added, “We were all basically screwing each other, having a wonderful time.”
Still, Hurwitz believes that the upcoming events planned by his peers lean too drastically to the left by idealizing the protests, and that Bollinger’s appearance is inappropriate.
“What you have basically is a commemoration and they want to pass on the torch to student activists, and it’s very important to feel that you validated your youth,” said sociology professor Allan Silver, who was a member of the 1968 ad hoc faculty group steering committee during the demonstrations.
But CC alumnus and one of the event’s organizers, Hilton Obenzinger, hopes this week’s tribute will be a period of self-scrutiny and nuanced reflection. “We attempted to reach out to people with a variety of viewpoints and experiences to participate,” he said, later adding, “We’re not sure how many will be interested in telling their stories, but we hope they will be able to tell their accounts in a productive atmosphere.”