The Campus Crackdowns Show What Universities Really Value

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...