At the end of this past academic year, Columbia University called in police to suppress peaceful protests in support of Palestine and in opposition to US complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza. Over one hundred students were arrested. Observers were quick to point out the similarities between this crackdown and an earlier one that took place on Columbia’s campus fifty-six years ago in response to the Vietnam War.
Police arrested 700 protesters in 1968, and 130 students and four faculty members were injured. It is tempting to see that year, which shares an identical calendar with 2024, as the lone precursor to the present. But the university’s militant opposition to antiwar activists has a much longer history…