Mondoweiss called Bob Feldman to discuss the parallels between this year’s demonstrations at Columbia University and those in 1968 — when he was arrested and suspended from the school. Feldman had exposed Columbia’s institutional involvement in the Defense industry at the height of the Vietnam War, and he continues that work on Substack today. Feldman is a singer-songwriter.
Philip Weiss: Why were you protesting?
Bob Feldman: We were protesting against the complicity of Columbia University in the war by sponsoring weapons research for the Pentagon, which was used in Vietnam, which was considered a genocidal war. As Gaza is considered a genocidal war.
You must remember that our demonstrations took place three weeks after Martin Luther King was assassinated. While our demands were about ending complicity in the Vietnam war, and stopping Columbia from building a gymnasium in Harlem, the King assassination on April 4 was the subjective mood for the students. That led to rebellions all over the United States. And many students were politicized.
When were students arrested?
The first police invasion was April 30, 1968, when 710 Columbia and Barnard students were arrested. I was suspended from Columbia after the second police invasion of the campus on May 22, 1968. There were 130 of us arrested in Hamilton Hall, and 70 suspended.
The following September we tried to get the suspensions lifted. The administration allowed some suspended students to come back if they acknowledged the authority of the university. But they didn’t allow the steering committee of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) to be reincluded. And I was on the steering committee since March 1967 based on my discovering the Institute for Defense Analyses connections with Columbia University, which was not public even though Columbia was an institutional member of the IDA– the Pentagon’s research thinktank.
Tell me about the Institute for Defense Analyses.
The core of Columbia’s complicity was its institutional membership and the participation by some faculty in the Institute for Defense Analyses.
Columbia President Grayson Kirk was a director of the think-tank. And the chair of the board of the IDA was a Columbia trustee, William Burden. Burden was also on the Lockheed Martin board and was former ambassador to Belgium when Lumumba was killed.
It was clear that Columbia University was sponsoring weapons research that was used in the Vietnam War. Even the Columbia Spectator picked up my research. But the mass media always minimized the importance of the Institute for Defense Analyses, saying Columbia was just giving some expert advice. But they were helping the Pentagon to build an electronic battlefield. The drones used by the Israel Defense Forces and used in Iraq by the U.S. military — all that stuff was started by the IDA, and Columbia had a secret lab working on such weaponry.
After the ’68 revolt, 12 universities resigned from the IDA, and so did university presidents, under pressure from their faculty. But the relationship between Columbia faculty and the IDA continues to this day.
Eric Olson, a former admiral who is a professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, is on the board of the IDA. And the chair of the IDA board is on the corporate board of Elbit Systems’ American subsidiary. Elbit, of course, provides Israel with drones and other weaponry for Israel’s occupation — as is documented on the AFSC website. You can see there how Elbit systems of America is directly linked to the war that began October 7. Another member of the IDA board is a former CEO of Elbit systems, Raanan I. Horowitz.
And today, you also have an institutional connection between Columbia and Tel Aviv University, which is helping Israel to carry out the genocide.
What are the parallels between the student uprisings in 1968 and 2024?
The chief parallel is the moral motivation. Under the Nuremberg principles, if your government is involved in supporting or carrying out war crimes, whether in Vietnam or in the Middle East, you, as a citizen of that country, have an obligation to resist.
International courts have said that what’s going on with the Israeli attack on Gaza may be a genocide, and people have an obligation now, just as we felt an obligation in 1968, to resist institutional policies that violate the Nuremberg principles. If you were in Germany in 1930 and a German university was developing weapons, what would be your responsibility? Our international responsibility would be to stop that university from doing that war research.
Today, people have seen in front of their eyes 35,000 people killed, another 7000 under the rubble– they see a war that clearly violated the Nuremberg Accords…it’s a horrifying thing, and you’ve got to do something.
The most effective way to stop the war machine is through institutional resistance in the institution in which you spend your day-to-day life. You have to ask yourself if this institution is involved in institutionally racist policies, or denying the rights of self-determination to Palestinians, or war crimes.
That’s the parallel. People are engaging in nonviolent institutional resistance, and Columbia is violating their First Amendment rights by trying to impose, without due process, suspensions for exercising their free speech rights. Now, you can’t even demonstrate outside at Columbia– because they have graduation ceremonies coming later this month, and the former president of Tel Aviv University is receiving an honorary degree. In an article in 2007, that man was quoted, saying that, at Tel Aviv University, “we do research for the ministry of defense to make sure that Israel has a military edge.” We know what that military does.
Columbia is institutionally affiliated with Tel Aviv University?
They began a degree partnership program with Tel Aviv University in 2019. Faculty members said we shouldn’t be doing this, but the arrogant former president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, who has been opposed to BDS for years, ignored what the faculty said. That’s outraging.
It’s been 56 years since the last rebellion at Columbia. You must have expected another many times. Why is this night different from all other nights?
Well, people like yourself have worked tirelessly to get the news out that the corporate media weren’t getting out, and the alternative media weren’t getting out either. That’s been building for all these years. The awareness has expanded much faster this time because of the social media.
And remember, you couldn’t see the daily killings in Iraq when the U.S. attacked Iraq. Yes, there were 300,000 demonstrators in New York, but the horror of seeing the Gaza genocide on television and the U.S. government supporting that is very powerful.
I need to point out that a major difference between ‘68 and now is there weren’t Vietnamese antiwar students in the leadership of the protests. Black students took leadership roles then. But in 2023, 2024, the key thing is that Palestinian and Arab American students, even though they are in danger from the right-wing Zionist fanatics — they went up and they took leadership roles.
That couldn’t happen in ’68.
You continue to document the defense and establishment connections of Columbia leadership.
Yes. Because instead of getting a statement from the Columbia administration of any conscience — calling for an immediate ceasefire — instead, you got an attack on the students.
There are many connections. There is the factor that Hillary Clinton is now director of the Institute for Global Politics at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) on campus. The guy she appointed to the State Department — Antony Blinken, now secretary of state — sat in a meeting with the Israeli war cabinet and said, I’m a Zionist.
The co-chair of Columbia University’s board of trustees is the journalist Claire Shipman, and she is married to Jay Carney, an executive now of Airbnb. The AFSC website documents its involvement in making money in the occupied West Bank. And Carney is the former director of communications for Joe Biden, when he was VP.
None of this is mentioned in the media.
Just like students don’t know the history of Columbia. In 2008 and 2016, Columbia commemorated the revolt of 1968, and the idea was — that could not happen again. We will never have police on campus again was the spirit of those events.
How does Columbia commemorate 1968?
Columbia has used 1968 to market itself, to say: we have learned our lesson, we are a changed institution. They have used the fact that Edward Said was allowed to teach at Columbia. That means a great deal to people. A lot of students came to Columbia because it was a liberal institution. It had made space for one of the greatest Palestinian intellectuals. So they come here, and all of a sudden, they’re not allowed to exercise their free speech rights in even a way that the students of ‘68 could. We could demonstrate outside on campus; these students were not allowed to.
You feel like crying but you feel anger at the hypocrisy of the thing. In 2008 under Bollinger — who was always against BDS, perhaps because of the donor influence — they had a commemoration. And in 2018, they had a commemoration, and the library had photos of the revolt. The message was, Columbia learned its lessons, Columbia will never do this again.
Another misrepresentation is that the issue was not just about a gymnasium. They always say, the main issue was the gymnasium in Morningside Park. They don’t like to talk about the Vietnam/Institute for Defense Analyses issue, because when you talk about the IDA issue, you’re talking about weapons research that ended up killing millions of people — that created the automated war machinery that resulted in drone warfare that has been used to kill civilians and do targeted assassinations of not only Palestinian political activists but in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And that connection continues to this day.
They don’t want to admit that great liberal Columbia — that’s part of their history.
Did you go to the commemoration?
I was in the audience. I was invited back — not by Columbia officially.
Another thing is, people don’t know that Columbia is violating the law when they block the entrances to the 116th Street walkway between Broadway and Amsterdam. Columbia made an agreement in 1955 with the Wagner administration that those gates were always to be open to neighborhood pedestrians. Columbia violated that agreement in 1968 when they closed the gates, and they are violating it now.
And the city of New York is allowing that, and the New York Times refuses to look at that agreement.
What are the possible political consequences of what the students are doing?
In terms of positive — by not giving in, the students may spark continued institutional resistance around the world to U.S. support for Israel and U.S. policy and maybe increase the pressure for not just a permanent ceasefire but for the right of return and other demands that Palestinians have made.
They have put their bodies on the line and inspired other people.
In terms of negatives, with the internet technology, the students may experience personal consequences. Some of the people with visas can be sent back to their countries. They may lose a lot of money.
What did you accomplish in ’68?
If the Columbia students and Barnard students had not disrupted Columbia University and done what they did, the government would have continued the draft, which was part of the motivation of the students. Now we have economic conscription. I also believe that co-ed dorms were a byproduct of the revolt. If we give them co-ed dorms, they are less likely to be political. So all of a sudden, after ’68, there were co-ed dorms. It’s ironic because many women are today in the leadership of the revolt.
You’re now in your 70s. How do you feel about what you did when you were 20?
I felt I had to do that, and it’s something I’m proud of. Most of the people who did that are proud of what they did. Yes, some people later sold out. But as you go through life, you realize it’s what Joan Baez said: it’s not how long you live, it’s what you do with your life.
I would tell these students — People will always remember what you did today. This is how they will remember Columbia. This is not something you forget. The young people who were involved were the people who were the most idealistic, the most socially committed, the most moral– and they went to this school, and this is what they got. They saw Columbia as a bastion of liberation, and they weren’t told the reception they’d get once they challenged the powers that be, who said we’re not going to divest, no matter what.
They see that Mort Zuckerman — whose support for Israel you’ve documented — gave 200 million to Columbia, and Columbia has a Zuckerman institute. Those are the donors. It’s a sad thing, that this is how things worked. But I am hopeful about what this will do for the divestment campaigns.
We will see. Maybe the faculty will stand up for the students, and the students won’t let themselves get beaten down, and many will be politicized, and share the outrage that people felt in 68 and that I feel now.
It was clear that the Columbia administration consciously chose, rather than protecting the students’ free speech rights, to call in the police. No one is going to stop us, we’re in control, even if we violate due process, because we want to hold our graduation here, when we will invite the former president of Tel Aviv University to get a degree. I think all this is alien to the way most of us were brought up, in our moral values. And you will hear from students that the people who govern Columbia University are not fit to control the place.
And I believe they have accomplished much more in 2024 than we did in 1968. Maybe not in policy but in terms of politicizing and rousing students around the world.
Wait, did I hear you say that they have done more than you were able to do?
Oh yeah. Obviously.
CNN Compares Campus Protesters To Nazis In Stunning Propaganda Segment
Caitlin Johnstone
May 02, 2024
“In one of the most appalling propaganda segments I have ever seen in my life, CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on Wednesday comparing anti-genocide university protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany — doing so in defense of a fascistic police crackdown against those very same protesters.
After playing a clip of Zionist activist Eli Tsives theatrically claiming campus protesters at UCLA were blocking him from his classroom, Bash solemnly said, “Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe, and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.”
According to journalist Jeremy Lindenfeld — who happens to be Jewish — Tsives wasn’t even being denied access to his classroom, but was only being denied access to the protesters’ encampment which he’d conveniently decided he wanted to walk through in order to get there. Dana Bash makes no mention of this, framing this instead as a terrifying attack on Jews which could soon see them being loaded onto trains headed for extermination camps.
Bash played a clip of New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done,” as though preventing the spread of radical political opinions is something a mayor is elected to do in the United States.”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/cnn-compares-campus-protesters-to
Bob Feldman was heroic in 1968 and is still on the right side of history in 2024. He quoted Joan Baez. Unfortunately she seems to be amongst the sell outs. There has not been a comment from her on this horrific far too long Gaza genocide on Twitter.
god, do we have to go through this again?
Republic of Vietnam, South Vietnam, was a war lord state that we supported after the fall of the French…and most probably created…read “The Spy Who Loved Us” written by a Major General in the People’s Army of Vietnam, Pham Xuan An, who was inspirational for a character in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s book. And most probably many others including Graham Greene. Look it up.
The North had an Army and an insurgency in South Vietnam, the South Vietnamese had an Army backed by the Yanqui dollar. The South was close to collapse when the North Vietnamese attempted to cut the country in half…therefore the movie by Mel Gibson parts of which were disowned by General Hal Moore, for whom a big Army base is named in Georgia.
I “came clean for Gene” in 68 but served in Vietnam. It was a conflicted time and I knew, lived and worked with Vietnamese. I had read “Streets Without Joy” and “Hell in a Small Place” and knew the ins and outs but was astonished in 70 that there were actually North Vietnamese soldiers 2 miles from me.
The USA didn’t know what was going on, and it was established as a reply to communism when in actuality it was an ongoing colonial civil war from the French. The question was, since we had firmly established ourselves as “saviors” how did we get out of the mess? Johnson and Nixon both understood and Nixon in his paranoid delusional state did just that with a lot of murder and mayhem thrown in.
I sat in a bunker in the Central Highlands at night controlling artillery, air strikes, some from returning aircraft from the north, and the like from American Forces and every strike or fire had to cleared with a bunker full of Vietnamese led by a Major or LT Col surveying maps to make sure the village or location did not contain innocents. For the most part the strikes were not indiscriminate.
The end of the Draft and all other activities were not really caused by students, of whom I was one in 68 but by the futility of it all reflected in the Media and the returning Veterans. County Joe Fish was a Navy Veteran, John Kerry was a Navy Veteran, Silver Star, who charged over the levee into the rice patties to shoot Viet Cong and Al Gore went on patrol in the US Army.
Viet Thanh Nguyen and various other guys from North Vietnam have gone over all this.
It was a sad occasion.
The MidEast is different. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan we have blundered into places of which the USA had no understanding. And we, USA, have bankrolled a fascist apartheid state in Palestine and cannot for the life of us understand why the inhabitants should object?
Our MIC has sought to maintain the I/P issue unresolved to keep chaos, its lifeblood.
We can anticipate once the ceasefire in Gaza is forced on Netanyahu, a resolution of the conflict will be on the table. Biden will need to be empowered to prevail on greater Israel’s sabotage.
Activists could encourage the resolution to be framed as one of self-determination via independence with two states or equality under one governance. Biden could then expect Israel to choose.
On one hand, the institutional power structure has increasingly solidified durring the intervening years, since I was once on the streets of San Francisco and participating in anti-Vietnam war protests. Back then, my fellow protesters had completely swallowed the Zionist propaganda rife in that day.
On the other hand, the grip of the entrenched media no longer holds sway, no longer has sole control over what we are allowed to see and know. It gives me hope to see these students taking on a cause that back then, those protesting against the atrocities in SE Asia, were unable to even imagine. “The times, they are a changing.” Indeed!