In pictures: Student-led protests echo Vietnam war times

Before setting a protest encampment on a Columbia lawn last week, some students took an optional course called "Columbia 1968" about protests against the Vietnam War, Reuters reported.

Photo: Columbia students protesting the Vietnam war in 1968.

A Palestinian-American student told Reuters that they did a sign that said ‘liberated zone’ after looking at a famous photograph of the 1968 Vietnam protests that said the same thing.

But while the 1968 protesters occupied multiple buildings on campus, the 2024 protesters decided to occupy one lawn that school administrators recently designated for protests, so that they wouldn’t be accused of disruption.

But this wasn’t the case at all, as Columbia President Minouche Shafik called in police, who arrested 108 of the students on trespassing charges, according to CNN.

Moreover, more than a thousand students have been arrested across the United States, according to The Guardian, and several videos of police brutality have been emerging in social media.

Particular violence is seen from Texas police at Texas University in Austin, where videos arised of one  officer tasing a protestor and another arresting a teacher violently, hitting her head on the pavement, after she defended a student.

Joe Biden and Netanyahu have been quick to say the Pro-Palestinian protests are antisemitic but many Jewish students, who are actually leading the movement, have dismissed this claims through their group social media channels.

Pro-Israel counter-protests have arised in some places though, such as in UCLA, with protestors that, in some cases, are not even students and just try to instigate violence, a video by journalist Constanza Eliana shows.

But although the protests are no doubt being violently suppressed, it hasn’t reached the Vietnam era level, when police killed four students and injured many by shooting at them in Ohio Kent State University in 1970. The tragedy then, however, brought some victory with it.

Photo: National Guard opening fire on student protesters.

In 1968, anti-war Vietnam protests led Columbia University to end classified war research and stop military recruitment, among other changes, wrote Rosalind Rosenberg, a professor of history at Barnard College, for Barnard Magazine.

Photo: Colmbia 1968 graduate flashes a peace sign.

Similarly, today's demonstrators also have specific demands, mainly involving divestment from Israel, citing the killing of more than 34,000 Palestinian people, more than half of which are women and children, according to Gaza Health authorities.