From Vietnam to Gaza: Student-led protests that shook the world

Widespread protests against Israel’s brutal military offensive in Gaza, which has killed over 34,000 Palestinians — 70 percent of them women and children — are spreading throughout American campuses.

The movement began at New York City’s Columbia University, where more than 100 arrests were made on April 18 following university president Minouche Shafik’s decision to call in New York Police Department officers to clear the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that students had set up.

Protesters are urging the university, and many others in New York City and across the country, to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

This echoes a long history of student-led protests worldwide and on American campuses — including in Columbia’s own, when students in 1968 staged anti-war protests calling for the end of the Vietnam War and the US Army’s involvement in it.

Here are several student protests that made a significant impact and led to far-reaching changes:

Soweto uprising

On the morning of June 16, 1976, an estimated 20,000 Black students across various schools in Soweto, South Africa, gathered for a peaceful demonstration.

The students were protesting the apartheid government’s plan to implement school lessons in Afrikaans — a West Germanic language traced to Dutch colonies in South Africa in the 17th century — but also indicated deeper socio-economic issues under the country’s white-only regime.

The peaceful march turned violent when it was met with armed police force. This led to the death of hundreds of protesters — with estimates ranging from 176 to 700 people killed and more than 1,000 people injured. Among the casualties were 15-year-old Hastings Ndlovu and 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, who were the first to be shot by police.

Despite the violent crackdown, students continued to organise, playing a significant role in fighting and overcoming inequality and oppression caused by apartheid.

Attracting worldwide attention and condemnation of the white-minority-controlled apartheid government, anti-apartheid protests spread throughout the country.

Groups worldwide soon began pushing universities to divest from corporations that supported the South African government, setting the stage for the end of apartheid.

Today, June 16 is recognised as Youth Day in South Africa to honour the students who stood up against an apartheid regime during the Soweto Uprising in 1976.

Velvet revolution

On November 17, 1989, thousands of student protesters participated in what is considered the largest anti-government demonstration in what was then Czechoslovakia, leading to the non-violent overthrow of an authoritarian system and ending over 40 years of communist rule in what is known as the Velvet Revolution.

Protesters chose the date as it was International Students' Day, which commemorates the universities in Prague that were stormed by the Nazis in 1939, killing nine students. Over 1,000 others were sent to concentration camps.

At that time of the protests, the Czechoslovak government, which had been under the control of a single, Moscow-aligned communist party since the end of World War II, severely restricted anti-government speech and suppressed dissent

In the years leading up to the protest, anti-government sentiment had been growing due to the declining economy of the Soviet Bloc and the success of democratic movements in countries like Poland and Hungary.

Despite police repression, the student-led protests continued to spread to other cities and gained significant momentum. By November 20, half a million people filled Prague's streets and demonstrated in Wenceslas Square.

Eight days later, the Communist Party’s leadership resigned, and Czechoslovakia was poised to elect a president for the first time since communist rule in 1948.

On December 8, Václav Havel, a writer and the country's most renowned dissident, was nominated as presidential candidate, before becoming president on December 29.

Anti-Vietnam War protests

Campus unrest in the US during the Vietnam War era was significantly influenced by college student activism, which had a hand in promoting anti-war sentiments to the wider public.

Some of the largest and most coordinated sequences of protests in the US occurred in May 1970, uniting over a million students from more than 880 campuses in a powerful display of solidarity that included walkouts and other disruptive actions, calling for the end of the war.

President Richard M. Nixon had pledged to end the war in Vietnam during his election campaign in 1968. However, in late April 1970, Nixon announced that the war was expanding with the US invasion of Cambodia.

The move was quickly condemned by the international community and sparked strong protests on college campuses such as Kent State University in Ohio, where one of the most prominent protests happened on May 4.

On that day, protests turned deadly when members of the National Guardsmen — who were called to the campus to intervene — opened fire at some 600 peaceful demonstrators, killing four students and injuring nine others.

The shooting had a profound impact, leading to a nationwide student strike that resulted in the closure of hundreds of colleges and universities.

Previously, in April 1968, students from Columbia and Barnard occupied their campuses, demanding the school cut ties with a Pentagon institute conducting research for the Vietnam War.

It turned out to be one of the largest mass detentions in New York City history after police, who removed occupying students by force, were called on campus, with protestors ultimately achieving their goals.

Protests against the Vietnam War, such as the one at Columbia and Kent State, transformed student activism and inspired many young people to get involved in activism.

Greensboro sit-in

On February 1, 1960, four African-American students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a ‘whites-only’ lunch counter in a Woolworth’s store located in Greensboro, North Carolina, serving as a catalyst for a wave of peaceful protests against segregation in businesses across the country.

Known as the Greensboro Four, the students — Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond — were protesting segregation laws that discriminated against African Americans, who were prevented from entering certain public places.

At the time, African Americans were allowed to shop and eat at the stand-up snack bar, but were prohibited from sitting at the lunch counter. “We didn’t want to set the world on fire,” Khazan said, according to the North Carolina Museum of History. “We just wanted to eat.”

They politely requested service at the lunch counter, but they were refused by the waitstaff.

The manager of the establishment called the police, but before they arrived, local media had already been alerted by Ralph Johns, a local white businessman who was sympathetic to their cause.

Since they bought a few small items before sitting down at the store’s lunch counter, authorities said there was nothing they could do, as the four men were paying customers who had not taken any provocative actions.

The media response, however, was immediate and a photo of the Greensboro Four was published in local newspapers, leading to the protest quickly expanding.

The four students returned to Woolworth’s the following days accompanied by more students, but each time staff refused them service. Close to a week of protests later, some 400 students met at the establishment to demonstrate.

Within weeks, as news of their sit-ins grew, protesters were holding sit-ins in cities across the country.

This led to dining facilities being integrated across the South, and in July 1960, the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro opened to Black patrons.

The focus of the sit-ins expanded to include segregated hotels, beaches, and libraries, providing a template for nonviolent resistance, and becoming a critical turning point in the fight for civil rights.

France’s May ’68

In May 1968, France was going through a period of unprecedented social unrest.

When students in Paris occupied Sorbonne University, one of the most prestigious universities in Europe, their takeover of the school became emblematic of the country’s upheaval at the time.

French president Charles de Gaulle had been in power for 10 years, and a new generation yearned for freedom.

The protest eventually grew to include workers, with an estimated 10 million people participating in the movement.

They demanded democratic and educational reforms, cultural liberation, social justice, and better working conditions.

“Everything was forbidden everywhere,” Josette Preud'homme, who participated in the 1968 protests as a 20-year-old, told NPR, noting that the events changed her life.

"You had to obey orders in the factories, in the schools. We were suffocating. There was this enormous need to talk and share. Everyone was fed up.”

During the student occupations and general strikes in France, university administrators and police used forceful confrontation to suppress the protests, which led to street battles in Paris’s Latin Quarter.

On May 3, students gathered and protested at Sorbonne University. When police entered the university, hundreds were beaten and some 400 had been arrested.

Sorbonne University was temporarily shut down, and when it reopened, the students returned and began an occupation that continued for over a month.

At its peak, the protests of that period, known as May 68, even caused the economy of France to come to a standstill.

According to journalist and author of Le Roman de Mai 1968, Jean-Luc Hees, who was 16 that year, there was “an excitement and the feeling that something might be about to change,” as the protests spread.

The impact of these protests paved the way for greater social and political freedoms, such as the women’s movement and better working conditions in France.

Based on a poll from May 2018, most French people today view May 68 as a positive moment in history.