Columbia University Archives: 1968 Crisis

Archival collections are non-circulating and can only be viewed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library's reading room (RBML). In order to use the University Archives collections at the  RBML, you will be required to register your own Special Collections Research Account before your visit and to validate the account in person with government-issued photo identification or Columbia ID card. Once you have created your Special Collections Research Account, you will be able to request materials directly from the finding aid: click the check box located on the right for the box(es) you need, and then scroll back to the top of the container list document and click “Submit Request” button in the red-rimmed box at top. This should lead you directly to your Special Collections Research Account to complete the request form.

• Cox Commission records, 1957-1971
  The Fact Finding Commission was composed of five members and chaired by Harvard law professor Archibald Cox. The Cox Commission was given the mandate to establish a chronology of events leading up to and including the Columbia crisis, and to inquire into the underlying causes of those events. The Commission held twenty-one days of hearings during May 1968, heard testimony from seventy-nine witnesses, and compiled 3,790 pages of transcript. The report, published in a paperback edition on September 26, 1968, stressed the lack of effective channels of communication between administration, faculty, and students, and endorsed implicitly the Executive Committee's idea for a representative University Senate. This collection consists of the audio-tapes, unorganized and uncorrected transcripts, and the final transcripts of the testimony from the hearings held from May 7 to July 25, 1968. (There is an index to the testimony books.) There are also the general exhibits used in the hearings and a collection of printed materials (newspapers and magazines) covering the events of 1968.

• Joanne Grant research files, 1963-1968
  This collection is a repository of Joanne Grant's research materials for her 1969 book Confrontation on Campus: The Columbia Pattern for the New Protest. The collection contains both Grant's notes taken throughout the Columbia revolt, as well as collected research materials. These materials consist of Strike Coordinating Committee fliers, agendas, leaflets and official statements. In addition, the collection includes the responses of faculty, administration and community members to the strike. The collection also contains materials from the Independent Committee on Vietnam at Columbia University, student protest files against Columbia's involvement in the war.

• Temple-Lilley Special Committee records, 1968-1971
  After the Columbia University student protests of April and May 1968, the Board of Trustees appointed a six-member Special Committee to study the structure of the university and recommend changes. The Committee met often during the next year, and examined and produced proposals for changes, such as the establishment of a University Senate. This collection includes memoranda, statements and reports from individual members of the University community as well as various working groups and committee among the faculty, students, alumni, and outside consultants. There are published reports of reform proposals at other universities, clippings from the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, and correspondence to and from members of the Special Committee and other University officials.

• William E. Petersen papers, July-August 1968
  This collection is comprised of papers collected by William E. Petersen, then Chair of the Board of Trustees (1968-1978) recording his role in choosing a new president for Columbia University following the Columbia Disturbances of 1968. The collection is comprised of one notebook, personal documents, writings, and correspondence. Most items are from the summer of 1968, following the Columbia disturbances.

• Warner R. Schilling papers, 1958-1975
  Warner R. Schilling was an American political scientist and international relations scholar at Columbia University. This small collection includes materials from 1967, when Schilling served in the Committee on Recruitment which considered the question of outside agencies (including the military) recruiting on campus, one of the issues which led to the student strike. As the protests broke out, Schilling also collected flyers, statements, and other materials released by students, faculty and the administration. 

• Columbia Crisis of 1968 project : oral history, 1968
  In this series of interviews, almost all conducted on the Columbia University campus in May, 1968, participants and observers--student activists (conservative, independent, and radical), junior and senior faculty, administrators, supporting staff, and parents--describe and discuss the many phases of the crisis that resulted in the occupation of five Columbia buildings by students April 23 and 24, the suspension of classes, fruitless negotiations, police intervention on April 30, a campus wide strike, a lesser eruption May 21-22, and the eventual restructuring of the University. Factors behind the crisis are examined and weighed in tones ranging from analytical detachment to passionate concern.
  Digital content for this collection (audio recordings and transcripts) was processed by Oral History staff between 2019-2021. You can see collection materials in the Digital Library Collections (DLC). As with all Oral History Archives materials, DLC publication status varies on an interview by interview basis. Many of these interview will be accessible remotely with a Columbia UNI login and some will accessible without a Columbia UNI login.

• Police on Campus collection, 1968
  Eyewitness statements, statistical summaries, correspondence, and miscellaneous materials pertaining to the publication of Police on Campus. The work is an account of the riots at Columbia University in 1968, written by Michael A. Baker, Bradley R. Brewery, Raymond DeBuse, Sally T. Hillsman, Murray Milner, and David V. Soeiro.

For more information on how to access our collections, check out our Research & Access website. If you have any questions about how to find materials or how to access materials, please contact uarchives@columbia.edu.

• 1968: The Global Revolutions
  From Hanoi to Harlem, Czechoslovakia to China, Memphis to Paris, the yearlong crises of 1968 rocked world communities with an epoch-making series of political explosions. In late April 1968, “The Revolution” came to campus at Columbia University. This digital exhibition traces the connections between those worldwide upheavals, linking them together to demonstrate how many local and national movements looked to peers and comrades in other countries, campuses, and communities. The exhibition was timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of those events and was on display during the 2018 spring semester in the Kempner Gallery of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Funding for the exhibition and related programming was provided by the Office of the Provost, the Department of History, and the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History.
   
• Columbia 1968
  "Columbia University 1968" is a website created by the participants in the protests as an outgrowth of a conference held in April 2008, forty years later, addressing the events of 1968, war, racism, sexism, and the role of universities. The website makes the proceedings of this conference available to the public for non-commercial use. The site also acts as a repository for their experiences of the history of Columbia 1968 as well as a source for reflection and discussion of the events and issues of that time and how they relate today.  The site was updated in spots (especially the publications list) at the time of the 50th anniversary in 2018.  The site was deactivated in Summer 2018 by the creators, but you can still access the content  via our archived version of the site captured on July 17, 2018.
   
• A Time to Stir
  A Time To Stir is a documentary film by Paul Cronin. His website for the film provides an excellent summary of the events on campus and links to important documents and articles about these events at Columbia. A four-hour version was made ready in early 2018 and was accompanied by a book published by Columbia University press. The book, available electronically, is illustrated and contains more than sixty newly-written testimonials from a range of participants. For more information about this project, see the Spring 2008 Columbia magazine article.
   
• Columbia Revolt
  Documentary film of the 1968 protests at Columbia University created by Newsreel Films.
  • Columbia Revolt Part I
  • Columbia Revolt Part II
     
• Frank da Cruz's Columbia 1968
  Frank da Cruz ('71GS, '76E), who worked at Columbia University until 2011, created this web site where he provides his personal reminiscences of the 1968 events.
   
• The Eye Special Edition: The 1968 Issue
  Staff of The Eye (the feature magazine of Spectator) created this special issue dedicated to the events of 1968 at the time of the 50th anniversary in the Spring of 2018. The issue is divided into four sections: History, Profiles, Columbia and Harlem, and "View From Here" which consists of reflections of two participants (Hilton Obenzinger CC'6 and Woody Lewis) in those events.
   
• Columbia Crisis of 1968 project : oral history, 1968
  Digital content for this oral history collection was processed by Oral History staff between 2019-2021. You can see collection materials (audio recordings and transcripts) in the Digital Library Collections (DLC). As with all Oral History Archives materials, DLC publication status varies on an interview by interview basis. Many of these interview will be accessible remotely with a Columbia UNI login and some will accessible without a Columbia UNI login.
  
  In this series of interviews, almost all conducted on the Columbia University campus in May, 1968, participants and observers--student activists (conservative, independent, and radical), junior and senior faculty, administrators, supporting staff, and parents--describe and discuss the many phases of the crisis that resulted in the occupation of five Columbia buildings by students April 23 and 24, the suspension of classes, fruitless negotiations, police intervention on April 30, a campus wide strike, a lesser eruption May 21-22, and the eventual restructuring of the University. Factors behind the crisis are examined and weighed in tones ranging from analytical detachment to passionate concern.

• Adamsons, Hannelore Minna. The Columbia crisis of 1968 : the role of the faculty. Columbia University thesis, 1975.
• Avorn, Jerry L. Up Against the Ivy Wall: A History of the Columbia Crisis. New York: Atheneum, 1969.
• Baker, Michael, et al. Police on Campus: The Mass Police Action at Columbia University, spring, 1968. New York: New York Civil Liberties Union, 1969.
• Bradley, Stefan. "'Gym Crow Must Go!': Black Student Activism at Columbia University, 1967-1968." Journal of African American History, Vol. 88, No. 2, The History of Black Student Activism. (Spring, 2003), pp. 163-181. 
• Bradley, Stefan. Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black student power in the late 1960s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c2009.
• Columbia University. Fact Finding Commission. Crisis at Columbia; report of the Fact-Finding Commission appointed to investigate the disturbances at Columbia University in April and May, 1968. (aka Cox Commission Report) New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
• Columbia University. Strike Coordinating Committee. Why We Strike. New York: The Committee, 1968.
• Cronin, Paul (editor). A time to stir : Columbia '68. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
• Dupee, F.W. "The Uprising of Columbia," New York Review of Books, Vol. XI, No. 5 (September 26, 1968), 20.
• Grant, Joanne. Confrontation on campus; the Columbia pattern for the new protest. New York: New American Library, 1969.
• Jones, Thai. "Two, Three, Many Columbias," Education Life supplement to The New York Times (January 6, 2008).
• Keller, George C. Six Weeks That Shook Morningside. New York: Columbia College Today, 1968.
• Kunen, James S. The Strawberry Statement; Notes of a College Revolutionary. New York: Random House, 1969.
• McCaughey, Robert A.  Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754-2004. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.  Chapters 15 and 16.
• Obenzinger, Hilton. Busy dying: An autobiographical novel. Tucson, AZ : CHAX, 2008.
• Rosenberg, Rosalind. Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Chapter 6.
• Rudd, Mark. Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. New York: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.
• Sutton, Sharon E. When ivory towers were black: a story about race in America's cities and universities. New York: Empire State Editions, an imprint of Fordham University Press, 2017.
• Truman, David. Reflections on the Columbia Disorders of 1968. Chevy Chase, Md. : Edwin M. Truman, 2008.