Winners and Losers of the Columbia Protests? History Will Tell.

Key Facts

• Fifty-six years to the day after police in riot gear first swept through the campus of Columbia University to clear buildings that had been taken over by protesters, hundreds of officers stormed into Hamilton Hall and put an end to the occupation over the war in Gaza.
• A Gallup poll conducted in 1963, for example, found that 60 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the March on Washington, assuming it would lead to violence and achieve nothing.
• Yet even with this kind of hindsight and understanding, it is natural to want to create a scorecard amid the smoke and fire of the moment.
• Beyond that, anyone who chooses to remain in Morningside Heights for the next few weeks will not be rid of the police, because university administrators, who oversee a $14 billion endowment, have asked the Police Department to stay on campus through mid-May, at taxpayers’ expense.

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