Columbia University Student Protests April 1968
Protests against Columbia University in the spring of 1968 were a two-pronged expression of University policies on the Vietnam War and racial issues. Columbia was a major property owner in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, with many residents of the area paying rent for their residences to the University. Over the preceding decade more than 7 thousand residents had been evicted by Columbia campus expansion, more than 80% of them black or Hispanic. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Afro Society (SAS) were separate student groups which at first worked together in the protests, later separating along racial lines when the SAS decided to stress its own position – which was anti-segregation – over that of the SDS, predominantly concerned with Columbia’s support of the Vietnam War.
The diverse nature of the protests led to poor communication between the two student groups, both of which clashed with Columbia Police and NYPD over the issue of the construction of the Morningside Gym, an allegedly segregated facility being built on Columbia property. Both the SDS and the SAS occupied several University buildings and offices, with the SAS stressing the racial issues which impacted students at Columbia. By the end of April, the NYPD had dislodged the protesters from the occupied buildings.
The main goal of the SDS was for Columbia to discontinue its relationship with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a government-funded think tank supporting American intervention in Vietnam. Thus the two protests, which ran simultaneously, were presented to the world as being racially motivated in one case, and anti-war in the other. The students’ occupation of various buildings and offices was seen as disruptive of the educational institution and American efforts to win the war. The presence of outside activists not affiliated with either student groups or the university (such as Jane Fonda’s activist husband Tom Hayden), negatively affected public opinion.
The Columbia protests were particularly divisive nationally as they were seen as being conducted by privileged students, many of whom were from wealthy families, who enjoyed draft deferments by virtue of their being enrolled in college. The image of Columbia University suffered from the negative response of much of the public, with enrollments and endowments suffering a decline from which the school did not recover for more than two decades.
Columbia severed its relationship with the IDA in the aftermath of the protests, and both ROTC and CIA recruiting on campus came to an end. Naval ROTC would not return to Columbia until 2013. Columbia also took steps to improve its relationship with the black and Hispanic communities of Harlem, largely ending the expansion of its campuses onto properties it owned there, and shifting its expansion focus to the west. The protests of April and May became more fodder for the law and order candidates, depicting the students as shills for radicals against the government’s legal application of law.