Looking Back and Moving On

After spending decades in the shadow of spring 1968, when weeklong student demonstrations brought Columbia to a standstill, the University is moving into another era of its history. The passage of the protests’ fortieth anniversary should remind Columbia of the hard lessons it learned—chief among them, the need to guard against divisions strong enough to tear the campus apart. But the anniversary should bring an element of closure to a sequence of events whose legacy is fiercely contested even today.

In April 1968, hundreds of Columbia and Barnard students occupied five campus buildings in protest of Columbia’s proposed gym in Morningside Park, its involvement with the Institute for Defense Analyses, and its disciplinary procedures. Campus reaction to the occupations—spearheaded by Students for a Democratic Society and the Students’ Afro-American Society—ranged from active support to private sympathizing to outright opposition from what came to be called the Majority Coalition. After faculty-led efforts to broker a compromise proved unsuccessful, the administration gave the go-ahead to a police bust in which over 700 students were arrested and 148 reported injuries. Though Columbia promptly withdrew from the IDA and scrapped plans for the gym, the aftereffects are still with us today. The protests led to the creation of the University Senate and the Student Governing Board, and spurred on much-needed changes within the board of trustees. But they also inaugurated Columbia’s slide from the top tier. Beset by financial troubles and discredited in the eyes of the nation, the University was hard-pressed to hire new faculty or to convince disaffected alumni to donate. Only recently has Columbia regained the prestige and prosperity it enjoyed mid-century.

Forty years on, it is time for Columbia to close a chapter of its history that still evokes strong feelings on all sides. More than a generation has passed since the building occupations, and while those present then were marked indelibly by what they saw, the University should be ready to come to terms with what happened. It is encouraging that Columbia’s administrators have spoken more openly about the impact of 1968 on the University. With the Columbia community reflecting on the protests’ legacy, now is the proper occasion to reappraise institutions and policies crafted in the crucible of that year. The University Senate, which served the crucial function of mediating among students, faculty, and administrators as Columbia rebuilt itself in the 1970s, has faded into the background and needs a renewed sense of purpose. As the spring of 1968 begins to pass into historical memory, and as its psychic hold on the University begins to loosen, the practices adopted then can be adapted to different times.

To move on is not to forget. Whoever was to blame for the 1968 crisis, a fundamental disconnect between students and the administration helped turn disparate grievances into a confrontation that shook Columbia to its roots. As the University embarks on its Manhattanville expansion—a project that might bring to the surface racial and political tensions on and off campus—students and administrators must be careful not to let such a divide materialize again. Columbia needs a flexible administration that can keep abreast of student opinion and solicit student input in a way that Grayson Kirk, University president from 1953 until August 1968, never could. The current administration did address the controversies surrounding September’s campus visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and November’s hunger strike. But the short notice given to student groups before President Ahmadinejad’s arrival, coupled with uncertainty about the administration’s plans to reform Major Cultures prior to the hunger strike, showed that the administration has more work to do to communicate its policies and priorities to students of all ideological stripes. Without open lines of communication, both within the University and with the surrounding community, Columbia will be ill-prepared to weather the next big crisis any better than it did that of 1968.

For all the progress of the last four decades, Columbia remains ambivalent about the legacy of spring 1968. Forty years after a demonstration at the Sundial kicked off a week of occupations, debate persists over the legitimacy of disruptive protest. Forty years after black protesters in Hamilton Hall advised their white counterparts to “get your own building,” the campus remains far from fully integrated. And forty years after students commandeered President Kirk’s office in Low Library, there is still a gap between students and administrators. Through the patient efforts of students, faculty, administrators, and alumni, Columbia has climbed back into the ranks of the greatest universities. It will keep its footing only if it learns to bridge the divisions that first made it fall.