Verita$ by Shin Eun-jung

Author:Shin Eun-jung
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2015-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

The Anti-war Movement, a Driving Force for Change

The Vietnam War shook American society to its very roots. As the war raged thousands of miles away, a cultural and social civil war broke out within America itself. Many students fought against racism, bureaucracy, war, nuclear armament, and gender discrimination and oppression. 1968, the year of the global revolution, was a particularly important year not only in U.S. student movement history, but also modern history in general. A wide range of critical events occurred in 1968. On January 30, lunar New Year’s Day, joint Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a devastating large-scale military offensive against South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies in what has become known as the Tet Offensive. Through waves of surprise attacks, the Viet Cong and North Vietnam occupied a host of major South Vietnamese cities and even the U.S. embassy itself. When news of this joint offensive was broadcast across America, it was clear that claims of imminent victory by President Johnson and his administration were not real. Public opinion rapidly turned against the war. Johnson announced his decision not to seek reelection on March 31. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, angry crowds rioted in more than a hundred cities across the country.

Following the fervor of these critical historical events, student demonstrations gained serious momentum. On April 23, 1968, Columbia University students occupied university buildings throughout the campus after they discovered links between the university and the ongoing Vietnam War, as well as the university’s planned expansion into surrounding neighborhoods. Due to the university’s purchase of neighborhood real estate, the area’s rents were skyrocketing and working families were being driven out. The April 23 Columbia sit-in lasted almost a week before it came to an end when the NYPD violently quashed it and arrested hundreds of students. On June 5, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, younger brother of the late president John F. Kennedy and anti-war candidate favored by student activists, was assassinated. The two assassinations—of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy—sent tremendous shock waves through the population. Students’ fights intensified and demonstrators began to attack research institutes with close ties to intelligence agencies in order to halt university research for the Department of Defense and the CIA.

In the midst of these crucial political and social developments, Harvard University made the anachronistic gesture of conferring an honorary degree on the Shah of Iran. Harvard’s President Pusey praised the Shah as “a twentieth century ruler who has found in power a constructive instrument to advance social and economic revolution in an ancient land.”17 Eleven years later, this same Shah would be ousted from his post and seek exile in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution.

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