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with Progressive between June 2022 and

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May 2023. Potential

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savings will vary. Hello

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and welcome to this day in esoteric political

0:34

history from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Abrogand.

0:39

This day, April 30th, 1968, New

0:43

York City police officers acting at

0:46

the behest of officials at Columbia

0:48

University cleared five campus buildings that

0:50

had been occupied by students protesting

0:52

various issues linked to a war

0:54

abroad and race relations at home.

0:57

And yes, listeners, there is a big sign

0:59

floating over my head as I read this

1:01

that says history repeating itself history repeating itself.

1:05

Look, of course, we are recording this at

1:07

a moment that there are campus protests at

1:10

Columbia and around the country going on

1:12

to protest the war in Gaza and the

1:14

police are being called in to clear them

1:16

often by university presidents themselves. Hundreds

1:19

of arrests. There's been a decent amount of

1:21

coverage about how this echoes what happened in

1:23

1968, but we thought that

1:25

we would bring our this day lens to it.

1:27

This was kind of on our list anyway, and

1:30

feels like the moment to do it. So let's talk

1:32

about the campus protests of 1968. And

1:35

then, of course, a little bit of what it tells us

1:37

about what's happening on campuses right now. But

1:40

here, as always, Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and

1:42

Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello

1:45

from Vanderbilt, where there is also an encampment

1:47

and also have been student arrests. Hello

1:50

from another college campus. Hey

1:53

there, guys. So, I mean,

1:55

I'm curious to hear what the vibe, as they

1:57

say, on your campuses. But of course, this may

1:59

change day. by day. So let's start

2:01

in 1968 and really just

2:03

kind of understand that because I think people will draw the

2:05

parallels and so forth as we go through

2:07

it. Should we start by

2:10

saying that both Nikina are Columbia alum?

2:12

And I feel like this story has

2:14

always been like sort of like the

2:16

folklore that gets passed on especially in

2:19

the history department about you know what

2:21

happened in 1968. So

2:24

let's start there. What's the folklore? Yeah. That's

2:26

where I learned of this story as well.

2:28

And you know there are some iconic pictures

2:31

that come out of this. A student protester

2:33

in sunglasses who has his feet propped up

2:35

on the president of the university's desk. Obviously

2:38

much more dramatic

2:40

and visceral footage of police using

2:42

nightsticks to club protesters. A lot

2:44

of bloodied students, actually conservative students

2:46

on campus dressed in suits and

2:48

ties lined up with the police.

2:51

You see all of these images

2:53

coming out of Columbia in 1968.

2:56

And none of that actually touches on what the protests were

2:58

about. But they give you a

3:00

sense of the imagery

3:04

of what we have come to associate

3:07

with really intense protests

3:09

on college campuses weren't only

3:11

created at Columbia but Columbia

3:13

has provided in these

3:15

68 protests some of the most iconic images. Yeah

3:19

certainly. When I think of like

3:21

protests there's probably three schools I think

3:23

of. I think of Columbia. I think of

3:25

Berkeley. I think of Howard for

3:28

me. Or you could probably say Kent State. But

3:31

I mean like these campuses were exploding

3:33

really all over the country but these

3:36

become sort of the most iconic ones.

3:39

Students upset about an

3:41

array of issues. I mean a lot of

3:43

it is anti-war protests were sort of like

3:46

the height of Vietnam and

3:48

sort of the duress that students have about

3:51

the war. Racial injustice

3:53

is still ongoing. I mean

3:55

King is assassinated at this

3:57

point but like there is still sort

3:59

of of fuming anger and

4:01

rage about racial injustice. Columbia

4:04

was trying to build a gym in

4:07

Harlem. I mean, I suppose we'll get to

4:09

this later, but that was one of the

4:11

major contentations is building this gym

4:14

in Harlem. And

4:16

I think there's a lot of also

4:18

discussion about is Columbia in Harlem? There

4:22

is sort of an ongoing beef with the

4:25

larger community or

4:29

has been a larger beef with the

4:31

larger, but the community that surrounds Columbia,

4:33

that is predominantly black

4:36

and brown and poor. I think that's

4:39

such an important place to go. Like, as we

4:41

start to talk about this gym, which as Kelly pointed

4:43

out is not the only issue that's going

4:45

on, but comes to embody a lot

4:47

of the issues that students had with the university.

4:50

Columbia situates itself in a neighborhood called Morningside

4:52

Heights, which when you're on campus, you're like,

4:55

do they just call it that so they

4:57

don't scare parents by saying they're in Harlem

4:59

because they're so clearly in Harlem? And

5:02

you could go around in Harlem. And

5:05

Morningside Park is one of those

5:07

dividing lines between Morningside

5:09

Heights and Harlem. And what's

5:11

interesting about that park, if people haven't seen

5:13

it, is that it starts very high up

5:15

on a hill, and then there's just a

5:17

cliff side. And

5:20

then it's several stories

5:22

down where the park actually is, you have

5:24

to walk down into the park. And

5:27

the gym was going to be built in Morningside Park, and

5:29

it was going to have two levels. There

5:32

was going to be one entrance on the

5:34

Morningside Heights level, where the Columbia students and

5:36

faculty could enter, and they could use

5:38

the full services of the gym. And

5:40

then on the lower level, there would

5:43

be access for Harlem residents,

5:45

for a community center, and they

5:47

would have some access to some

5:49

of the facilities on a restricted

5:52

basis. And 12%, 12%,

5:55

that's how Mosey was saying, the

5:57

optics of this. Like, used

5:59

to be. the back door downstairs to

6:01

get like a second class service

6:05

for Columbia which has been

6:07

a predominantly white institution. You

6:10

can understand why this became A, like

6:13

a flare point and

6:15

B, known very funnily as Jim Crow, G-Y-M

6:17

Crow. Jim Crow is good. Love

6:19

it. Doesn't translate well in audio. Yeah, that's

6:21

true. But I mean,

6:24

the optics, again, the

6:26

optics, like it's not, it

6:29

was never a good look. It was never a good

6:31

design. It was never created with

6:34

the community in mind. Or

6:36

maybe it was and that's the rub, you know? So

6:39

it starts off a

6:41

lot of protests and I

6:44

think to some degree, and I

6:46

don't know, Nikki, you can correct me if I'm

6:48

wrong, but I feel like to some degree, the protests

6:51

of the gym and the

6:53

racial unrest gets sort

6:56

of marginalized a little bit because black students

6:58

don't have a large demographic

7:01

or representation at Columbia's campus. And

7:03

so they really can't go

7:05

toe to toe in the same way that

7:08

these white students can who will have daddy's

7:10

money to bail them out of jail. And

7:13

so black students very quickly are like,

7:15

we want to protest, but we actually

7:18

can't while

7:20

out in the same way that some

7:22

of their peers were doing. I feel

7:24

like this is such an important point

7:27

because there are black students sit-ins and

7:29

protests. They're particularly calling for more black

7:31

professors, more black students, a black studies

7:33

program. But when push comes to

7:35

shove, they're like, okay, we're done. We made

7:37

our voice. We're not going to do

7:39

anything. Meanwhile, the white

7:42

students are holding

7:44

a dean hostage, occupying

7:46

several buildings. And I

7:50

think, Kelly, you're right to bring up the

7:52

difference between these two because the white students

7:54

just had more space, which is not to

7:56

say that they got off Scott for you

7:58

doing that. Like I said, like. Jodi mentioned

8:00

that 100 were arrested, students were

8:02

beaten by the police. So it's not that

8:04

they got off scot-free, but it was clear

8:07

which students felt like they could push the

8:09

boundaries and which students understood that they couldn't.

8:11

Yeah. So to paint a

8:13

little picture of how this went

8:16

down, this sort of occupation of the buildings, and I

8:18

just want to get to so many of the sort

8:20

of big strands and ideas that you both just laid

8:22

out. But, you know, we have, yeah,

8:24

we have this march and this protest down to

8:26

where the gym is being constructed. That

8:28

gets broken up, students return back

8:30

to campus, they seize about five buildings,

8:32

take a Dean hostage, as we've said.

8:34

It basically brings the university to

8:37

a halt in this moment. Notably,

8:40

there are also lots of protests and

8:42

kind of ancillary things going on outside

8:44

the gates. It's a huge dynamic

8:46

we're seeing now and the sort of inability to

8:49

disentangle kind of like, who's a Columbia student, who's

8:51

not, who's just there to kind of be part

8:53

of the scene. All of that is

8:55

going on in 68 as well. Black

8:57

students do have the sort of dynamic

8:59

there is really interesting. There is an occupation

9:02

led by black students, 86 protesters

9:04

take Hamilton Hall and reclaim it,

9:06

call it Malcolm X Liberation College.

9:09

Notably, I think to your point, Kelly, they

9:12

eventually surrender without a fight. I think there's just

9:14

an understanding of kind of who can push the

9:16

line and who can't. I

9:19

want to sort of take half a step back

9:21

and just ask in that 68 protest

9:24

that we've described here, I see a

9:26

really important kind

9:28

of dynamic, which is both

9:31

of you kind of got to it, but the marrying

9:33

of campus politics

9:36

and larger politics and

9:38

a moment when they feel like they become the

9:40

same fight for a bunch of reasons. I'll

9:43

say, I went to college and when I

9:45

was in college, the university's office

9:47

was probably more occupied than not. I mean,

9:49

it was just always occupied, right? Friends

9:52

who would do it, but even at the

9:54

time and certainly in retrospect, I tend to

9:56

recognize those were important fights and college kids

9:59

taking a stand. But they were

10:01

campus politics. They were little interseen campus

10:03

fights. What you

10:05

see in this 68 story to me is

10:07

a different dynamic, which is there is

10:10

this fight over the gym, right? But

10:12

it becomes immediately, because I think it

10:14

is genuinely connected to this larger racial

10:18

justice fight, and then also to this larger

10:20

fight about the Vietnam War. And something about

10:22

that really echoes to this moment and I

10:25

think leads to these moments really kind of

10:27

pushing beyond the boundary of, you

10:30

know, young lefty college

10:32

students will always be agitating about something. I

10:34

think that intersection is so important

10:36

for understanding why these conflicts take

10:38

place on college campuses. Because

10:41

students have these moments where they

10:43

see their university as a perpetrator

10:45

of a larger injustice that they're already

10:47

concerned about. So when it came to

10:50

college campuses in the 1960s, universities were affiliated with

10:52

all sorts

10:56

of military research and weapons

10:58

production. They were deeply embedded

11:00

from the invention of napalm

11:02

and the nuclear bomb to

11:04

all of the

11:06

different military contracts

11:08

that universities had. So that

11:10

becomes a flashpoint. As

11:13

you mentioned, the racial justice issues,

11:15

particularly when it came to representation

11:17

on university campuses, like what does it mean to

11:20

say that you are a desegregated university

11:22

and yet you have like two black

11:24

professors or that your black students are

11:26

treated differently or that there's no black

11:28

studies program at the university. And so

11:30

what you often see at these universities

11:32

and in protest signs is like we're

11:35

protesting yes, because of these

11:37

large injustices in the world, but we're also

11:39

protesting because this place that is

11:41

supposed to be a space that prepares us

11:43

for the world and introduces us to all

11:45

of these new ideas has become rote and

11:49

it's become its own kind of machine that is

11:52

stamping us out for these boring jobs and trying

11:54

to take the idealism and

11:57

radicalism from us. And we protest

11:59

that too. Yeah,

12:02

I mean, but

12:05

also the idea is that like

12:07

when students go to college for

12:10

the first time in a lot

12:12

of cases, they are being enlightened

12:14

and educated and introduced to really

12:17

big ideas and concepts, how

12:19

systems work, how power

12:21

works, how capitalism and

12:24

socialism or patriarchy, all these

12:26

big ideas are being

12:29

discussed in classrooms. And so students

12:31

are, you know, having sort

12:33

of an awakening moment. I know that's what it

12:35

was for me when I went to Howard. It

12:37

was like, oh, there's

12:39

this much bigger world that

12:41

I'm being prepared for. And

12:44

what role do I want to play in this

12:47

world? Do I want to be someone who makes it better? Do I

12:49

want to be someone who makes it worse? And

12:52

you have a lot of, I think,

12:54

appropriate ethical questions being asked. And

12:58

in some ways, it's sort of one

13:00

of the best opportunities, I think, to

13:02

use the tool of protest

13:04

because students have so little to

13:06

lose. The best sign I've

13:08

seen at the Columbia protests was one that

13:10

said, Dear Columbia, why require me

13:13

to read Edward Said if you don't want me

13:15

to use it? You loved that. And

13:18

it's like, yeah, you know, but I also will

13:20

say, and I'm of the same mind, and I

13:22

think it gets to this question of kind of

13:25

when do these protests reach escape

13:27

velocity? Is that the phrase to kind

13:29

of connect to the larger world? Yeah, I'm also of the

13:31

mind that, Kelly, you're absolutely right, you know, students

13:34

go to have their horizons expanded to be injected

13:36

with new ideas. And then what do you expect?

13:38

They're going to use them. But

13:41

I also feel like, you know, a

13:43

big part of the story is that they should

13:45

use them and it should stay on campus and the rest of

13:47

the world shouldn't really care, you know, and

13:49

a big part of the dynamic, especially now,

13:52

is that the rest of the world is sort of

13:54

meddling in what has always taken place on campus, which

13:56

is a bunch of people agitating, but that's what college

13:58

kids do. That said, to come

14:01

back to this idea that it feels like it

14:03

connects to a bigger issue that the whole world

14:05

cares about, that's clearly what's happening in

14:07

68, is what's happening now. And

14:09

I will also say, I mean a lot of places we're

14:12

doing it are drawing this 1968 parallel. We've

14:15

mentioned a few times on the show

14:17

the apartheid movement and the divestment fights

14:19

there. I feel like that's the

14:21

one that isn't being talked about. Enough, I'm fascinated by that

14:23

moment. I could do a 10-part series on that. I'd

14:26

love to at some point. But that's another one here. I'm

14:28

just excited to do a 10-part series like that. But

14:31

that's another one where it feels like,

14:34

oh, all these campus fights really connect

14:36

to this much bigger issue and all

14:40

of a sudden it mushrooms in

14:42

that way. The other dynamic, it's the dynamic

14:44

we are marking today,

14:47

is the police. The police getting caught

14:49

in to break this thing up. So let's talk about

14:51

how that goes down in 1968 and

14:53

what that does to this moment. And then obviously we

14:55

can tie it to today. As

14:58

far as we know, leads the university president.

15:00

I'm just saying words. This sounds just ripped

15:02

from today's headlines. The university president asked the

15:04

NYPD in the same sort of language of,

15:06

I do this with a heavy heart. It

15:09

brings me no joy to do this. But

15:11

nevertheless, I feel like I need help to

15:13

break up these protesters who are disrupting campus

15:15

life. How does that all go down

15:17

in 1968 and what does it do in the moment? I

15:20

mean, it becomes chaos. The cops

15:22

come in. They arrest

15:24

about 700 students and

15:27

there are physical and violent

15:30

altercations. Students are getting dragged

15:32

down the steps. They are being pulled.

15:35

They are pushed. They are being hit

15:37

with batons. It

15:39

becomes removal by force. And

15:42

this is always the most disappointing,

15:45

if that's the best word to use,

15:48

probably not, but most disappointing aspect of

15:50

a lot of these protests is

15:52

that they are never solved

15:54

with actually addressing some of

15:56

the grievances that the students

15:59

have. The primary tool

16:01

of the administration is just get

16:03

rid of them, get them out,

16:05

send them away, silence them, rather

16:08

than sort of deal with what it is

16:10

that they're demanding. Interested

16:20

in the forces shaping our world?

16:23

The Council on Foreign Relations has

16:25

you covered. For those who like

16:27

to look ahead, dive into the world

16:29

next week, hosted by Bob McMahon and

16:31

Carla Ann Roberts. We were not

16:33

forecasting anything about Russian domestic upheaval, and yet

16:36

that has been the story of the week.

16:38

These are scorpions going after each other in

16:40

a bottle. And for those who

16:42

want to go beyond the headlines, join Jim

16:45

Linzei as he opens up the President's interest.

16:48

What should U.S. policy do? The

16:50

approach towards China, it's enough to

16:52

make me question bipartisanship. And

16:54

finally, join me, Gabrielle Sierra, on Why

16:57

It Matters, as my guests and I

16:59

bring some of the world's most compelling

17:01

stories home to you. Do you feel

17:03

good about where we're heading with AI?

17:06

Maybe we need to invent a new

17:08

word here, which kind of is a

17:10

combination of frightened and excited. I'm excited.

17:13

So what are you waiting for? For

17:15

the world next week, the President's inbox.

17:17

And Why It Matters, we'll see. And

17:29

there's such an interesting dynamic to it

17:31

as well, because the police come in,

17:33

they immediately escalate the situation, they're meeting

17:35

the students. So

17:37

now the University President has invited the

17:40

silence onto campus and has

17:42

put his students in harm's

17:44

way. And

17:47

he's also ceded whatever sort

17:49

of moral high ground he

17:51

might have had. These students, some of them were,

17:54

they held the Dean hostage and yes, they fed him

17:56

and they only held him for 24 hours, but I

17:58

think maybe we shouldn't keep them. people

18:00

that feels important. So

18:03

it could have been very easy to

18:06

paint these protests at Columbia as silly

18:09

or as college students who

18:11

don't have any sense of proportion or

18:13

is dangerously radical. And

18:16

yet when you bring the police in, you do

18:18

a couple of things. You say, actually, these students

18:20

do have power and they're a threat to our

18:22

university, which makes people also pay attention. But

18:25

it also says, and we think

18:27

that the way that we're going to take

18:29

care of our students is to bloody them

18:31

up and throw them in prison. And that

18:34

turns public sentiment toward

18:36

the students who are being beaten.

18:39

And it damages, in

18:41

this case and in other cases, irreversibly, the

18:43

Saffons and Berkeley as well. Like it damages

18:45

the reputation of the president so much that

18:47

they're forced out early. And you

18:50

would think given this long history and

18:52

the availability of history books at university

18:54

libraries. And the way that this is

18:56

lore at Columbia itself. The way that

18:58

it is celebrated lore. These are called

19:01

the storied protests of 1968 in university

19:05

literature. And yet maybe

19:07

we can send them a copy of this

19:09

episode. I just sometimes you just want to

19:11

be like, wait, let's take a

19:13

beat. Let's think about what we did before

19:16

and what didn't work. And

19:18

then let's just repeat that again. Hoping

19:21

for new results. It

19:23

never works. It never works. I

19:25

mean, going back to this conversation we've been

19:27

having about how these moments bind

19:30

together a bunch of different issues.

19:32

It does feel like, and we've

19:34

seen this not just with campus protests, but just, you know,

19:37

the police reaction to social

19:39

justice movements in general. But it's like when

19:42

you send in the cops, it's like injecting

19:44

like superglue or a binder. And all of

19:46

a sudden, all these issues that maybe felt

19:48

a little disparate or we're just sort of

19:50

starting to coalesce, they just become one, right?

19:53

And the campus politics and the larger politics

19:55

and the media story, it all just becomes

19:57

about the police response. And so purely from

19:59

a. tactical level, which I don't think is the

20:01

most important consideration here, but purely from a tactical level,

20:03

as you've been saying, it just

20:05

backfires. It just puts everyone on the other side of

20:07

the cops together, generally speaking.

20:10

You know why? Because it reveals the

20:12

power dynamic that gets often

20:14

obscured in the coverage of these things, right? Like

20:16

it's like, oh, the students are in charge. The

20:18

students are in control. The students run the university.

20:20

And then as soon as the cops show up,

20:22

you're like, oh, wait, the students don't

20:24

actually have power in this situation. And this is

20:26

true for activists as well. I mean, the

20:29

kind of rhetoric that comes out from

20:31

people who oppose protests and activism as

20:33

they're going on is that these are

20:35

the people who are running the

20:37

asylum. And then the cops show

20:39

up, and that is disproven.

20:43

So that said, I do

20:45

want to talk about the aftermath of this

20:48

on two fronts. One at a

20:50

tactical level, like what were these

20:52

protests about? And did they accomplish something?

20:55

And was that dynamic changed by the sending in of the

20:57

cops and the breaking them up in this way? But

21:00

then also, because you're starting to see

21:02

this conversation already emerge, the

21:04

story of these protests and whether the story of these

21:06

protests felt connected to the original idea of the protests.

21:08

And we've hinted at that a little bit. But let's

21:10

go through very quickly the kind of nuts

21:13

and bolts. We talked about this fight over

21:15

a gym being built in Morningside Heights. Yeah,

21:17

well, the gym doesn't go through.

21:19

They actually decide not to proceed

21:21

with constructing this gym.

21:24

They do eventually build a

21:26

gym, one that I've used for

21:28

some of the most underground and it's terrible. Yeah,

21:30

it's yeah, it's a

21:32

subterranean. It's basically a

21:35

basement gym. A

21:37

really big basement gym. And

21:39

the uncomfortable dynamic between Columbia and Harlem

21:41

certainly doesn't go away. No, no,

21:43

but the gym gets stopped. Yeah, yes. So

21:46

in that sense, they get what they want.

21:48

They do hire more black

21:50

faculty. They do bring in more

21:52

students. It's still

21:54

not a substantive amount, but it's

21:57

more than what they had before. campus

22:00

guidelines to sort of accommodate protests a little

22:02

bit more, which is actually something still playing

22:05

out now, right? I mean, people are pointing

22:07

to what's happening now

22:09

as being facilitated by the

22:11

fact that Columbia opened

22:13

its understanding of the role of

22:15

protest, at least for a

22:17

while. And it

22:20

doesn't end with graduation in 1968,

22:22

although that becomes a side of protest too

22:24

when students walk out. But this

22:27

is also part of the law at Columbia.

22:29

For many semesters after, there were

22:31

not final exams held at Columbia because the

22:33

university kept getting shut down by student

22:36

protesters. So this is the

22:39

beginning of a season of protests at

22:41

Columbia and other universities, obviously around Kent

22:43

State. They're going to flare up again

22:45

in 1970s. So really

22:47

the late 1960s and early 1970s

22:49

are disruptive in terms of the

22:51

schedule at Columbia, but I suspect

22:53

a period of real learning for

22:56

students. Yeah.

22:58

You know, as you said, it

23:01

backfires for the president and the leadership of the

23:03

university. A lot of them have to resign. I

23:05

think it's generally seen as a mistake, the response

23:07

to these protests. You know,

23:09

it's not just these protests, but obviously it's the

23:12

late sixties in general. You know, radicalizes

23:14

a whole group of students who then

23:16

go on to lead protests through the

23:19

70s. The Weatherman and the SDS famously

23:21

kind of come out of Columbia, not

23:23

just a generation later, we're into anti-apartheid movements. I

23:25

mean, you know, we can see the kind of

23:28

lineage throughout. The

23:30

story of these protests, because I think I'm

23:33

seeing a lot of people even now, and

23:36

this is moving day by day, but even now

23:38

as we're seeing these encampments on

23:40

campuses around the country and then police

23:42

being sent in and being broken up,

23:45

a lot of people are saying, wait, wait, wait,

23:47

we're losing sight of the fact that this is

23:50

about Gaza. This is about what's

23:52

happening in Palestine. And instead it's

23:54

become about a fight between the cops and the kids. And

23:57

I wonder what you make of that. I wonder if 1968 has lessons for that. especially

24:00

both in the moment and in the

24:02

lore that got told on Columbia's campus.

24:05

Is there a danger here and in

24:08

some ways that then advantageous to the powers

24:10

that be that when you take a step

24:12

like this it turns it into a fight

24:14

that's not really about what it where it

24:16

started? I can see

24:18

in the short term the attention being turned

24:20

to the question of whether to as many

24:23

people have floated bringing the police or

24:25

the National Guard onto college campuses in

24:28

order to put down student protest and

24:30

faculty protest and that is

24:32

understandably where people's focus are when they're on

24:34

campus is how the university is going to

24:36

retaliate. But I think the lesson

24:39

of this is that that both

24:41

build solidarity on campus. You weren't seeing

24:43

a ton of faculty out there with

24:46

students until students started getting arrested and

24:48

the protests have gotten bigger because of

24:50

the police violence and that

24:52

is not to say that everyone

24:54

is coming out to protest because

24:56

of agreement on what university and

24:58

US policy should be toward Israel

25:00

and Gaza but it

25:02

does I think create

25:05

the ground for a larger movement and

25:08

so in that case like in the short term maybe

25:11

people aren't talking quite as much about Gaza although I think

25:13

they still are talking about it quite a lot but

25:16

I think that it grows these movements and

25:18

empowers them in a lot of although I

25:21

would much rather not have universities

25:23

seeking law enforcement on students and

25:25

faculty. Yeah same

25:27

I mean I think that

25:30

these moments should teach us anything it is

25:34

how do we get

25:36

to a place where you can resolve

25:39

or address grievances without

25:42

the police and

25:45

without these sort

25:47

of altercations but

25:50

I think part of it is that the administration

25:52

has always been sort of in

25:54

some way dismissive of students like you

25:56

bye go away you know as though

25:58

you know like They don't bring anything to

26:01

the table or they don't have anything to say. And so

26:03

trying to have meaningful conversations

26:05

about, okay, where do we go from

26:07

here? What does this look like? And

26:09

what would be required to sort of do

26:11

the work that you want us to do? I

26:15

never see those conversations taking place. I'm

26:17

not saying that they don't happen behind

26:19

closed doors, but we never

26:21

see that sort of like conflict resolution

26:24

play out in public. And I think because

26:26

we don't see that, we

26:29

never have a model for what solution

26:31

building will look like. And in part,

26:33

it's because universities have gotten very used

26:35

to responding to students as consumers and

26:37

responding to consumer complaints, but they don't

26:39

have a framework for responding to students

26:41

as activists and protestors. And that I

26:43

think is where there's a lot of

26:45

conflict on campuses right now. And

26:47

none of that is helped by social

26:50

media and the speed at which outside

26:52

attention can come flooding in and outside

26:54

pressure can come flooding in. And I

26:56

agree. I mean, Kelleh, you painted such

26:59

a wonderful, but I think achievable and

27:01

laudable vision for how these things could get

27:03

resolved. I don't think those things get resolved

27:05

that way with everyone

27:08

in the world agitating from the outside and having

27:10

an opinion. I think campuses should be able to

27:12

just work stuff out on their own and realize

27:14

that other people should just keep

27:16

it moving. But nevertheless,

27:21

I'm really glad we did this, really fascinating and

27:23

obviously tons of parallels. And we wanted to cover

27:25

this on its own, right? But man, it feels

27:27

so resonant. It's been flying around,

27:30

but we'll send out some of

27:32

the articles that were written at the time

27:34

because it really just feels so reflective

27:36

of what's happening right now. But we will leave

27:38

it there. As always, Nicole Hemmer, thanks to you.

27:41

Thank you, Jodi. And Kelly

27:43

Carter-Jackson, thanks to you. My pleasure.

27:47

On April 23rd, SCF called demonstration,

27:49

in which we plan to demonstrate

27:52

inside Low Library the protest Columbia's

27:54

complicity with the Institute for Defense

27:56

Analysis. It's racism in building the

27:58

gym in unison. Park and

28:01

it's attempted suppression of the left by

28:03

just 20 ex-students. About 500 people joined

28:05

us at the sundial. We

28:07

were opposed by about 200 jocks. We found that

28:10

not only were the jocks there blocking our way, but

28:12

we found when we got to the library that the

28:14

library was locked by the administration. There

28:18

was a thought that would stop us, but it didn't. Because we went at the

28:20

heart and we busted into the gym side. And

28:22

things called and re-imported. And

28:35

I think

28:38

everybody is

28:41

doing well, you know.