How and why did College students impact the anti war movement during the Vietnam War?

Nearly half of American colleges and universities experienced at least one war-related protest during the Vietnam War period. And even though numerous works have been written on the subject of campus unrest, most have involved the incidents at only one school. A study needed to be produced for readers to compare student antiwar activities and administrative responses at several institutions. This work accounts for a few of the more publicized demonstrations as well as some of the lesser known events. It additionally introduces the occurrences at three previously unpublicized schools—Southern Methodist University, Rice University, and Texas Tech University. The Vietnam War had little effect on college students during the early 1960s. But after President Lyndon Johnson began increasing the number of American troops in Southeast Asia, many students and faculty became more concerned. In 1965, teach-ins, not confrontation, provided impetus for the movement, and in 1966, most students seemed confused about their role in ending the war, so only a few sporadic protests occurred. During 1967 and 1968, however, antiwar students shifted to a more resistant stance, primarily directing their anger against ROTC programs, and Dow Chemical Company and military recruiters being on campus. Then, in 1959, large numbers of students participated in a national Vietnam War Moratorium. But campus antiwar activity reached its zenith in 1970 after the Ohio National Guard killed four Kent State University Students. America's participation in the Vietnam War created a strained atmosphere on many campuses, forcing university officials to respond to adverse situations. Some of their decisions adequately prevented violent confrontation; others proved disastrous. Accordingly, this dissertation first regards several cases in which antiwar students and administrators clashed; it differentiates between some administrative responses to the demonstrations; and it suggests some guidelines that administrators might consider for attaining peaceable settlements, primarily through better communication.

In the mid-1960s, Cornell students were caught up in the cataclysmic movements and events surrounding the growing resistance to the Vietnam War.

In the mid-1960s, Cornell students were caught up in the cataclysmic movements and events taking over the country, especially the growing resistance movement against the Vietnam War.

Bruce Dancis was a freshmen primed for activism as a participant in the 1963 March on Washington. Sheila Tobias was an administrator in Day Hall who joined a band of anti-war faculty and graduate student activists. David Connor was an assistant Catholic chaplain with Cornell United Religious Work who educated faculty and counseled students trying to avoid the war. And Frank Dawson was an African-American student who tried to balance his activism with his mother's fears as a first-generation college student wanting to protect his future.

All of them worked together to form a new Left, a group that occupied buildings, held protests, scheduled Teach-Ins and destroyed their draft cards to protest the war in Vietnam and push for civil and women's rights.

Twenty-five of these students, faculty and staff will return to campus Nov. 10-11 for a 50th anniversary reunion, organized by Professor Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government as part of the Department of Government and College of Arts and Sciences' celebration of the university's sesquicentennial.

Anti-war activists, Vietnam veterans share memories at sesquicentennial event

By Kathy Hovis

A Teach-In was a common occurrence during the 1960s at Cornell, as students gathered in Barton Hall or similar venues to explore the volatile issues of the time – the Vietnam War, racial discrimination and gender inequality.

A crowd of nearly 400 experienced a similar event Monday night, sponsored by the Department of Government and the College of Arts and Sciences and part of the two-day event, "Vietnam: The War at Cornell," one of the college's sesquicentennial celebrations during the month of November.

From stories of the horrors of fighting in Vietnam to recollections of protests and events to remembrances of students who were lost in the war, the 21 alumni, faculty and staff who returned to campus for the conference shared their stories along with current students, faculty and community members from the audience.

Jason Koski/University Photography

James Matlack, an assistant professor of English at Cornell from 1967-71 and a Quaker activist, told the Teach-In audience how reports coming from places like My Lai cemented his "anguish and righteous opposition to the war."

Part of that anguish came after Matlack learned that one of the Cornell undergrads he has counseled about the draft ended up enlisting in the war and was killed after stepping on a land mine.

"His was the first name I found at the Vietnam Memorial," Matlack said. "And when I ran my fingers over that engraved name, I thought of that young life lost."

Most of the alumni who returned for the two-day event were members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They actively protested the war, encouraged students to turn in or destroy their draft cards and continually worked to educate the campus about the war.

"The war was happening to us and the issues were clear," said Susan Rutberg '71. "I was a foot soldier in SDS – running off leaflets and participating in the takeover of Barton Hall."

Rutberg graduated with a degree in government, went to law school and ended up as a public defender, as well as co-counsel on several cases related to the Black Panther party.

"Our opposition to the war was with our foreign policy," said Joe Kelly '68, " not with the soldiers." Kelly turned in his draft card while a student and continued to work with SDS after graduation, spending three months in a Chicago jail for demonstrating at the Chicago Seven trial.

While returning alumni focused on resistance efforts, several speakers at Monday's Teach-In spoke of their time serving as soldiers in Vietnam.

Terry Cullen MBA '66, the coach of Cornell's Sprint Football team, enlisted in the Marine Corps after receiving his degree.

"Kennedy was my hero and when he said 'Ask not what your country can do for you,' I took that seriously," he said. Cullen was severely wounded in battle and spent more than a year in a Naval hospital.

"It was a terrible war with tremendous casualties on both sides," he said. "Just God-awful."

Still, Cullen doesn't regret his decision to enlist, saying it was important for him to serve.

Like Cullen, Dave Juers, a network engineer in the College of Engineering, also served in Vietnam in 1970, but he was drafted after finishing graduate school. Juers thanked the activists who opposed the war at home.

"All of the soldiers there had peace symbols under the camouflage on their helmets; we were constantly giving each other peace signs," he said. "Most of us didn't want to be there. Knowing there were people at home opposing the war balanced some of the craziness that the war does to you."

Trey Birdwell, executive office of Cornell's Army ROTC and an assistant professor of military science, told the audience that activism of the 1960s resulted in "measurable changes" in the U.S. military during the last 50 years, including increased support for returning soldiers.

Birdwell, who has led soldiers in five combat missions in two countries, shared some military stats:

• The average age for a soldier in Vietnam was 22; today it's 28.
• In Vietnam, 79 percent of soldiers had a high school diploma; today that number is 99 percent.
• During Vietnam, 20 percent of soldiers came from racial and ethnic minorities; it's 40 percent today.
• A soldier wounded on the field in Vietnam had a 62 percent chance of survival; today that chance is up to 88 percent.

"I was surprised to hear how big of a part Cornell played in this piece of our national history," said Abi Warren '15, an economics major who attended the Teach-In and said she's participated in some on-campus activism.

Government graduate student Ed Quish said he attended the Teach-In wanting to learn more about how the experiences of 1960s protestors might relate to today's opposition movement to the "war on terror" waged after 9/11.

Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz professor of Government and organizer of the event, said he was deeply moved by the two days, which realized all that he had hoped for during months of planning.

"It brought to life an important chapter in Cornell's history for today's undergraduates," he said. " It was wonderful for them to hear from opponents of the war and from people who proudly fought in it. I was particularly pleased that these alums visited some 18 classes during their visit, alongside the three public events and shared with undergraduates their stories of Cornell 50 years ago and their agonizing over America at war, as well as their concerns for racial and gender equality."

By Kathy Hovis

Two other forums highlighted the "Vietnam: The War at Cornell" event, "Race and Cornell Protest in the 1960s" and "Gender and Cornell Protest in the 1960s," both featuring alumni from that decade.

For both issues, 1969 was a pivotal year, which included the takeover of Willard Straight Hall and a ground-breaking women's conference at Cornell, which led to the first women's studies courses here and eventually the Women's Studies Program, now Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Monday's panel featured five speakers sharing insights on the issue of race on campus during this time, when Cornell went from having 25 African-American students in 1963 to 250 in 1969.

Lindsay France/University Photography

Frank Dawson '72 was a freshman when he and his friends joined other members of the Afro-American Society in the Willard Straight takeover.

"I called my mother to tell her what we were doing and she started crying and reminding me of how hard they worked to get me here," he said. "But I told her that we were doing what was necessary."

Because of the takeover, African-American students were able to accelerate the development of the Africana Studies center, add black counseling staff to the health center and push through other changes to make campus a better place for students of color.

"The commitment of the students was to a cause greater than ourselves," Dawson said. "We were taking our education back to our communities to make our communities a better place."

Dawson and classmate Abby Ginzberg '71 are working on a documentary about the Straight takeover and similar events across the country, called "Agents of Change." Part of the film was shown at Monday's Teach-In.

Bruce Dancis, a student at Cornell from 1965-67 and the first Cornell student to destroy his draft card, said he came to Cornell wanting to work with black students on civil rights issues but gravitated to anti-war movements after realizing that black students wanted to handle these issues as a community.

"They told me that what I needed to do was to fight racism in the white community," Dancis said. "That made sense to me."

White students did support the Straight takeover, Dancis said, by forming a ring of marchers around the building to offer protection.

Robert Barker/University Photography

During Tuesday's panel focused on gender issues, Irene Smalls '71, the first president of the Cornell Black Alumni Association and founder of Wari House, said she worked hard on civil rights issues while a student, but still was told she couldn't be a leader "because I was a girl."

Smalls said parts of the feminist movement attracted her, but she felt alienated because the movement was led mostly by white women. "I didn't see a lot of reaching across the aisle," she said.

Susan Reverby '67, now a professor of women's and gender studies/history at Wellesley College, said female students in the 1960s "were so conscious of what was going on to women, but we had no vocabulary to explain it or political way to think about it."

Reverby said she didn't feel oppressed by men on campus, but it was oppressive for women to realize that their identity was based on "who they were sleeping with." If your boyfriend burned his draft card, she said, then you were also considered a radical.

She said the main problem for feminism today, as it always has been, is "to make gender matter and not matter at the same time."

Helping Resisters Find a New Life in Canada

Chaplain David Connor was active in the movement at the same time, testifying in Dancis' trial and helping students find ways to avoid the draft, sometimes by filling out paperwork and sometimes by finding them new identities and helping them get to Canada.

"Things were breaking on many fronts," Connor said, adding that civil rights and women's rights issues were also coming to the forefront. "I was lucky enough to be in a place to do something about it and I took a shot."

Connor, a former Cornell football player, said his position as chaplain allowed him to work with faculty, staff and students. "Fraternities and faculty members would invite me over to talk because they didn't understand the anti-war movement," he said. "They couldn't understand how the greatest country in the world could be as bad as the peace movement and the SDS was portraying it to be."

Connor, who was 30 at the time, ended up mailing his own draft card back to his local board. He was immediately called for induction and showed up at the Buffalo, N.Y. induction center along with a number of students, refusing to be inducted. Charges against him were dropped and he eventually left the priesthood, founded a commune close to Ithaca and worked for various peace and social justice causes here until 1989, when he moved to Vermont. There, he recently served as associate pastor for The Old Meeting House church before retiring. He is involved with several peace and justice organizations, has demonstrated at marches for peace in Washington, New York and in Vermont and has attended a weekly Peace Vigil every Friday at noon for 12 years in front of the Montpelier Post Office.

An Ally From Within Day Hall

Sheila Tobias – newly hired in 1967– was actively opposing the war in Vietnam as a young faculty member at the City College of New York before coming to Cornell.

"[At CUNY] we were stressed by our students' dilemmas: draft card burners who risked going to jail - and those whose lives were in our hands because if they failed our courses they lost their student deferment," she said. "One year a group of us in the history department gave all A's to all our students as a protest. But of course that only sent more underprivileged students to the war."

Once at Cornell, she said she was attracted to Daniel Berrigan and joined the "Dump Johnson" movement after hearing Allard Lowenstein on campus urge Democrats to oppose the president's likely re-nomination.

Her position in Day Hall led some anti-war activists to believe she would unlock the doors for their sit-ins, which she did not do, although she did support them in many other ways.

"I was not an official adviser to Cornell students," Tobias said, "but because I was permitted to 'assist' as a section leader in a popular freshman-sophomore history course, I knew a bunch of students and was drawn with them to several on-campus anti-war rallies."

Tobias said a number of faculty, especially those in the humanities, provided important leadership to protestors, but many others were opposed.

"I experienced close at hand the passion for ending the war and the resistance to the resisters," she said of the mixed feelings on campus. "But we activists took full advantage of Cornell facilities, notably Clark Hall (built with Department of Defense money) to do our xeroxing."

Between protests and draft-card burnings, Tobias said, student activism brought together anti-war activists in the Ithaca community, especially those already involved in the Glad Day Press, which published broadsides and pamphlets for the community and the nation.

Tobias said she "cut her teeth" with the anti-war and civil rights movement before taking on the cause of women's rights, eventually founding a women's studies course, which in turn launched the Women's Studies program at Cornell – one of the first in the nation. She then moved into research on undergraduate education in math and science and is the author of numerous books on math avoidance and reforming college science, including "Overcoming Math Anxiety," "Breaking the Science Barrier," and "Rethinking Science as a Career," as well as books on feminism such as "Women, Militarism, and War" and "Faces of Feminism: An Activist's Reflections on the Women's Movement."