"'We will not be moved!' : the 1968 student occupation of Columbia University and its influence on protest movements around the Western World"

Abstract

This thesis examines the Columbia University student occupation in the context of other protests that arose in 1968. It illustrates that the occupation of the Columbia campus was a turning point in student protest and protest movements in general. The Columbia protest, led by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Society of African-American Students (SAS), was more radical in scope than previous student protests on other campuses, and thus it prompted a more radical -- and violent -- response from police and institutional authorities. As a result, the impact the Columbia University protest had on others that followed was vast, influencing a general strike in Paris and student unrest at the Democratic Convention in Chicago later that summer. There was a certain irony in the expansive influence of the Columbia protest, in that it proved to be disorganized and quickly divided between black and white students. There were numerous ideological breaks between the different student groups, prompted in part by their differing goals and in part by the university's various negotiation attempts to end the protest. Yet the violent reaction of the police to the largest group of protestors inspired action on the part of students involved in the Paris protests in May 1968 and the London and Chicago disturbances later in the year.