Gaza campus protests: why understanding 1960s student demonstrations and police reaction is relevant today

In the past weeks, riot police have entered several college campuses at the behest of administrators to break up unauthorised encampments of students protesting the war in Gaza and calling on their universities to divest from companies supporting Israel. The scenes of police arresting hundreds of students at Columbia University and UCLA are reminiscent of police and National Guard actions against students protesting the Vietnam war in the late 1960s.

It is tempting to draw easy parallels with the worst examples of overreach against those anti-war students in the 1960s. But what are the similarities between then and now? What lessons have been learned, and ignored, from past experiences? 

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