My Coming of Age in a Time of War Protest - May 4, 1970

Original documents from Columbia University Strike of 1970 and the Kent State Massacre

I can’t imagine going to college without a war to protest.

54 years ago, May 4, 1970, I was walking through the Columbia University campus to my English class when they blasted an announcement that four students had just been killed at an anti-war protest at Kent State. I went to class in a daze and speechless. When my professor asked me whether something was wrong and I couldn’t answer.

I was 19 and fortunate to be a member of the Columbia Barnard Experimental College (EC) in it’s first year. EC was an intentional community of students, founded by Jan Oxenberg ad Bob Friedman. We lived in individual rooms on the fourth floor of the Hotel Paris on 97^th & West End, with a large meeting space on the floor. We created our own courses and held marathon encounter groups, which was a thing. It was a time of idealism, the Age of Aquarius, and consciousness raising. It was the most formative year of my social and political development, which I cherish.

Pioneer feminist Kate Millet was one of our resource people in the early days of feminism. We noticed that the “girls” didn’t speak up as much as the guys, and analyzed other group dynamics. In addition to majoring on psychology, I minored in education and took courses at Columbia Teachers College during the heyday of the open classroom, Walden Two, Summerhill, and Death at an Early Age by Jonathan Kool.

Columbia shut down for the Strike of 1970. I was in high school during the Strike of 1968, and there was some 1968 envy, although the expansion of the Viet Nam War to Cambodia and the Kent State Massacre were powerful triggers for moral outrage. We Experimental College students ended up running Columbia’s Strike Information Center since we were the most cohesive group on campus.

One of members of the EC, Erica, grew up with Jeffrey Glenn Miller, one of the four students killed at Kent State. There was a huge funeral procession down Broadway for Jeff.

I was also a student in the Joint Program between Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary. JTS was very active during the strike with a strong moral voice and a lot of heart.

My experience the strike was colored and shaped by my intense and deep personal embeddedness in these two nurturing, self-aware, and ethically minded groups committed to peace and social justice.

Note that compared to today’s protests, issues were simpler with Nixon as our president, the Viet Nam War, and the draft. Sentiments against war, violence and murder of innocent civilians in our name do have resonance. However, they were not fraught with conflicts over identity, religion and Zionism. As you will see in the attached original documents from the Strike of 1970, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Jewish students were active in leading and organizing the movement, aligned with religious, textual and moral values. There was no identity conflict.

I have visited the encampment at George Washington University, including a Shabbat Service, as well as a Seder on the lawn of the Capitol building by If Not Now, Jewish Voice for Peace and the New Synagogue Project, the role of Jewish, Muslim and Christian students. Many zooms and webinars offer rich, detailed accounts of what is going on. I am deeply interested in the complexity, truth, exaggerations, distortions, misperceptions and possibilities for constructive approaches. I will write about this later.

Political Therapy

I am reframing and building my Substack as political therapy. I intend to post much of my life’s work and analyses of current events regarding conflict transformation and reversing cycles of violence.

I am excited to share these documents from 1970 in light of these times.

What might be therapeutic about exploring these documents as we are immersed in the present conflict? Perhaps a historical perspective and reflections on past might help loosen the grip of the present, shed some light and inspire humility. Please let me know in the comments how these documents might be valuable for us today.

I will soon post articles including organizing principles of political therapy, psychological and social science theories and concepts to analyze what is going on now, including conflict analysis, the psychology of terrorism, the complexity and historical aspects and meanings of anti-semitism, strategies for reconciliation, dualism, gender and violence, messaging, language and framing, and more.

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Original Documents

I have a box of literature distributed on campus during the Strike of 1970, attached below. While scanning over 70 pages for you, I realized how precious they are to me. They evoke the atmosphere and feelings of the time. If anyone is studying the period wants original material I copied many below and I have more as well, including documents from the October 1969 War Moratorium not included here.

It is the next best thing to being there.

Here are a few. Download the attachments below for many more.

Here is a sampling of documents from Columbia University and Action for Peace.

Columbia Strike 1970 Scans

35.3MB ∙ PDF file

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Here is a sampling of documents from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Scannable Jts Strike May 4, 2024 At 6 21 30 Pm

15MB ∙ PDF file

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