EDUCATION
NEWS, OPINION + ANALYSIS
Campuses are hotbeds of protest, but it’s nothing new. Nor is it as bad now as in the ’60s and ’70s
CAMPUS UNREST
Author Nye, recalling the mood of large anti-war rallies from the Vietnam War era said, “the mood of a large crowd is volatile, and with violent rhetoric whipping up the audience, I always felt an undercurrent of fear and anxiety.” Fifty years later, a pro-Palestinian rally on the steps of Harvard’s Widener Library on October 14, 2023, a week after Hamas’ attack on Israel.
Since the surprise October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, American universities have been embroiled in campus protests as well as questions about what limits—if any—on free speech are appropriate at private institutions, what constitutes harassment (which is protected against at universities by Title VI) and more. Historically, college students tend toward activism, but over the past three months, Harvard and the responses by its newly inaugurated president, Claudine Gay, were particular flashpoints, with highly publicized events including an October 8 letter by 34 student groups blaming Israel for the attack the prior day, frequent pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents on campus. After initially weathering a contentious Congressional hearing on antisemitism, President Gay resigned on January 2 following plagiarism charges. Reflecting on the differences between the protests of today and those of the Vietnam War era, Harvard professor emeritus Joseph S. Nye, Jr., puts the events on the campus into context in the current situation in an adapted excerpt from his new memoir, a life in the american century (Polity Books). Nye is an international relations expert and a former Kennedy School dean. He also worked in the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence community during the Carter and Clinton administrations.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY IS PASSING THROUGH rough political seas in the wake of the war in Gaza and the resignation of President Claudine Gay. Younger colleagues sometimes ask me if I have ever seen things so disrupted. My answer is “yes”—the Vietnam War years were worse! For my new memoir, A Life in the American Century, I revisited my diaries from this period. The entries reveal how volatile and hostile the atmosphere was at Harvard at the time.
In the first half of the 1960s, Harvard faculty meetings were lightly attended. They were held in the great faculty room in University Hall where tea was served, a grandfather’s clock chimed and portraits of early notables looked down on the assembled faculty. By 1967, the meetings had become so contentious that they had to be held in large thea
