Title: Columbia 1968 | The Sticking Place
Headings: Columbia 1968
Columbia 1968
The Role and Responsibility of Democratic Citizenship
The Role of the University in American Society
Racial Justice in Sixties America
Participatory Democracy
1968: End of an Era
from Sticking Place Films

Content: heated student and faculty responses to the university’s heavy-handed purchasing of neighborhood buildings and subsequent evictions; and picketing at Columbia dining halls in support of better conditions for its workers. Each of these actions fueled the next. Worried about your grades? About being thrown out of Columbia? Consequences, be damned! Organising vs. Activism Mark Rudd (2018) from Sticking Place Films on Vimeo
Organising vs. Activism Mark Rudd (2018)
from Sticking Place Films
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This opens in a new window. [transcript of Organising vs. Activism by Mark Rudd here]
By 1968, it was clear that students were becoming a vital and effective political force and that inflexible university administrators across the nation would be unwise to ignore calls for change. Demands from students to become part of the decision-making processes were thunderous, with “relevance” a new watchword when it came to curriculum reform. But change could come only if workable channels of communications and possibilities for meaningful dialogue existed, and many vocal students felt that those who ruled Columbia had constructed a paternalistic, archaic culture of opaqueness.