A Time to Stir: Columbia '68

For seven days in April 1968, students occupied five buildings on the campus of Columbia University to protest a planned gymnasium in a nearby Harlem park, links between the university and the Vietnam War, and what they saw as the university’s unresponsive attitude toward their concerns. Exhilarating to some and deeply troubling to others, the student protests paralyzed the university, grabbed the world’s attention, and inspired other uprisings. Fifty years after the events, A Time to Stir captures the reflections of those who participated in and witnessed the Columbia rebellion. With more than sixty essays from members of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the Students’ Afro-American Society, faculty, undergraduates who opposed the protests, “outside agitators,” and members of the New York Police Department, A Time to Stir sheds light on the politics, passions, and ideals of the 1960s. Moving beyond accounts from the student movement’s white leadership, this book presents the perspectives of black students, who were grappling with their uneasy integration into a supposedly liberal campus, as well as the views of women, who began to question their second-class status within the protest movement and society at large. A Time to Stir also speaks to the complicated legacy of the uprising. For many, the events at Columbia inspired a lifelong dedication to social causes, while for others they signaled the beginning of the chaos that would soon engulf the left. Taken together, these reflections present a nuanced and moving portrait that reflects the sense of possibility and excess that characterized the 1960s.

Table of Contents:
Foreword, by Paul Berman Introduction Chronology of Events 1. Children of the New Age, by Nancy Biberman 2. Inside Alienation, Outside Agitator, by J. Plunky Branch 3. Race and the Specter of Strategic Blindness, by Raymond M. Brown 4. Liberation News Service and the Columbia Student Revolt, by George Cavalletto 5. A Working Class Veteran’s Perspective, by Mark Donnelly 6. Constructions of Power, by Thomas Ehrenberg 7. You Gave Us Hope, by Carolyn Rusti Eisenberg 8. A People’s Prehistory of Columbia, 1968, by Bob Feldman 9. “Possibilistes” vs. “Maximalistes”: How It Went Down in Fayerweather, by Larry Garner 10. Attempting to “Hold the Center” at Columbia, 1968, by Michael Garrett 11. The Man Who Shook My Hand, by Stuart Gedal 12. In the Spirit of Reconciliation, by Bennett Gershman 13. How I Become a National News Source: Columbia’s Office of Public Information, by Ira Goldberg 14. The Jolt of Radicalization, by Ken Greenberg 15. Daddy’s Girl, by Lois-Elaine Griffith 16. The Columbia Stir-Fry, by Peter Haidu 17. The Great Morningside Rising, by Robert W. Hanning 18. From Columbia 1968 to Fort Leavenworth, by Susan Eva Heuman 19. The Essence of Spirit Is Freedom, by Neal H. Hurwitz 20. The Smartest Kids I’d Ever Met: Memories of a Columbia Rebel, by Tom Hurwitz 21. Who Be the Dominator?, by Michael Johnson 22. The Moral Obligation to Act, by Susan Kahn 23. Columbia in the Community, by Thomas M .H. Kappner 24. Mutiny in the Air, by Ted Kaptchuk 25. Liberated Fayerweather: Agony and Ecstasy While Awaiting the NYPD, by Frank Kehl 26. The Special Case of the Fayerweather Occupation, by William Keylor 27. A Time for Revolt, by Michael Klare 28. Getting Back to “Life as Normal”, by Jay Kriegel 29. The Power of Power Structure Research, by Michael Locker 30. Days of Whine and Ruses, by Phillip Lopate 31. A Time to Stir . . . Up Trouble, by Frederick K. Lowell 32. The Primary Shades of Opposition to the Columbia Occupation, by Vaud E. Massarsky 33. No More Antiwar! The Rise of the Therapeutic Left, by Michael Neumann 34. Already Dead: Inside Low Library Commune, by Hilton Obenzinger 35. A Night to Remember, by Fred Pack 36. Silence Is Compliance, by Dan Pellegrom 37. On the Air: A View from WKCR, by Jon Perelstein 38. Columbia and the Draft, by David F. Phillips 39. Impressions of a Rookie Cop, by John Poka 40. The Sound of Breaking Glass, by Henry Reichman 41. Hats and Bats, by Mike Reynolds 42. Stopping the Machine, by Eve Rosahn 43. Life on the Ledge, by Michael Rosenthal 44. How I Learned I Was a Menshevik, by Joshua Rubenstein 45. What It Takes to Build a Movement, by Mark Rudd 46. Self-Determination and Self-Respect: Hamilton Hall, Fifty Years Later, by William W. Sales Jr. 47. Long Ago and Not at All Far Away, by Bill Sharfman 48. Columbia 1968: My Course Correction, by Marvin Sin 49. Uniters, by Gene Slater 50. A Sense of Rightness, by Susan Slyomovics 51. Avery Hall to Urban Deadline, by Tyler Smith 52. Forming Community, Forging Commitment: A Hamilton Hall Story, by Karla Spurlock-Evans 53. From College Walk to the Stonewall Inn, by Peter Stamberg 54. Five Red Flags, by Eleanor Stein 55. Never Again?, by Michael Steinlauf 56. Covering—and Covering Up—Spring ’68, by Michael Stern 57. Hundreds of Pairs of Wings, by Johnny Sundstrom 58. Political Education and the Birth of Students for a Restructured University, by John Thoms 59. It’s Better to Build Up: Post-’68 Governance at Columbia, by Harold S. Wechsler 60. A Foot Soldier’s Story of the Sit-Ins, by Meredith Sue Willis 61. From Community Service to Political Action: The Evolution of the Citizenship Council, by Joel D. Ziff Afterword by Juan Gonzalez Index