College is for Chaos: A Survey of On-Campus Activism

When I was younger my mom used to tell me a story of how she knew Spelman was the right place for her. It was the mid-80s, and she had begun her matriculation right at the tail end of the movement for divestment from South African apartheid. She recalls walking through campus in awe of students camped outside in tents. They had reconstructed the shantytowns that Black South Africans were forced to live in, visual representations of the racial and economic inequalities existing within apartheid. Born and raised in Chicago, privy to and a victim of several other matters of civil rights and social liberty, a young Romeldia was peripherally aware of the issue but shocked by the image of girls not much older than her risking their scholarships, places at school, and safety for the sake of a social justice matter seemingly thousands of miles away from their small liberal arts women’s campus.

Marian Wright Edelman, Former Chairman of the Spelman College Board of Trustees

Spelman wasn’t the only college or university participating in the movement for divestment. In fact, across the United States, hundreds of campuses were home to demonstrations just like this. In the 1980s, students at Ivy League, major midwestern, and the University of California schools to name a few, were embarrassed by their institutions' involvement with South Africa and felt that if the US, namely higher education were to pull financial support from the country, the pressure would force them to reform their systemic treatment of Black, or “coloured” South Africans. Ultimately, 155 universities divested from the country (KORA), with the US in 1986 passing legislation that would prohibit new American investment in South African business as well as the importation of lucrative products like steel and coal. The policy even went as far as to halt flights landing in the US from South Africa (Roberts, 1986).

These demonstrations only built on the momentum led by South African and other African activist groups, but the pressure from international world leaders like the US was instrumental in forcing the South African government to begin dismantling the apartheid state, pressure that was amplified deeply by young people on college campuses like Spelman (Narea, 2024).

In the wake of recent on-campus demonstrations arguing for divestment from Israel, voices criticize the actions of students, accusing them of throwing “adult temper tantrums” and suggesting that they should leave their institutions if they disagree with the administration’s choices. They argue that protesters should face consequences for their disruptive activities (Wall Street Journal, 2024). To some, institutions of higher education are apolitical havens, strictly to exist for studies and social engagement (Barnes, 2021). To others, the opposite is true. What could be a better place to learn about other points of view and exercise one’s rights and beliefs than within the four walls of a university, protected from the outside world, and intended to aid in personal development? While some disagree with the school being a place for political action and advocacy, in recent years it has become paramount to the experience. But when and how did this shift happen, and what does it mean for the future?

The Baby Boomer generation, those born between the mid-1940s and 1960s, came of age in a post-World War II society, both affluent and triumphant in the aftermath of the Allied victory against Germany. Similar to Gen Z youth born post-9/11, this generation was raised to have unwavering faith and patriotism, yet this faltered as they began to see the late-stage effects of postwar policy, coupled with the undeniable horrors of the Jim Crow era. Entering college, they were exposed to intellectual discussion of such policy, racism, war, and the United States in general creating space for skepticism to become criticism. They began to question Cold War tactics, standardized treatment of minorities, and reject American standards of living that they felt to be conformist, fearing what their post-college lives would become.

1962 saw the forming of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Michigan, where delegates from several elite universities drafted a manifesto and began campus protests that focused on several issues including African American civil rights, and the country’s imperialist foreign policy and presence.

SDS Members at the 1967 March on the Pentagon

As the 1960s progressed, college campuses were seeing excessive enrollment as the overwhelming majority of a generation of unprecedented size was reaching college age. When President Lyndon B Johnson escalated the Vietnam War in 1965, sending in more troops in more places, many of these students had had enough, they deeply feared being drafted while achieving their education, especially to fight in a war that they didn’t agree with. Furthermore, many colleges were involved with –either directly or through organizations – military recruiting, research, or funding, which students felt was a misuse of their tuition funds (Heineman).

College campuses became centers of anti-war protest for several reasons. First, the United States had recently welcomed the largest birth cohort in its history; 76 million people were born during the baby boom from 1946 to 1964. Subsequently, college enrollment swelled, from three million in 1960 to 10 million by 1970. The number of faculty also increased, from 196,000 in 1948 to more than 500,000 20 years later. Most of the student and faculty anti-war activists were clustered in the liberal arts.

1970s Anti-Vietnam War Protest

These demonstrations for peace and against war were the inadvertent cause of similar movements for free speech, as campuses were challenging students’ rights to engage politically in action that might be considered against the institution or state. Despite how important this work was, and how successful it would be later proven, many administrators had never seen such dissonance and feared its outcome, ultimately calling for it to stop for lack of knowing what else to do. In late 1964, the University of California-Berkeley administration banned student social and political advocacy on campus, which many saw as a response to the students’ involvement in civil rights movement protests. Students from all points on the political spectrum saw this as an infringement on constitutional rights and sought to negotiate an end to the ban, when this didn’t work the school saw semester-long protests (“non-violent police car blockade, a march on the Regents meeting, a mass sit-in and mass arrest at the administration building, and a student/TA strike”) in the struggle for free speech on Berkeley's campus (Free Speech Movement Archives).

In addition to winning its immediate demand for student free speech rights, the FSM also became a catalyst for other university reforms and was an inspiration for the nationwide wave of student and youth-led social and political protest movements that followed.

Another, more harrowing example of poor reaction from university administration can be found in the infamous Kent State Massacre of 1970. In April of 1970, President Nixon announced that the US would invade Cambodia, escalating its presence in the East for the sake of widening the war effort. In early May, Kent students led a peaceful protest against this. Later the peaceful demonstrations escalated to violence throughout downtown Kent, with physical confrontations and vandalism, causing the Kent mayor to request for Ohio’s National Guard to occupy campus. On the fourth of May, just three days after the initial demonstration, students called for another protest on the now-occupied school campus. By late morning there were allegedly around 3,000 people. When the National Guard ordered protestors to disperse, they were mostly ignored. “After tear gas was fired and following a series of standoffs, troops fired live rounds into the crowd. Four students were killed and nine wounded. Two of the dead had not been involved in the demonstration (Kelly, 2024).”

Ohio National Guard approaching Kent State protestors

It's profoundly unfortunate that students exercising their right to peaceful protest at Kent State were met with such a tragic response. However, their unwavering passion for justice and their willingness to mobilize for others played a significant role in making change. Students were part of a larger group of American communities protesting the war. Among them were labor unions, churches, and eventually government officials. As would be seen later with the South African divestment movement, this pressure would force the US to gradually withdraw forces from Vietnam. Notable also was the suspension of Selective Service, also known as the draft, in the early 1970s, a direct response to the unjust conditions under which people were being forced to enlist (Zunes and Laird, 2010). The eventual end of the Vietnam War reflects how grassroots movements, even in the face of adversity and violence, shaped the course of history.

One of the very first movements led in part by students, and one of the most influential is the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s, in which student involvement played an extremely crucial role. Spelman College particularly, due to it being a historically Black campus part of the larger Atlanta University Center, located in a major Southern city, served as a hub for Civil Rights era activism. At Spelman, despite a culture of surveillance and the importance of ‘traditional’ values, students were deeply involved in many areas of the movement, participating in protests, sit-ins, and registering voters to name a few, all in the face of expulsion and arrest threats, let alone violent acts from the Klu Klux Klan (Zinn, 1960). Had students at Spelman and elsewhere been tempered by the fear that they were being too disruptive or unbecoming, we can’t be sure that the Civil Rights Movement would have seen the success it did. Groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Southern Christian Leadership Conference are credited for having a great presence at crucial events like the March on Washington, Freedom Rides, and Freedom Summer, working alongside leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., himself a proud graduate of Morehouse College. Students at HBCUs in particular struggle with the respectability politics that dictate their behavior, but without disruption and chaos, how do otherwise unheard young people enact change? The activism of students during the Civil Rights Movement brought attention to the injustices Black people faced across the US and inspired a generation to join their struggle, and future others to stand tall in their own. Their action in large part led to the passing of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (National Archives).

AUC students protest during the Civil Rights Movement

Despite precedent having been set generation after generation, recent protests against the genocide of the Palestinian people have triggered familiar fear in administrators and politicians. A mirror of what happened nearly 40 years ago now in response to apartheid in South Africa, young people in America have made it their responsibility to pressure institutions and individuals to pull support from Israel as it wreaks havoc on an already weakened Palestine. Since October 7, Israel and its efforts have been greatly supported by Western powers the United States and the United Kingdom, two nations that would otherwise have the unique ability to persuade Israel to cease fire on Gaza and other Palestinian cities (The White House, 2023). College students paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, one detail that differs from past movements, are calling for divestment from the entity and companies that support it, more specifically that academic institutions cut ties with “major weapons manufacturers that universities have invested in, [ensure] that their universities no longer accept research funding from the Israeli military, [and end] academic partnerships with Israeli institutions (Narea, 2024).”

Encampment for Divestment from Israel at USC

Response to these on-campus demonstrations has been multifaceted. While Palestinians have voiced gratitude and optimism to American students for their solidarity (Al-Mughrabi & Gebeily, 2024), there is a unique discussion among administrators about the nature and impact of said protests. The sensitivity of the topic, specifically Israel as a Jewish ethnostate and the long history between Jewish people, Israel, and American institutions, leads Pro-Palestine protests to be painted as antisemitic and, at times, violent, especially when employing chants and signage with language that some perceive as such. As with any left-leaning movement, that for solidarity with Gaza and Palestine has been met with condemnation (Rosman, 2024). However, some of the responses have triggered discussion reminiscent of Berkeley’s 1964 Movement for Free Speech.

Protests across the US have been met with resistance from various administrations and escalated to police intervention. At the University of Southern California, police in riot gear raided and dismantled the student encampment in the middle of the night (Yang, 2024). Students at this school and many others have been peacefully speaking up about the issue for months now, in letters, walk-outs, social media posts, and now sit-ins or encampments. It is these demonstrations that are being called disruptive, chaotic, and prejudiced, despite in most cases being textbook protests–protected by the First Amendment. Also protected by the First Amendment is speech, which has–not shockingly–also been censored at USC, with the cancellation of valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s commencement speech, justified by the provost as an action taken to minimize disruption and keep the campus safe (Cineas, 2024).

At Emory University, an April 25 protest erupted into chaos not even an hour after forming, when University President Greg Fenves called the police–an extremely incendiary choice in a city like Atlanta–on his students and faculty. Emory police, the Atlanta Police Department, and Georgia State Patrol responded and within minutes detained several participants, spreading tear gas and even tasing a medic. Professors and students alike were assaulted and arrested, for simple acts such as standing too close to an officer (Riley, 2024).

Events such as this exhibit distressing similarities to what happened at Berkeley in 1964 or at Kent State in 1970, where students were put in harm's way by those meant to keep them safe. President Biden, in a statement meant to condemn student protests, proclaimed that “There is a right to protest, but there is not a right to cause chaos (Cancryn, 2024).” Ignoring that it is often not the students that are causing chaos, but the efforts to remove them. This kind of dissonance is difficult to overcome. Young people are told that they must be politically engaged and that it is their responsibility to use their voices and their votes, yet when they do so they are forcefully silenced and publicly shamed. This generation is called overly sensitive and disruptive, when in fact this kind of action has been characteristic of institutions of higher education for longer than they have been alive.

Rokiyah Darbo, Spelman College C'2026

Spelman student Rokiyah Darbo is an active member of the campuses’ Student for Justice in Palestine chapter and Student Intercommunal Coordinating Committee. She credits past movements for inspiring her to use her voice, specifically for divestment from South Africa. Darbo is motivated by her grandmother, who was at 13 years old, forced into marriage, but spoke out and fought against her oppression, eventually being the reason that their village no longer engages in the practice. At Spelman, she is inspired by the movement for divestment from South African apartheid, which in 1986 drove the campus to divest and is a perfect example of why student voices matter and should be wielded for causes such as this. It is hard to understand the argument that campuses should minimize political discourse rather than create space for it because this conversation and engagement makes a difference in the world, and in many cases aids in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Darbo, and others, are adamant that students have a responsibility to speak up about the genocide in Palestine, as young people there no longer have college campuses to live and learn on. “Their books are burnt, they’re not allowed to learn or be as outspoken as we are without it being a direct threat to their life.” She feels that students need each other, across campuses and countries but also on their own. In November of 2023, the Atlanta City Council resolved to support calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. Rokiyah Darbo and her organizations were at the meeting where this decision was made, she cites this when emphasizing how important it is that she found this community at college and that her community and others continue to take action.

Honestly, I think that college has made me more outspoken, I love this environment I feel like a lot of the girls that I’m around, they're all vocal about it as well so I get that confidence boost. I also know that I’m not alone in any action that I do so I’m not scared.

Tracing the arc of student activism throughout history, it is abundantly clear the youth voices have power, and should not and cannot be underestimated. For the last 60 years, from anti-war protests, and the civil rights movement, to the fight against apartheid and the current struggle for Palestinian safety and rights, students have always been there to drive social change. Stories of courage and unwavering commitment, such as those of Rokiyah Darbo and those at Kent State University, reverberate through the halls of universities not just in the United States but around the world. This reminds us that college is not just a place for academic pursuit, but for forging values and community, and becoming a civically engaged member of society. In the present day, as we struggle with the challenges of an ever-changing and ever-divided global landscape, it is important to look back and learn from the past. Today’s students are only more amplified versions of yesterday’s. It is the responsibility of academic institutions to recognize and embrace their role as incubators of change agents, fostering rather than stifling environments that encourage diverse perspectives and criticism. It is within these institutions that progress is made, that each new generation of leaders is created.

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