Student protest is an essential part of education

Columbia University students sit in at Hamilton Hall on April 23, 1968. In 1968, Columbia waited a comparatively long time before bringing in law enforcement to dismantle a student uprising over Columbia’s ties to the defense industry and the war in Vietnam. — Filepic/©2024 The New York Times Company

ANYONE who was at Columbia University in the spring of 1968 cannot help but see a reprise of those stormy, fateful and thrilling days in what is happening on the Morningside Heights campus today.

But there is a troubling and significant difference. If the students back in ’68 were divided into rebellious, longhaired pukes and conservative, close-cropped jocks, with a lot of undecideds in between, the current protests at Columbia – and at the growing number of other campuses to which they have spread – have witnessed personal and often ugly divisions between Jewish students and Arab or Muslim students or anyone perceived to be on the “wrong” side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.