Kent State in 1970, Columbia University in 2024
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 1: NYPD officers talk to the driver of a car who sped past a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside The City College Of New York (CUNY) one day after police cracked down on protest camps at both Columbia University and CCNY on May 1 in New York City. A heavy police presence surrounded both campuses and cleared the tent encampments set up by pro-Palestinian protesters. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,163 Israelis, Israel has responded with a war in Gaza that’s killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians. Despite a ruling from the International Court of Justice that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, Israel’s government insists on continuing the war.
Meanwhile, Americans have increasingly voiced opposition to U.S. support for Israel, to the point where the Biden Administration paused some weapons shipments to Israel over concerns Israel may use those arms to attack Rafah, a Gaza border town currently sheltering some 600,000 Palestinian children.
The center of opposition against the U.S. arming of Israel can be found on college campuses, from Columbia University in New York to Vanderbilt in Nashville. Sadly, America’s media and law enforcement have insisted on repeating past mistakes. In doing so, they’ve reminded us all that we’ve been here before: the police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests and the derision of the protesters in the media bear an eerie resemblance to the Kent State Massacre.
Kent State, a crucible moment in American history
“Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’, we’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drummin’, four dead in Ohio.”
– Neil Young, “Ohio.”
The Kent State Massacre took place on May 4, 1970. It involved the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus. The shootings took place during a student-led rally opposing the Nixon Administration’s decision to expand the Vietnam War into Cambodia, a neutral country. The students also opposed Nixon’s executive order ending undergraduate student draft deferments, meaning protesters knew they were about to be drafted into a war they opposed.
During the massacre, 28 National Guard soldiers fired 61 rounds in 13 seconds. Two of those killed were part of the protest group; the other two were observing from the sidelines, which suggests the troops engaged in indiscriminate firing.
Though the massacre produced immediate outrage on college campuses across the country, the broader American public held a different view, thanks in part to the media’s portrayal of the protesters and the government’s handling of them. For example, the media pushed a story about an alleged individual with a sniper rifle who hid among the protesters and thus conveniently gave the National Guard pretext to open fire (this story was later wholly debunked).
Following the massacre, law enforcement offices representing federal, state, and local governments shut down protests with beatings, arrests, martial law, and, in the case of the Jackson State University protest just days later, more killing of protesters. All the while, the media crafted a protester demonization narrative by megaphoning stories of protester violence while muzzling stories of state-sanctioned violence on protesters.
The result? A May 28, 1970 Gallup poll found 58% of Americans thought the Kent State students were responsible for their own massacre, compared to only 11% who blamed the National Guard — who did the shooting.
Columbia University, the birthplace of dissent in 2024
In March 2024, 26% of pro-Palestinian protests were student-led, 74% non-student. Those figures flipped in April with a surge in student-led protests thanks to Columbia University students setting up an encampment on campus and setting off a chain reaction of anti-Zionist protests calling for universities to divest from Israel.
In response, dozens of universities — including Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee — have suspended students, called in law enforcement to break up protests, and facilitated the arrest of over 2,900 protesters.. These haven’t been cordial arrests, either. Though 97% of protests have been peaceful, law enforcement’s removal of protesters from campuses have been anything but. Dozens of protesters have been injured and hospitalized, and a handful of officers have also been hurt.
Nowhere has the crackdown been as brutal as at Columbia University. Police actions were described as disproportionate and violent by the United Nations Office for Human Rights. Law enforcement used pepper spray, tasers, rubber bullets, and nightsticks to beat students and professors. One officer fired his handgun when clearing a student barricade in Hamilton Hall.
Such violent responses would incite more opposition from the American public were it not for the media’s efforts to vilify pro-Palestinian protesters and thus manufacture consent for the police crackdown. Examples include a now-debunked media story of a Jewish student being “stabbed in the eye.” Pundits have also conflated anti-Zionist chants with “calls for genocide,” protesters’ bicycle locks on campus buildings with “the locks and chains of professional agitators,” and a college-level history book on terrorism with “proof that protesters are terrorists.”
From Kent State to Columbia to Vanderbilt, the kids were right
Americans now understand the National Guard was at fault for the Kent State Massacre. Even Nixon’s President’s Commission on Campus Unrest sheepishly concluded, “Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified.”
But that’s our understanding of Kent State 54 years later. In a peculiar aspect of human psychology, moral crises are not always obvious to many of us in the moment they occur. And yet, every time we face such a moment, some part of the population always seems to see the crisis for what it is.
From abolitionists to suffragettes to Civil Rights organizers and the students who opposed the Vietnam War and U.S. support for Apartheid South Africa, these groups were condemned and ignored by the government, media, and much of the population. Yet, as years passed, Americans overwhelmingly came to see that these groups had it right all along.
Now history is repeating itself. Today’s government and media institutions have coalesced in deriding pro-Palestinian student organizers, just as government and media did in 1970.
Hopefully it doesn’t take 54 years for us to realize the kids were right on this issue, too.
The post Kent State in 1970, Columbia University in 2024 appeared first on Tennessee Lookout.
