
In the spring of 1985, more than 100 Columbia University students blockaded Hamilton Hall for three weeks, protesting the university’s financial investments in South Africa. At the time, a school administrator stated that bringing police on campus to quash the student protest would be “anathema” to the university. Anti-apartheid protests were commonplace then: More than 80 students at Princeton University blocked off that institution’s main administrative building, Nassau Hall, shortly after the Columbia action. And the following year, students at UNC-Chapel Hill constructed an encampment on campus, calling for “immediate...