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1. The protests of 2024 have an “uncanny” resemblance to the student protests of 1968.

From coast to coast, dozens of universities are seeing pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on campuses across the United States:

• Boston police dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson College, clashed with protesters and detained more than 100 people.
• Just in the last two weeks, at least 800 people have been arrested on university campuses, with some students face suspension. Some universities are debating the question of whether or not to proceed with upcoming graduation ceremonies.
• The University of Southern California recently issued a statement canceling its main graduation ceremony due to “safety measures.”

The last time the United States saw such fervor over protests on college campuses was about five decades ago.

Frank Guridy is a history professor at Columbia University, where approximately a hundred students have been arrested.

Guridy teaches a class on the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War that took place on the Columbia campus. She teaches in one of the buildings the students occupied in 1968: Fayerweather Hall.

“Like 1968, the Columbia students of 2024 are absolutely galvanized by what’s happening in Gaza, in the Middle East,” Guridy said in an interview with NPR.

“In that sense, there is a striking resemblance to what happened in the late 1960s in this country, when American students and others in this country were inspired to speak out and mobilize against what they saw as an unjust war in Vietnam.” .

2. Parallelisms and differences.

In Guridy’s class, students read historical texts that place the 1968 protests in a broader historical context. Students visit archives in Columbia and other parts of the city. At the end of the semester, they complete a research paper on what they learned about the 1968 student protests.

“The students on this campus, a generation of students who have no direct connection to ’68. However, what they see in it is a source of inspiration,” Guridy said.

A key similarity between the 1968 and 2024 protests are calls for divestment. In the 1960s, students on college campuses tried to get their administrations to get rid of the defense industry or anything related to the Vietnam War.

Guridy adds that the divestment strategy has a long history dating back even to the 1930s, when people called for boycotting Nazi Germany.

Today’s students also focus on the financial decisions made by their administrators.

Two of the main differences: The United States does not have troops on the ground in Gaza and American college students do not face recruitment.

“Recruitment was a real reality, even for privileged college students in the late 1960s. So the sense of urgency was slightly different for college students and the anti-war movement at the time,” Guridy says.

3. Lessons learned from the 1968 protests.

Several student activists who spoke to NPR cited student organizing in 1968 as inspiration for your own movements.

Matthew Vickers, a junior at Occidental College in Los Angeles, is one of many students who set up camps to protest Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Most of the Palestinian solidarity movement has been directly inspired tactically and morally by the movements of the 1960s. I think the parallels could not be more obvious,” Vickers said.

Alifa Chowdhury is a third-year student at the University of Michigan and one of the organizers of the protest on her campus. Their camp on Diag is exactly where students in the 1960s marched against the Vietnam War.

“So we build on things that have been done before, this is not a new phenomenon. We build on that history of protests today,” Chowdhury said.

This episode was produced by Noah Cadwell and Brianna Scott. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.