RE: 1968 to 2007--Antiwar Student Movements in the US Then & Now

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: The Man Common
Date: Apr 26, 2007 8:56 AM

1968 to 2007--Antiwar Student Movements in the US Then and Now

by Ron Jacobs
State of Nature

As an email acquaintance and veteran of the Columbia 1968 uprising recently reminded me, we are creeping up on the thirty-ninth anniversary of that event. Although seemingly a minor instance to many people today (of those that even know about it), the takeover of campus buildings, a police attack on the campus, and the subsequent strike had repercussions well beyond Columbia's ivy walls. Simply put, the success of the action in terms of galvanizing student and community support, especially after the repressive police attack on the protesting students and their supporters, lent great credibility to the belief among many Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) members that action was a better organizer than education. This debate had been brewing for a while within the leadership factions in SDS, as well as at the local level. A crooked line can be drawn from the advent of the Weatherman a little more than a year later at the fractious 1969 SDS convention back to the tactics of the so-called action faction after the Columbia events. Indeed, many of Weather's east coast membership came out of that milieu.

 

Flashback to Spring 1968

By late April 1968 at Columbia University it was clear that the issues plaguing the university were not going away. The university continued to insist on its right to build a gym on land then occupied by apartment buildings housing hundreds of Harlem's residents, and hundreds of students and neighborhood residents continued to oppose those plans. In addition, the university's ties to the U. S. defense establishment via its sponsorship of a branch of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) was angering more and more students and younger faculty as the bloodshed in Vietnam increased in volume and intensity. The Institute's rumored involvement in the death of revolutionary Che Guevara didn't help matters, either.

In the minds of the student radicals these issues were not only connected, they shared the same roots. Consequently, those who carried out those policies were equally culpable. That included Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia, just as much as it included Lyndon Johnson and General Westmoreland. That left those who opposed the university's desire to build a gym on land bought out from underneath those who lived on it and its involvement in the war in Vietnam only one route of opposition.

 

Confrontation

On April 23, 1968, after a march opposing the gym construction, Columbia students and neighborhood residents headed back to the Columbia campus. En route, a group of black and white students headed towards Hamilton Hall and took it over. Early the next morning another group of students, including white students asked to leave Hamilton Hall after a consensus reached by the students inside the building, took over the Low Library which housed many of the school's administrative offices. By the end of the following day, a total of six Columbia buildings had been liberated by the students and their sympathizers. These occupations continued for several days and nights. Meanwhile, rallies in support of the takeovers took place daily-one even featured an impromptu concert by the Grateful Dead who were in town for a series of shows in Manhattan. These rallies were attacked occasionally by right wing students and professors egged on by plainclothes cops. But those scuffles were nothing compared to the police raid and attack which occurred the night of April 29.

It was this attack which convinced much of the student population who had been previously uncommitted to support the radicals in their demands-which had been increased to include a demand that all disciplinary and legal charges be dropped on those involved in the takeover. The radicals' statement that the university would call in the police and beat its own students before it gave up its ties to the military or changed its construction plans were validated. A strike was called and classes became a joke.

Meanwhile in France, a revolutionary insurrection was erupting. What began as a demonstration against curfew rules in university dormitories in Nanterres spread across France, igniting universities and the streets of Paris. By the middle of May the workers of France had joined in and President DeGaulle was considering launching a military attack against the French people-something which had not occurred in France since the days of the Commune in 1870. Students spent their days holding open organizing meetings in the commons areas of their schools and spent the nights fighting the police. Workers throughout France took over their factories and ran them with workers' councils. Workers in one Renault plant in the hinterlands locked their managers in their office and ran the plant themselves. Their goal was to show how needless management really is. Then, just as they did at Columbia, the powers regrouped. The workers' political parties-the Communists and the Socialists-reneged on their support of the strike in favor of immediate pay raises and some changes in working conditions. In addition, the Socialists ended up with a substantial share of political power. Although the more conservative Gaullists and their allies did lose some ground and although it could be argued that the balance of power shifted in France after May 1968, one would be hard put to prove that now.

At Columbia, and in France and the rest of the world, the corporate powers are more entrenched than ever. Students still protest, only now it's just to get a bit of recognition for the decreased status of youth in their respective societies. As recently as one year ago in France students and workers took to the streets in an attempt to prevent the passage of a law that took away any job security for workers during their first two years of employment, and were successful. In the United States, various campuses have seen protests over the war, military recruitment, sweatshop labor and a multitude of issues connected to global capitalism. None of these protests, however, have been able to maintain a serious challenge to the role of the university in the corporate state, like those of 1968 did. It's not that the understanding of the relationship doesn't exist, it's just that in today's world this is an assumed reality. After all, the presence of corporate influence are everywhere from the names of sports stadiums to the naming of rock music festivals and tours. Why shouldn't a college take some of the money being handed out? And, furthermore, how can one challenge such a pervasive reality and expect to be effective? When everything is branded it becomes considerably more difficult to separate one's existence from that reality. Heck, at the January 27th protest against the war in Iraq there were people holding signs opposed to the war that were distributed by Working Assets communications company and included their corporate logo.

 

As for the college students themselves, just like the European student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit said back in 1968: … "the present educational structure ensures that the majority of working-class children are barred not only from the bourgeois society we are trying to overthrow, but also from the intellectual means to see through it." (Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative) In an even more fundamental way, these words are true today. What with the rapid increase in the cost of post high-school education, the plummet in the availability and amount of government student aid, the lack of support by those same governments for K-12 public education resulting in the destruction of the educational infrastructure and the continuing "dumbing down" of our children, working class youth are more disenfranchised not only from our educational system, they are removed from society itself. Unfortunately, they also seem to be at a loss as to how to combat that removal. While certain campuses maintain a healthy oppositional culture which expresses itself both socially and politically, many more do not. Working class youth and those youth who have rejected their privilege continue to congregate in the larger cities forming youth "ghettos" and cultures, but at this point on the eve of the millennium, most youth are reduced, like their older counterparts to merely figuring out a way to survive. Unfortunately, many of their elders who have "made it" economically (and who were once part of the generation of 1968) insist on criminalizing (or increasing the penalties for those already illegal) the very same acts they trumpeted when they were young: drug use, open sexuality, opposition to the empire, etc. The acts they have not succeeded in criminalizing (and some of those they have) are commodified, leaving young people feeling cynical even about justifiable acts of rebellion-as they perceive today's revolutionary act to be tomorrow's soft drink commercial.

 

The US War Machine and the University

The IDA still exists. It maintains a headquarters in Alexandria, VA. and actively recruits on college and university campuses. In the Spring 2006 semester, it has already scheduled recruitment sessions at Princeton, MIT, Harvey Mudd College, University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon, and New York University, among others. Judging from its website, the IDA is currently working on a number of projects concerning computing and warfare, weapons analysis, and a variety of work for the Department of Homeland Security, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Director of National Intelligence. The nature of the agency's work can be surmised by reading a couple of its current projects: Countering Improvised Explosive Devices and Joint Training for Irregular Warfare. Other specific projects include a threat forecasting analysis regarding North Korea and a project that is "examining the kinds of nuclear forces the United States could need for each of the postulated alternative 2022 international security environments." In addition to its recruitment efforts on U.S. college and university campuses, the IDA has a number of connections to the world of U.S. academia. According to a blog maintained by Columbia SDS vet Bob Feldman,

The Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]'s board of trustees in 2005 also continued to include members with connections to various U.S. universities. The University of South Carolina's president, John Palms, for example, was the chairman of the IDA's board of trustees in 2005. Sitting next to the University of South Carolina president on the Pentagon weapons think-tank board of trustees in 2005 were the Dean Emeritus of the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, Jack Borsting, and the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs Dean, Edwin Dorn. A lecturer at Harvard University's JFK School of Government, John White, also was a member of the IDA board of trustees in 2005. In addition, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] Center for Genome Research, Jill Merirov, and an MIT Institute Professor, Sheila Widnall, also sat on the IDA board of trustees in 2005.

In addition, Feldman writes that MIT faculty members continue to engage in secret war related research for the Pentagon via the IDA.

Most universities and colleges also host recruiters from various military branches and the National Guard. These recruiters, being the most obvious representatives of the war machine, have been met with opposition at some campuses since the war in Iraq began. This opposition has ranged from petitions to picketing and, in some instances, the recruiters being physically chased from campus. Nonetheless, the recruiters keep coming back. This is due in part to the (need name) Act which forbids academic institutions from banning military recruiters from their campus if they receive federal funds. Of course, in today's world, virtually every institute of higher education receives some kind of federal funding. Besides recruiters, many campuses have ROTC programs. Although they are not compulsory except at military colleges, these programs continue to provide close to sixty percent of the officer corps in all US military branches.

Then there are the investment portfolios tied to the endowments of virtually every university. When I worked at the University of Vermont (1994-2005), the war industry captains General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and General Electric consistently led the list of investments. This trend is replicated around the country, especially in today's world of soaring war profits. Although the committee on socially responsible investment at the University of Vermont was able to convince the Board of trustees to divest its holdings in tobacco companies, any discussion of ending the investments in arms manufacturers never even made it past the committee. If one recalls the anti-apartheid divestment movement at US universities during the 1980s, they know that movements against investment policies of questionable morality (to put it mildly) can be successful.

In addition, there are several grants provided to university departments whose purpose is to enhance the warmaking capabilities of the US armed forces. One example of this type of research grant can be found in this January 24, 2007 news release from the University of North Texas: "The University of North Texas and three other area universities have formed a partnership with industry to develop the next generation of software technology to be used by the defense industry. "UNT's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, along with UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas and SMU are joining Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Metallect in developing what is known as net-centric software systems." Indeed, UNT is but one of the multitude of post secondary institutions that have accepted these types of research grants. A cursory survey brings up a list that includes the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa, Penn State, the University of California, Rochester Institute of technology and a multitude of other schools.

 

Student Resistance Today

There are a number of student organizations opposed to the way things are today. The best known of them are the Campus Antiwar Network, the revived SDS, and local incarnations of the anti-capitalist globalization movement. All of these groups tend to ebb and flow in their membership numbers and those members energy, but do manage to gather for national and regional meetings and to also make their presence known at protests. Indeed, the Student and Youth contingent at the recent antiwar march on January 27th was one of the largest and loudest sections of the march. This winter there have already been a few counter-recruitment actions and college students in the Pacific Northwest are fundamental to the movement around military resister Lt. Watada. This alliance is also present at schools like the University of Vermont, where at least one member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War attends classes and is actively involved in antiwar organizing.

On February 15th, 2007, dozens of colleges and universities around the US stayed away from class and attended teachins against the war. The statement from the Columbia student group that organized the strike at that school (Columbia Coalition Against the War) is emblematic of the student strikers' sentiments:

We, the Columbia Coalition against the War, are staging a strike followed by a teach-in on February 15th, 2007. We are inviting the entire Columbia community, including students, faculty, staff, and the administration, to join us in publicly and actively opposing the unjust War in Iraq. We call upon the people of this country-especially our generation-to shoulder the responsibility of bringing an immediate end to this war.

 

This sentiment is beginning to be heard more and more. As for the actual protest at Columbia, it was relatively small, with a round 400 participants, including an anarchist faction that, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator, set off "fire alarms... in Butler Library, Lerner Hall, Hamilton Hall, and Kent Hall, forcing an evacuation of the buildings and an investigation by the New York Fire Department. Later, a group calling itself the Union of Students Advocating for the Preservation of Tedious Paperwork claimed responsibility for the fire alarms in a statement delivered anonymously to Spectator, which called the protest "symbolic, harmless, [and] permissible" and called the strike's organizers "aspiring bureaucrats." ' The group's statement continued, '"We pulled fire alarms on campus to disrupt the scripting of both activism and student life," the statement said. "No one should be willing to sit idly in the face of war, nor should they be willing to act as mere extras in a farcical theatre of resistance."'

Similar numbers were present at the other schools participating in this and other days of protest. What this means more than anything is that the movement against the war on US college campuses is small but committed. Like much of the rest of the US population, the general sentiment is opposed to the war, but the numbers willing to get out and do anything about it remain relatively small. Hopeful signs do exist, however, one of them being the existence of SDS chapters on several southern campuses in a region traditionally known for its support of the status quo. In fact, it was these southern chapters that led the charge for the second national day of student protest on March 20, 2007. The numbers of schools participating stood at around eighty-five and included at least a dozen high schools. The numbers were not majoritarian, but there were more protesters than last time.