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Stefan M. Bradley, Amherst College
(THE CONVERSATION) Columbia University has become the epicenter of student protests over the war in Gaza. In the following Q&A, Stefan Bradley, a history professor at Amherst College and author of the 2009 book “Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s,” touches on the similarities and differences between the protests of the 1960s and now.
How do protests now differ from those of 1968?
Similarities lie in students’ opposition to war, racism and prejudice.
A key difference is social media, which has contributed greatly to the ability of students to mobilize. News of various actions and protests spreads quickly.
Violence or the threat thereof is another difference. Initial demonstrations at Columbia University in April 1968 started with the threat of violence between radical students who wanted to end the university’s ties to war research during the Vietnam War and terminate a university gymnasium construction project and mostly white athletes who wanted to push forward with it. The gym had been designed for mostly Black and brown Harlem residents to enter one door and Columbia affiliates in another. Columbia affiliates also had greater access to various parts of the gym, leading residents to refer to the situation as “Gym Crow.”
Considering the institution’s history of expansion and the uprisings surrounding the assassinations of the Rev....
