For many students in years past, Boston University was far from the stereotype of an overtly political campus, with activism falling easily to apathy.
Funny how prospects of a war can change all that.
After United States government officials spent the fall drumming up rhetoric against Iraq, U.S. forces attacked the country in late March. As war efforts intensified, students held a number of pro- and anti-war demonstrations, loudly expressing their opinions.
But the most striking part of the reactions to the war this spring was the speed with which students organized and expressed their pro- and anti-war sentiments.
Howard Zinn, a historian and BU professor emeritus who spoke at a November rally, offered a unique perspective on how the campus reaction in past conflicts compared with reaction this semester.
‘It took at least two years before the impact of the [Vietnam] war came through to students,’ Zinn said. ‘The demonstrations we have had at BU were before the war started. There was no such activity during Vietnam.’
To compare campus reactions between the Iraq and Vietnam conflicts, Betty Zisk, a political science professor at BU since 1965, said it depends on what period of Vietnam to which one is comparing.
‘One thing that disappointed me in 1965 was that [the anti-war movement] was very slow in getting started,’ she said. ‘I am proud of the fact that [this year’s] anti-war movement got started before the comparable stage during Vietnam.’
One reason for the slow reaction to the Vietnam War was the distraction presented by several simultaneous causes.
‘There were so many movements, including civil rights, environmentalism and feminism,’ she said. ‘We were distracted by multiple movements, so Vietnam didn’t seem to be our most important cause. Now, students recognize that global issues and environmentalism and war are interconnected.’
Zinn said he felt this year’s protests were well-organized and peaceful. And, he noted, there was far less hostile opposition to anti-war protesters this year compared with treatment he received during Vietnam.
‘Unlike the first marches during the Vietnam War, people did not see manifestations of anger,’ Zinn said.
Lt. Col. Morton Orlov, the chairman of the Department of Military Science, said there was also far less hostility toward BU ROTC students compared with his experiences in the wake of Vietnam in the late 1970s.
Orlov was a student at Tufts University, and cross-enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Army ROTC program. He said bystanders verbally assaulted him while he was wearing his uniform on numerous occasions.
‘We were approached more than once and called ‘a bunch of murderers,” he said. ‘One [bystander] even suggested that we were fascist. I was shocked, as I am Jewish. It was very confusing for a young student. I thought, ‘What did I do wrong?”
Orlov said this year, his ROTC students reported no problems to him.
THE PROTESTS On Feb. 18, Students Unite for Peace organized a bus trip for BU students to join the thousands of anti-war protesters in New York City. Closer to home, a student peace protest that started in Marsh Plaza marched to Government Center to join a citywide demonstration.
More protests followed. In late March, religious leaders held vigils to pray for peace in Marsh Plaza, and some BU students protested a speech by former President George H.W. Bush at Tufts University.
Support for the war became vocal later in March, when BU’s College Republicans and students from the BU School of Law held a rally of their own supporting the Bush administration’s actions and U.S. troops.
Even though she had previously attended the peace demonstration at Government Center, Rachel Gordon, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman, said she appreciated the small, but vocal, rally.
‘I really enjoyed the College Republicans’ protest,’ she said, though she described herself as a liberal Democrat. ‘They had a great poster that said ‘War is bad. Saddam is worse.’ And another that said ‘Support our troops.’ Although I am against the war, I do think that it’s really important to show support for our troops.’
BU spokesman Colin Riley said he was not surprised to see that the majority of the protests were against the war.
‘BU is a place where all viewpoints are expressed and heard,’ Riley said. ‘Criticism is usually more vocal.’
Some students, such as CAS freshman Jenna Dickerson, said they felt protesting was inappropriate once the fighting began. Dickerson said she had no problems with the pre-emptive protests, but frowned upon their continuation after the war began.
‘I’m anti-protest,’ Dickerson said. ‘We’re already at war so why are we protesting when it will just bring morale down? It’s a person’s right but I don’t believe in it.’
Still other students said they believed they could have played a major role in the protesting effort.
‘There should have been more protests even before the war started,’ said Natasha Roberts, a CAS sophomore. ‘This is a university campus, so protesting is something that should be expected of learned people. [BU students] certainly seemed apathetic.’
Adam Wescott, a College of Communication freshman, cited a lack of information as a reason that students had difficulty formulating opinions.
‘As students at BU, we often feel cut off from the outside world,’ Wescott said. ‘Before coming to Boston University, we rely heavily on television as our main source of news and here our dorms do not allow for cable or the needed news channels.
‘Vietnam was the first time Americans saw live, violent images of war and it changed a lot of minds,’ he continued. ‘Instead of all Americans supporting the war, a division was created.’
But Wescott said he enjoyed the diverse range of opinions represented at BU.
‘Being at BU has allowed me to identify with a greater diversity, including a variety of opinions,’ he said. ‘This would not take place at a smaller school.’
A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF PROTESTS? Though some said the period around the war was among the most active in 10 years, Chancellor John Silber said there were really not many anti-war protests in general, either on campus or around the country.
‘There were some faculty protests, there were some universities where faculty tried to organize student protests,’ Silber said. ‘There were some people who, in the midst of nostalgia from the ’60s, tried to make this thing appear to be something like the Vietnam War.
‘[It] doesn’t bear any resemblance to the Vietnam War and the overwhelming majority of American students had the good sense to recognize that and just didn’t protest,’ Silber continued. ‘So you can’t talk about a big student protest it just doesn’t exist.’
To explain the decline in protests since war in Iraq broke out, Zinn said he thought students felt they should support the troops once they were overseas. However, he still does not think students have become indifferent.
‘The anti-war movement has not diminished,’ Zinn said.
Both Zisk and Zinn agreed that if the fighting in Iraq had continued for a longer period of time, as was the case in Vietnam, more students would have been involved in activism.
‘My students seem to be against war, but only about 10 or 15 percent went to [Washington] D.C. or to the Common,’ Zisk said. ‘They are skeptical about anything that we could do. They are not activists, they don’t want civil disobedience, they are not in the Green party, but there would probably be more activism if things [in Iraq] got worse.’
Of the pre-war activism efforts that did exist, BU students were among the 15,000 protesters who gathered on the Boston Common to protest a war on Iraq on Nov. 11, 2002. A month later, 20 BU students held a ‘die-in’ by lying on the steps of the Tsai Performance Center to represent Iraqis who had died under United Nations sanctions since the Gulf War.
Mel King, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor for 25 years, also credited the brevity of the war in Iraq for the lack of intensity in the anti-war effort.
‘One of the issues is that this war was short,’ King said. ‘The reactions were there, however [the anti-war movement] could not build up the kind of steam and comprehensiveness that there was during Vietnam.’
King said another reason for activism surrounding Vietnam was that the anti-Vietnam War movement came on the heels of the civil rights movement.
‘There is a historical difference in the level of energy,’ he said. ‘[Martin Luther King] Jr. was a spokesperson against the [Vietnam] war and [this year] even with the Pope speaking out, the quickness reduced the level of build-up.’
BU’S ACTIVE VIETNAM According to Zinn, BU was one of the most active anti-war campuses in the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, the BU News, a vigorously outspoken anti-war paper, was the first to call for the impeachment of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Zinn said.
In 1967, BU students participated in a rally of 100,000 people at the Boston Common before marching to the Arlington Street Church to burn draft cards.
In 1968, a United States Army deserter took sanctuary in Marsh Chapel and was surrounded by students for five days and five nights before federal agents arrived and forced their way into the building, Zinn said.
In 1970, in response to President Richard Nixon moving troops into Cambodia and the shooting of four students at Kent State University by the National Guard, widespread BU anti-war demonstrations forced deans to call off final exams and graduation.
In the first issue of The Daily Free Press on May 6, 1970, editor Charles A. Radin described student reaction to news about the Kent State deaths.
‘Fire bombs hit several campus buildings that night,’ the article read. ‘More than 400 students paraded through campus into the early hours of Tuesday morning informing students of the deaths and urging them to join the nationwide strike.’
In the same issue, a statement from the University Council outlined deans’ reasons for ending the semester early.
‘The University Council views with grave concern the fact that in our society, an institution of higher learning must be forced to consider the interruption of the academic process,’ the statement said. ‘Nevertheless, the massive expression of student concern over Cambodia, Kent State, and New Haven have created an atmosphere on this campus in which the traditional educational processes cannot effectively continue without endangering the personal security of students.’
Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts, now CAS, then passed a resolution in support of student activism, allowing students to stay in their dorms longer to participate in protests.
Zisk remembered a unified faculty and student body in the Social Sciences department.
‘Faculty and students and graduates in our department were deeply united,’ she said. ‘We spoke almost with one voice.’
Zinn also recalled the allied relationships among most departments in BU during the later years of Vietnam.
‘The administration was more sympathetic to the students,’ Zinn said. ‘If Silber had been president, the commencement would not have been canceled.’
According to Zinn, the end of the 1970 spring semester left a long-lasting impression on graduates.
‘I have talked to BU alumni who said they considered that a much more memorable ceremony than a regular ceremony would have been,’ he said.
Eugene Green, a Professor of English at BU for 37 years, cited the presence of the draft as a major reason for student activism in the 1970s.
‘The draft during the Vietnam War had a direct influence on student thought,’ he said. ‘The reluctance to enter the current Gulf War was widespread, largely because we have as a society an antipathy to initiating war.’
Orlov said when the draft ended and the military became an all-volunteer force, it made a big difference in people’s feelings during war.
‘The possibility of being drafted crystallized views,’ he said.
A GULF WAR COMPARISON Student reaction to the Gulf War in the early 1990s did not match this year’s reaction to a second war in Iraq, Zinn said, likely because Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait was enough to validate war in many peoples’ minds. This year’s war had no provocation, he said.
‘In the Gulf War, there was a precipitating incident,’ Zinn said. ‘There was no such incident with Iraq; there was not a clear and present danger. This invasion was more crass with less justification.’
Although the BU activism effort was significantly smaller than during Vietnam, Zisk said the reaction was quick and well-thought out.
‘Activism during Vietnam was a lot more in-depth in terms of participation, but not in terms of thought,’ Zisk said.