Antisemitism against Columbia University: The Case Against Vietnam War Research and the Importance of Military and CIA Recruitment in the United States

The Society of Afro-American Students protested Columbia University’s plans to take over part of a Harlem park to build a gym which critics said would only give second-class access to the local community.

Eleanor Stein said that the building was in the park, which was one of the few green spaces in Harlem. “We felt like business had to change because we felt that the university itself was engaging in an indefensible takeover of Harlem land and participation in the Vietnam War effort.”

White and Black students coordinated a protest against the gym — and then hundreds of students moved from there to take over office and classroom buildings, enforcing a strike against the school.

On the same day that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik testified in Congress about reports of antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, a group of students set up tents to hold a demonstration on campus.

She testified in the debate over free speech on campus. The school’s response to antisemitism is the subject of an investigation by the House Education Committee.

The radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) also opposed Columbia’s links to the Institute for Defense Analyses — a think tank researching and analyzing weapons and strategies to use in Vietnam. They wanted the military and CIA to be barred from on-campus recruiting.

“Although the war in Vietnam continued for seven more years, the protesters were, in many ways, successful,” wrote historian Rosalind Rosenberg of Columbia-affiliated Barnard College. “They persuaded Columbia to put an end to classified war research, cancel construction of the Morningside Park gym, ask ROTC to leave, and stop military and CIA recruitment.”

This lawsuit comes as students at university and college campuses across the country protest for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which erupted after a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that Israel says killed 1,200 people. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict.

The University was in danger because of the disruptions, and New York Police Department was asked to remove protesters one day after.

The University students who are participating in the encampment have been told they are suspended. At this time, the participants in the encampment are not authorized to be on University property and are trespassing,” Shafik said.

When the police were called onto campus in 1968, officers were blamed for violently arresting hundreds of students, using nightsticks and horses in a chaotic scene.

A week ago, police and city officials said that there were no injuries or damage during the removal of the demonstrators from Columbia’s campus.

The War Between Black and White: Students in Hamilton Hall, BC, Sustained by the State of Washington, D.C., over Pro-Palestinian Speech

Reporters from Columbia’s college radio station, including NPR host Robert Siegel, were present when Henry Coleman, acting dean of Columbia College, stood among a crowd of students in Hamilton Hall to confirm his status.

The online history exhibit says that SAS leaders later said that the politics of the white students interfered with the Black students’ goals that centered on racial justice and equity.

Conditions inside Hamilton Hall were calm and quiet compared to the “boisterous” atmosphere elsewhere, the exhibit states. Harlem’s black community would mount a violent response if police were called in against the students at the Black-held hall.

But some divisions emerged among the students: Black protesters asked their white counterparts to leave a building due to their different approach and focus, for instance. And women who were part of both groups cited their disillusionment with being left out of positions of power, spurring their embrace of the feminist movement.

Students at a Washington, D.C., public school are suing their principal and the school district over the administration’s censorship of the Arab Student Union’s pro-Palestinian speech, according to the federal lawsuit filed by the the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit alleges that the club was prevented from holding its Palestinian Culture Night in the way the students wanted, that they were barred from distributing a one-page “zine” that explained various Palestinian symbols and were not allowed to offer face paint “tattoos” or to distribute pro-Palestine stickers.

In 1968, the Supreme Court heard a case that said that high school students have a right to peacefully express their views about the war.

In 1965, a group of students in Des Moines decided to make a public showing of their support for a truce in the Vietnam war by wearing black arm bands. School administrators made a policy that student would be suspended for refusing to remove the armband. Two students were sent home on December 16th, 1965, after they wore their arm bands to school. The Supreme Court held that students’ freedom of speech does not lose when they step onto school property.

The students were eventually able to host it this Thursday, but Spitzer told NPR, “It was still not exactly the program they would have wanted. They tell me the school required them to submit for advanced clearance what books they were going to display on a table and what symbols they were going to display.”

The students are trying to find a federal judge that will act quickly so that they can host the documentary screening before the senior year ends.