This Ain’t 'Animal House' But We've Seen This Movie Before

Unrest on America’s college campuses may be history repeating itself, but let’s talk about who turned out to be on the right side of history.

This Ain’t 'Animal House' But We've Seen This Movie Before
Wikimedia Commons

Can we talk about the student protests on campuses across the nation? No? Okay good, I’ll break it down for you in simple terms: Students once again are opening America’s eyes, despite the nation trying its best to keep them closed.

In the way that generations of college students have reminded America that at least some of its 330 million people that they have a conscience and that there is such a thing as doing what’s right, demonstrations have popped up on campuses from Yale to Harvard to USC to U-T Austin. All of them unified in their objection to the war in Gaza that has claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinians including the elderly and children.

The beef is that Israel is being indiscriminate in their campaign against Hamas terrorists and are ignoring the humanitarian catastrophe their attacks have caused. When you look closely, this is a very diverse group of young people which includes Jewish students who object to the activity.

And as what seems to be a hallmark of these types of protests, they took over Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University in New York. The building is named after the early American statesman Alexander Hamilton, who historically has been seen as an abolitionist, but newer information shows that he did once enslave human beings (sorry Lin-Manuel Miranda, it was still a great musical). This is fitting because Columbia, largely seen as a center of progressive thought, already has a black mark on its reputation for displacing thousands of Harlem residents.

Well, this citadel of enlightenment is now kicking out students who have held a weekslong demonstration against the war in Gaza. On April  29, they were given a 2 p.m., deadline to end their encampment, which saw tents spring up on the campus and consistent student participation and  help from outsiders, who have been accused of creating a hostile environment for Jewish students. Threatened with suspension and defiant, instead of ending the encampment, they took over Hamilton at midnight.

The next day however, NYPD officers burst into Hamilton and cleared it of protesters, arresting at least 100. New York Mayor Eric Adams says the protest was co-opted by outside agitators, but either way demonsrtators were not able to hold on to the building in the way they intended.

Early on May 1, things got violent at UCLA as people from both sides decided to throw hands in the middle of the night. Now, for things to go crazy at UCLA, one of the most pristine campuses in the country, which sits in the middle of one of the nation's wealthiest neighborhoods, it means that a conflict on the other side of the globe has lent itself to the American social fabric.

Sound familiar? It’s not the first time it’s happened.

The first thing I think of, of course, are the sit-ins of the 1960s. It was students from Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) who went to lunch counters at retail outlets and just sat there as a form of revolutionary protest. It wasn't on campus, but the action was the same. The result? People spat on them, the police attacked them, they were arrested, thrown in the backs of wagons. People said that communists were influencing them or that they were agents of Russia. None of it was true. They were young people who knew what they were doing was right.

In 1968, in opposition to the Vietnam War, students occupied the building for more than a month, and in a later protest for five days. Part of the protest was also against the school’s link to a segregated gymnasium in nearby Harlem, but it was mainly about Columbia’s link to a weapons research think tank that itself was connected to the U.S. Department of Defense, which had for several years waged a campaign in southeast Asia targeting communists. In the first round round of the protests, the cops tear gassed them out and in the second round, they bum rushed the building.

In 1985, students who were irate about Columbia’s investment in corporations that invested in South Africa chained themselves to the doors of Hamilton in a movement to spur the university’s divestment in those companies, who they said essentially supported the apartheid regime by doing business with it.

Both of these issues were repeated at campuses across the nation even in the face of bloodshed like at Kent State University in Ohio, where four students were killed by National Guard soldiers in an anti-Vietnam protest. In the case of apartheid, students were motivated by a global movement against racism, and with Nelson Mandela as a figurehead.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, students at my own school, Central Michigan University, joined campuses nationwide in demanding action to free Mandela and end apartheid.  I will admit though, that the major campus conflict for us GenXers was over affirmative action and racism rather than global conflicts. It was the left vs. the right and we spent the entire four years at each others’ throats.

But whether it was USC, Harvard, Georgetown, Ohio State, Berkeley or Stanford, they all have something in common: the university sided against the students, and like now, there was incendiary rhetoric, threats, violence and lawbreaking – none of which can really be condoned, but the students ultimately were proven right. 

America recognized that Vietnam was a losing game and that they were doing little more than causing the loss of life (a lesson she failed to learn until after a generation in Afghanistan). The universities, corporations and politicians (even though the Reagan administration considered Mandela a terrorist) had to let up and admit that apartheid was nothing more than a reflection of the systemic racism that slavery and colonialism that powerful western nations had perpetuated for centuries.

It still comes down to dollars and cents though. Students don’t want their tuition dollars going toward things they feel are immoral. Multiple schools ranging from Northwestern to the University of Texas are seeing a major pushback against the war in Gaza, something that has faced opposition from the start but since the beginning of year has seen a major uptick in campus protest. The Israeli campaign in Gaza, although the nation says it is intended to root out Hamas terrorists, has resulted in the deaths of 34,000 Palestinians according to the United Nations. The students don’t feel that’s okay for their schools to be a part of funding any of this.

Truth is, Ivy League schools like Columbia can afford to at least halt their investments in the companies in question while they review their impact. Columbia’s endowment value was more than $13 billion in 2023, the school reports. The University of Texas system’s endowment was worth more than $24 billion. Topping them all was Harvard at $50.7 billion. The reality  is some of these schools are sitting on so much cash they have some real cojones charging students as much as they do for tuition.

So we have a group of multibillion dollar corporations that are among the most influential and powerful in the world, which educates the nation's intelligentsia and moves society forward with its research and discovery. After all the controversy, chaos, punditry, misinformation and media bias bullshit, they are once again faced with a moral question: Is it right for them to continue their links to Israel?

Right now it looks like the students are causing chaos and are blurring the lines between protest and criminal activity, but that’s not new. If they are smart, the schools, particularly the ones being most focused on would be wise to at least listen to and consider the positions of the people who have consistently landed on the right side of history.

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Note: This blog post has been updated.