Volume 11, Number 5 · September 26, 1968
The Uprising at Columbia
By F.W. Dupee
NOTE:Here are some impressions of, and reflections upon, the first phase of the Columbia crisis as it was experienced by a member of the faculty. That phase began with the student demonstrations of Tuesday, April 23 and ended with the big police raid during the early hours of Tuesday, April 30. The crisis still continues, having gone through further phases of relative quiet and of extreme violence. And despite resignations and replacements in the personnel of the administration, despite the work of reconstruction carried on by numerous committees, the disturbances threaten to break out once more when classes begin this month. Throughout the intervening months many new facts have emerged, and many facts established earlier have acquired new and startling implications. For these reasons the reflections that follow are necessarily subject to correction. As for the impressions, they are peculiarly, although I think not uniquely, my own. For if the Columbia ordeal has been primarily a collective shake-up, it has also amounted to an individual shake-up for most of us who have participated in the experience—an experience which, in its duration and its bitterness, its capacity to absorb every major issue now dividing the nation, is probably without precedent in the history of American universities.
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