‘Police raids are nothing new’: student protesters from 1960s see history repeating itself

Anti-Vietnam war activists from Tariq Ali to the Weather Underground on the remarkable parallels with today's pro-Palestinian uprising - and authorities' responses

Early last week, days before the NYPD raid, Eleanor Stein poked around the edges of the Gaza Solidarity encampment at Columbia University. The area was the hub of the pro-ceasefire, pro-divestment, pro-Palestinian protest movement that has, in recent weeks, spread across the United States (and, more recently, Canada and the UK). It wasn't her first time witnessing clashes of protesters and counter-protesters on the lawns of the august Ivy League school.

In 1968, Stein was one of 700 students arrested at Columbia during protests targeting both the university's ties to the US military apparatus at the height of the Vietnam war, and the college's plan to build a segregated gym, at the height of the civil rights movement. This was really a crisis moment," Stein, 78, recalls. Students were taking a moral stand. We were ready to risk our careers, and our lives and our futures, and take a leap into the unknown and say, No. We are not going to budge.'"

Top: On the mall in front of Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, a young man with a microphone speaks to a crowd of students, faculty and onlookers during a protest in New York, 1968.

Bottom: Students camp on Columbia University's campus to protest against the university's ties with Israel in New York, 22 April 2024.