Protests

Protester David Shapiro sits in President Grayson Kirk's chair during the 1968 protests

So many protests to choose from...

Pre-1960s

The Bonus Army marches down Broadway

• 1811: the "Riotous Commencement"

• October 1935: Protest against Casa Italiana over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia

• 1930s: Bonus Army marches

• Late 1930s: Anti-war rallies preceding World War II

1960s

Mathematics Hall is "liberated" during the 1968 protests

• April 20, 1967: anti-Vietnam recruitment protest by SDS in John Jay Hall turns into a violent melee with rightwing students

• April 23 - 30, 1968: The protest to end all protests. Not really. The 1968 protests surrounded the construction of the Morningside Park Gymnasium, Government funded science research, and CIA recruitment on campus. It ends with the bloody removal of students from five occupied buildings and a deeply damaged, divided campus.

• March 24, 1969: Massive protest for unclear reasons

• April 15 - 23, 1969: Protests against delays in setting up the African American Studies program culminates in SDS occupations of Hamilton and Mathematics Halls

1970-2000

Hamilton Hall during the 1996 Ethnic Studies hunger strike

• 1970: Black students take over ROTC lounge. Administration agrees to make it the Malcolm X Lounge which still stands.

• 1972: Latino students protest for Latino Studies.

• 1960s-1985: Students protest for divestment from South Africa, culminating in a 1985 takeover of Hamilton. Administration agrees to divest, although they didn't do so fully until 1991.

• 1987: A mob of white students beat a black student, Mike Jones, and a couple of his friends outside Ferris Booth Hall. Black students mobilize on campus, take over Hamilton. Professor Marcellus Blount was arrested during these protests. The demands led to the creation of the Intercultural Resource Center.[1]

• 1992: Students again take over Hamilton Hall, protesting Columbia's plans to turn the Audubon Ballroom, the site of Malcolm X's assassination, into a biomedical research facility

• 1996: Students go on a hunger strike, and occupy Hamilton for the establishment of an Ethnic Studies Department. Three years later they get a center with no hiring power

Since 2000

Pro-Iraq War demonstration, 2003

• Spring 2003: Iraq War Protest and Counter-Protest

• Spring 2004: Columbia University Concerned Students of Color Protest

• Spring 2006: SHOCC-led protest

• October 2006: Minuteman stage-rush

• Fall 2007:
  • September 2007: Protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • November 2007:
    • Multi-purpose hunger strike

Faculty protests

• 1891: Law school faculty protest over the adoption of the case method over the Dwight method; faculty leave to found New York Law School
• First World War: Protest over silencing of dissenting faculty; faculty leave to found the New School
• 2007 Statement of Concern by the Faculty Action Committee

Strikes

• Spring 2004 and Spring 2005: GSEU Strikes for the right to grad student unionization

Ongoing community protests

• Since 1940s: Lots of tenant protests over Columbia evictions. Today, these are primarily related to the Manhattanville expansion controversy.