“At Columbia, Revisiting the Revolutionary Students of 1968”

‘“Things” is an understatement for what began at Columbia around noon on April 23, 1968, when students, united by opposition to plans to build a university gym in a nearby public park and by Columbia’s involvement in weapons research, converged on that spot. A week later, nearly a thousand activists had occupied five buildings (including the president’s office), taken the dean hostage and shut down the campus, before being removed by the police in a violent melee that ended with one of the largest mass arrests in New York City history.’