Did student protests in the 1960s prevent Nixon from launching a nuclear attack? Historian Michael Koncewicz joins Vin and Ola to remind us that student protests always have more power than we realize, and he explains why it may take decades to know the true impact. Go deep inside the Columbia protest of '68 and '24 and emerge with unexpected hope and faith in activism.
https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/nixons-drunken-run-ins-bomb
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB195/index.htm
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/25/nixon-and-the-bomb/
Ola: [00:00:00] This is minds blown. There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
Hello and welcome to Minds Blown. We are your hosts Olamide Samuel and Vincent Ntandi. And we're thrilled to have you with us today. In today's episode, we're diving into a topic that is both timely and deeply rooted in history, the power of student protests. We have a special guest joining [00:01:00] us to discuss the recent campus encampments and how to explore student activism as being a force for peace throughout history.
But first, let's kick things off with an intriguing tale from Cold War history. Vin, take it away.
Vin: Thank you, Ola. So because of our guest that we have today, , I'm going to focus a little bit on President Nixon. And when we think of Richard Nixon we usually think, we don't think a lot of nuclear war or threats of nuclear war.
President Nixon - Nuclear Negotiations: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As you know, the Soviet American talks on limiting nuclear arms have been deadlocked for over a year. As a result of negotiations involving the highest level of both governments, I am announcing today a significant development in breaking the deadlock. The governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, after reviewing the course of their talks on the limitation of strategic armaments, [00:02:00] have agreed to concentrate this year on working out an agreement for the limitation of the deployment of anti ballistic missile systems, ABMs.
They have also agreed that together with concluding an agreement to limit ABMs, They will agree on certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons. If we succeed, this joint statement, that has been issued today, may well be remembered. As the beginning of a new era in which all nations will devote more of their energies and their resources, not to the weapons of war, but to the works of peace.
Vin: We think it was a period of detente. And in fact, Nixon we think of arms control because Nixon signed the SALT Treaty and the ABM Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention. He was the [00:03:00] president when the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was ratified and when SALT II talks began. But the reality is quite different.
And after Nixon left office Journalist Hunter Thompson wrote, quote, it's probably a good thing in retrospect, that only a very few people in this country understood the gravity of Richard Nixon's mental condition during his last year in the white house. There were moments in that year when even his closest friends and advisors were convinced that the president of the United States was so crazy with rage and booze and suicidal despair that he was only two martinis away from losing his grip entirely and suddenly locking himself.
in his office long enough to make that single telephone call that would have launched enough missiles and bombers to blow up the whole world off its axis, or at least kill 100 million people. And that first occasion happens in 1969 when a US spy plane was downed in North Korea over the Sea of Japan, killing 31 Americans.[00:04:00]
And George Carver, the CIA's top Vietnam specialist at the time recalled that, quote, Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike. The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked him to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them and they agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning.
If the president had his way, Henry Kissinger was known to say, there would be a nuclear strike each week. And this continued with Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger attempted to lever concessions with this madman theory to try to convince the world that he was so crazy about, and he would use nuclear weapons, that it would somehow get other countries to, , stop acting in certain ways and behaving in certain ways.
And they began planning for this massive shock and awe military operation that was in the White House, referred to as Duck Hook. And the initial duck hook concept included proposals for tactical nuclear [00:05:00] strikes on targets in North Vietnam. In early October 1969, Nixon aborted the plan in part because of Hanoi's refusal to back down, concerns about US public reaction, anti war protests, and Internal dissent within the administration, but he continued on this path.
Nixon and Kissinger Clip: I still think we ought to take the dikes up, Tom. You're letting drowned people catch on to other people. Well, no, no, no, no, no, I thought it was just a nuclear bomb. That's, that's right. That's what you were supposed to do.
Big Henry for Christ's sake.
Vin: And in fact, he said, he told Henry Kissinger once quote, I don't give a damn about salt. I just couldn't care less about it. And he privately explained that I don't think it makes a whole hell of a lot of difference. In 1972, Nixon told Kissinger speaking about Vietnam. Quote, we're going to [00:06:00] do it. I'm going to destroy the goddamn country.
Believe me, I mean, destroy it if it's necessary. And let me say, even with nuclear weapons, by a nuclear weapon, I mean that we will bomb the living bejesus out of North Vietnam. And then if somebody interferes, we will threaten them with nuclear weapons. A week later, he continued Nixon. I'd rather use the nuclear bomb.
Have you got that ready? Kissinger, that I think would be just too much. Nixon, a nuclear bomb, does that bother you? I just want to think big. Henry, for Christ's sake, the only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You are so goddamn concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn.
I don't care. Kissinger, I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher. And so learning this, I'm In hearing this, the lessons to me seem quite clear. One, that no individual, whether it be a Democrat or a Republican, a [00:07:00] Nixon or Obama, should have the ability to end life on the planet by themselves.
Especially one like Nixon, who simply cannot stop boozing. So while I'm sure I didn't blow the mind of our guests, who we're going to get to shortly how much of this did you know? Going in, Ola, about Nixon and his predilection to wanting to use nuclear weapons.
Ola: Very little. I didn't even know about Duckhook and it's supposed to be my wheelhouse. But the thing that really, really struck me was His reliance on trying to use nuclear weapons to bomb a country and then also use it to shield the aggression in that country. So threatening nuclear detonations on other countries that disagree with the bombing of Vietnam.
That sounds scarily similar. To the strategy of nuclear coercion that we're seeing today, especially in the context of Ukraine, where although [00:08:00] a nuclear weapon hasn't been used by Russia yet, they are clearly threatening some sort of nuclear retaliation to anyone who interferes. So there's some parallels in history and today, and that's quite, you know, mind boggling to think of a U.
S. president, you know, setting that precedent. There's
Vin: Arguably nobody but and I think we need to find a person better to kind of get their opinion on this and talk about this in our guest. So let's let's not wait any longer. Let's introduce our guest here Michael All right. Michael Koncewicz is a political historian who is the associate director of NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge.
He previously worked for the National Archives at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, contributing to the museum's Watergate exhibit. He is currently working on the authorized biography of Tom Hayden, scheduled to be published by the University of California Press in 2026. His first book they said no to Nixon.
Republicans who stood up to the president's abuses of power was published in 2018. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, [00:09:00] the Nation, the Washington Post. Welcome Michael to Minds Blow.
Tom Hayden Obituary: Also breaking overnight, the passing of anti war activist turned politician Tom Hayden. He was a member of the famed Chicago 7 who organized rallies at the Democratic National Convention. He was later a California lawmaker for nearly two decades and was married to Jane Fonda for 17 years. Tom Hayden died in Santa Monica after a long illness.
He was 76 years old.
Vin: it must be pretty surreal to be writing a book.
Tom Hayden right now the student activists, if you will, in American history who is so heavily involved with 1968, especially in Columbia, and now seeing the student protests going on today. So before we get into specifics, what are your general thoughts as somebody who's been knee deep in this research, writing about this period of history and this individual and then seeing.
In real time, what's happening today?,
Michael: thanks Vin for that question. I've been working on this [00:10:00] biography as I believe you, you know, I've been working on it for about two years and interviewed more than 200 friends and family members of of Tom Hayden. , what came out a lot out a lot, quite a bit in the early interviews was where is the anti war movement?
You know, why? Why are young people who are participating in a lot of social movements that have sprung up over the last five to 10 years? Why don't they care that much about foreign policy? Well, that's changed quite a bit over the last six to seven months. And of course, the Israel's bombing campaign of Gaza is a major reason for that.
So yeah, over the last several weeks, it has been a Fascinating to watch both the similarities and differences between protests springing up, not just at Columbia, but all over the country, and what was going on in 1968. And 69 and 70, I mean, you brought up Operation Duckhook. One of the reasons that that has reigned in is because of the anti [00:11:00] war movement having historic protests in the fall of 69.
We often think of 68 as the peak, or to cite Hunter S. Thompson again, the crest of the wave, you know. I mean, most anti war activists went on to say, Out on the streets in 69, 70 and 71. I bring that up because who knows if this is the peak of, of a new anti war movement. But yes, it has been remarkable to watch this.
You know, as someone who's been knee deep in, , this the history of the social movements of the 60s through the kind of the story of Tom Hayden. It's been very encouraging to see a new generation of peace activists mobilizing in pretty creative ways to try to stop a, new war in the 21st century.
Ola: So thank you so much for that, Michael. ,
do these protests truly make a difference in shaping public policy and societal attitudes or do they not?
Michael: Another important question. I mean, we really will not know the full impact Sadly of these [00:12:00] protests for decades. When it comes to the Vietnam era, I think the immediate impact was felt with, I mean, a president deciding to not seek another term.
, I'm talking about Lyndon Johnson, you know, when he drops out of the 1968 campaign. , that's a pretty direct link to anti war protests, shaping or reshaping the political culture, practically forcing a president out of office with Nixon, though, we got a taste of it in terms of the Watergate scandal, which would not have happened without an anti war movement.
It really begins. In many ways with the release of the Pentagon papers in 1971 and Daniel Ellsberg, who decides to become an anti war activist. But we find out more about Nixon in the Vietnam war decades later with the release of new records, we find out that he was closely monitoring anti war protests, and this is especially true in the fall of 1969, but it continues throughout his presidency, but in the fall of 69, there's a panic in the White House because.[00:13:00]
It's not just long haired student radicals who are out on the streets. There are so called quote unquote ordinary Americans. And there's this real concern that more respectable kind of liberal or perhaps even apolitical types who are turned off by the war are marching the streets with student radicals.
Those activists who were organizing those protests did not know the full extent of Nixon's paranoia and concern about the anti war movement in 69 70. I've talked to many people who have said that they had practically given up on anti war activism in the winter of 69 70. Because you had these historic protests, millions of people participating in the moratorium against the Vietnam War in the fall of 69, and then nothing seemingly changes.
They do not know that, well, one, they have prevented a massive bombing campaign, perhaps even the use of nuclear weapons that could have saved, you know, potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives, not [00:14:00] more. They did not know that, and they did not find out about that until years later. So the lesson is, is, you know, you, I think it's almost always fair to assume you're having some sort of an impact.
You may not discover that till decades later. And that's something that I think, you know, Tom Hayden is one of the co founders of SDS and lifelong peace activists. I think it's something he fully appreciated throughout his life. He was someone who was always rather optimistic about the impact that social movements could have on mainstream politics.
And so I think that's a lesson for today's activists who may think that they're being ignored. But that they should not, they should not ignore even small incremental changes in rhetoric. I'm
Vin: glad you mentioned the the whole thing of ordinary folks and radicals, because there are some scholars, I know from my conversation with Tom that he didn't like this kind of analogy, but they would say that there was the good sixties and the bad sixties.
Right. That the good sixties [00:15:00] was when you had kids that were had, you know, shorter hair and they were wearing suits and registering voters and they were in the Peace Corps. And it was, you know, very much. What can I do for my country from Kennedy? And then you had the bad sixties, which was long haired hippies and drugs and, you know, radicals .
And I see today from Hillary Clinton going on TV and saying, these kids don't know what they're talking about. They're not educated to trying to find the most outlandish kid you can find in a protest with the, you know, I don't know the drums and the devil's stick. And, you know, they're like, Oh, see, they're just a bunch of clowns.
We don't know, uh, very much at all about the history of the Middle East or frankly about history, um, in many areas, uh, of the world, including in our own country.
Vin: What did you see in your research of the sixties about that idea of kind of the more radical the movement got, the more isolating it got from mainstream America versus kind of what you see today in these kids and how they're being portrayed.
Michael: Well, as always, it's a complicated question. [00:16:00] What I will say is that there were very similar discussions, particularly in 1968 and 1969. I think after Richard Nixon is elected, you see a greater willingness from liberal Democrats to protest against the war. And once they start to become more involved in the anti war movement, there's this kind of larger discussion about what should anti war protests look like.
You know, there is a concerted effort to look more respectable to not adopt like radical rhetoric and it has, you know, to be fair, a certain amount of success. So it cannot be completely dismissed. Nevertheless, they're building on the foundation laid by the so called more and I'm, I'm, I'm using this term because it's more, we're having a quick discussion here, but the more radical students to quote, quote, radical who are willing to adopt more confrontational tactics and, and use more radical rhetoric even within that world, there are, as you know, Vin splits and debates [00:17:00] over, , confrontational tactics and the use of violence versus nonviolence you know, what kind of rhetoric should you use?
But let's leave that aside. In 1969, though, there are anti war protesters who want to be inviting to adults, you know, to actually bridge the generational divide. And what I will say is, compared to today, the general, the generational divide is Much more stark in the Vietnam era than it is today.
I think there's a few obvious reasons the draft for one. I mean you actually had american soldiers on the ground in vietnam it's rather heartening to see how many people care about about the war on gaza given that there are no u. s. Troops there. So that that is that is a positive Nevertheless, it's a clear difference that we need to acknowledge because it's going to explain the level of intensity of protests, which I think we're even though what we're seeing now is historic and it's [00:18:00] significant.
It's still not the same level than what we saw in the late 60s. And it's because you don't have U. S. Troops on the ground. You don't have. A family member or next door neighbor who has died in Vietnam, and so whether you are for the war against the war, trying to figure out your own thoughts on the war, that whole process was far more intense when you add a personal connection to someone who is serving overseas.
That does not exist today in the same way that it did back then. But to get back to your original question about the good 60s versus the bad 60s, that is something that throughout his life, even when he was a democratic politician, Tom Hayden pushed back on. And I think the reason being is that it was a very, well, his own personal story showed that, that narrative is way too simplistic.
People who started off in the good sixties were driven mad by the war we're driven mad by the fact that, you know, tens of thousands of Americans had died, you know, millions of Vietnamese had died. And so for [00:19:00] Tom, even if privately, he could be critical about certain tactics and could have a debate one on one with certain individuals, friends who he thought went off, you know, the deep end for lack of a better phrase.
He always recognized that the starting point of. Of any sort of analysis of the social movement of that era or any era was the war. It was the war It was violence overseas and also violence at home And you cannot understand the so called good or bad 60s without using that as your starting point And if you use that as your starting point, then you can have a much more sophisticated discussion about which tactics work And , what's the path forward in order to create a better foreign policy?
Ola: Thank you so much for that. Michael . So as we've been talking about the sixties, we saw. Rise of the quote unquote, new left, a broad political movement that sought to address issues beyond traditional labor concerns, focusing instead on civil [00:20:00] rights, anti war activism and social justice.
And a key player in this new movement was the students for a democratic society. So the SDS, which became one of the more prominent activist organizations advocating for what some might say were radical changes in American society and vocally opposing the Vietnam War. So could you provide some insight into the new left and the role of the SDS within this movement?
And how specifically did the SDS contribute to anti war protests that shaped the objectives of the new left?
Michael: , SDS Students for a Democratic Society, is founded at the beginning of the 1960s. It's originally an offshoot of a so called Old Left organization. It was the Student League for Industrial Democracy, part of the League for Industrial Democracy.
When I use the term Old Left, that's rooted in the first half of the 20th century, more focused on issues surrounding class. And what happened is that University of Michigan [00:21:00] you had a few students who wanted to create a new organization using the funds and resources of this old left organization, and that eventually became Students for a Democratic Society that was started by Al Haber at the University of Michigan.
He recruits several student leaders. One of them was Tom Hayden, who is a. the then editor for the Michigan Daily at the time. If you were the editor of a school newspaper, you were seeing as this kind of, you know, young, ambitious person who was interested in politics. And so the two of them and others go around the country and start to recruit student leaders.
And most of these people are inspired by, actually, all of them are inspired by the civil rights movement, which had reached a new stage in the early 1960s, the sit in movement had sprung up in 1960. And so these. Predominantly white northern students were very inspired by what they saw as a direct confrontation of the Jim Crow south.
Tom Hayden: So we can [00:22:00] never forget. That, of course, it was the Vietnamese resistance and their sacrifice that led to our awakening, along with the civil rights movement at home. It began with handfuls of young people, black students who led Freedom Rides, sit ins. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the first to resist the war.
Julian Bond, who's sitting here, was rejected after being elected to the Georgia legislature. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing titles. It also began with the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, growing out of teach ins, out of SDS that called the first march, the draft resistance. There had never been a peace movement like the one in 1965 that arose out of the Civil Rights Movement and came just weeks after Selma.. . . . .
Michael: , by
1962, what SDS is, is a small, [00:23:00] but increasingly influential network of liberal, progressive, left minded, Activists across the country. Their numbers are small. It's maybe a few thousand by 1962 63. But what happens is by the mid 1960s, when the escalation when Lyndon Johnson decides to escalate the war in Vietnam, it becomes the central level.
Organization for any college student who wants to oppose the war. And that's because SDS actually decides, even though there's a debate about this, there were some students, including Tom who initially wanted to focus more on community organizing. Tom was Tom Hayden was a community organizer in Newark.
There was a project called ERAP where students actually went into urban areas to try to help solve issues surrounding poverty. So those students thought that perhaps organizing against the war. In '64 '65 might be a distraction or might take away too many resources. Nevertheless, they are on the losing side of this internal debate.
The [00:24:00] majority supports a national demonstration against the Vietnam War. And that that takes place in April 1965, very early on in the war, and they actually surprise themselves when they get 25, 000 activists to descend in Washington, D. C. And this is this is historic. It's the largest protest, at least since the 1890s against an American war.
And so SDS, if you're a college student on campus and you're concerned about Vietnam, SDS for a few years from the mid to late 1960s becomes the main organization. And at its peak, it has roughly about 100, 000 students across the country. Kind of eerily similar to what you see with the DSA today, Democratic Socialist America, another, you know, kind of decades old organization that rebrands himself in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016.
And it's not just young people, but it's predominantly young people that have kind of created this new generation [00:25:00] of DSA in American politics, and I think they're currently somewhere between 70 and 90,000 members. But where SDS goes, I think is important because by the end of the 1960s they start to drift away from anti war organizing.
And start to split into various sectarian. There's a lot of sectarian battles, and I won't go into the step by step story about the descent of the of SDS, but by 1969, they split off into various radical factions, the most famous one eventually becomes the weather underground, and they, organize, you know, bombings in order , to protest the Vietnam War and SDS at the national level, And that's an important part at the national level collapses in 1969, just as the anti war movement is noticeably expanding.
And it's something that many SDS activists lament because they fall apart just as the rest of the country had more or less caught up to them. You know, it took four or five years, four or five [00:26:00] years of organizing. And so many of these people were either exhausted or driven to adopt more radical analysis.
But they see this as a missed opportunity where they could have potentially mobilized The majority of the country into anti war activism. And so that's that's the general story of SDS chapters remain in the United States into the early 1970s, but it is, you know, kind of in many ways, the vanguard student organization of the Vietnam era.
And when it collapses, it does leave a void at the university level in terms of keeping students connected in some sort of United way.
Vin: I want to turn specifically to Columbia for a couple of reasons.
AJ+ Columbia Protests: This isn't the first time Columbia University students were arrested for protesting war. In the 1960s, Columbia University students led a historic protest that ended in mass arrest. We occupied and barricaded five buildings. We prevented classes from going forth. Journalist Juan Gonzalez was a student leader at [00:27:00] Columbia during the protest that shut down the school for a week.
It's very similar to what is happening here today. Back in 1968, students were protesting the Vietnam War, which would go on to kill 3. 8 million Vietnamese people and some 58, 000 Americans. At Columbia, hundreds demonstrated after learning the school secretly partnered with a Washington think tank that conducted military weapons research.
The most important thing is having the courage to stand up and defy what you believe to be unjust policies. It's a badge that you carry with you for the rest of your life.
Vin: There's that, that iconic picture of Tom helping the other person get into occupy the building.
And now you have Heinz Hall and. What your, or what Tom's thoughts were and what was going on back then as far as the occupation of a building in terms of strategy and things like that compared to today, the other piece I wanted to ask you about with Columbia is there was, there's this idea of [00:28:00] where Columbia University is physically located in New York.
And the money that it brings in compared to the neighborhood in which it, you know, occupies and who it displaced when it was first built the same, what we kind of look at with John Hopkins university, where they're in Baltimore in this economically depressed area after this, super wealthy, , school that gets more money from the defense industry than from tuition.
So, Your thoughts kind of then and now specifically relating to Columbia university and what's going on.
Michael: So the Columbia student revolt comes about in the spring of 1968. Tom Hayden is there. He sneaks in, he's an outside agitator who at the time is, Living in Newark as a community organizer. He's about to move to Chicago to start preparing for the Democratic National Convention that was going to take place that August.
So like I said, another connection since we have a Democratic National Convention that as of right now is still scheduled to be in Chicago. But Tom is there and he, he goes [00:29:00] into Columbia because he recognizes it as the next stage. In student. Activism. Aside from SDS, you had other. Major moments in student activism in the 1960s, as both, you may know, you had the free speech movement that disrupts, , UC Berkeley's campus for, for months.
And this, this is a, a protest that starts over tabling students having the right to actually set up a table to promote their causes. It actually
Vin: brings, it's the one issue of free speech that brought the right and left together on Berkeley's campus, right? Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it brought, you know new left kids together with, , people who are working with the Young Americans for Freedom group.
And, student organizing is, is reaching a new stage, though, in 1968, with SDS exploding across the country. And And students becoming more restless about the Vietnam War. I mean, by 1968, we're entering the third year of the war. Students are willing to take [00:30:00] more take on more confrontational kind of approaches.
And so at Columbia, you had a plan to build a gymnasium in Morningside Heights, a predominantly African American neighborhood. And many students particularly black students were upset about that. You also had students who by 1968 are. Promoting the fact that Columbia is taking a lot of money from the defense department and they were not alone.
I mean, Columbia is one of dozens of campuses that are taking in a substantial amount of money for weapons related research. As I cover my first book, M. I. T. Is the number one recipient. And eventually you have anti war protests at M. I. T. In 1969, but in Columbia. You have this kind of double campaign that's coupled together against the gym that's being constructed in Morningside Heights and against the university's connection to the military industrial complex.
And that leads to weeks of protests and the occupation of several buildings in [00:31:00] Columbia that, I mean, let's be honest here, are far more kind of provocative. Even if we're talking about surface level or headlines, they're far more provocative than anything we've seen this past spring. I don't know if you'd like to have curse words on this podcast, but I mean,
M mean,
Mark Rudd, one of the student leaders of, the protests at Columbia famously borrows a phrase from H rap Brown and says up against the wall, motherfucker. They actually occupy the president's office and there's famous pictures of student leaders smoking the president's cigars
Mark Rudd Interview: Mark Rudd. He's a political activist and the leader of the 1968 Columbia protest.
What are your thoughts when you see police coming in to Columbia and to other schools like UCLA overnight to what I think the administrations are are their fundamental aim both then and now [00:32:00] is to shut the students up. Um, in our case, one difference was that we didn't hold strongly to the principle of nonviolence.
We kind of over the line with our rhetoric, calling the cops pigs and worse. We also let our anger out and we fought the cops after they attacked us. I mean, the, the bust on, on, on, on April 30th, Um, involved a thousand police beating up, uh, hundreds and hundreds of, of, of nonviolent protesters, um, and, and injuring them terribly.
These students are much smarter than we were. They are holding to the, uh, strategy of nonviolence and they're not crossing the lines. Uh, so, um, as far as outside agitators, there's always going to be people who Uh, from the outside, but listen to the students, listen to what they're saying. Now [00:33:00] they are saying we are non violent.
Michael: I think part of the reason that you have this, , it's also, there's a lot of overlap, it's not the same thing, but there's a lot of overlap between anti war activism of the late sixties and the emerging counterculture, this kind of very anti authoritarian part of American culture that's defining much of youth culture in the 1960s.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that Columbia becomes the symbol , of the broader student revolt of the late 1960s. And Tom sneaks in because he, he was someone that always wanted to be where the action was, but he also recognized that this was an important moment in the history of student activism.
It's also coming at a time where he is I think it's fair to say severely doubting any space for meaningful liberal reform, particularly when it comes to the Vietnam War. He is questioning that kind of liberal idealism that defined his early activism. Very quickly in 1968, I mean, Tom had [00:34:00] already witnessed the Newark rebellion in the summer of 1967 where, you know, I mean, you have soldiers actually marching in Newark shooting you know, black civilians he had.
Michael: visited North Vietnam actually for a second time in the fall of 1967. He actually helped release three American POWs. But prior to doing that, he once again witnessed bombing sites and saw firsthand just how the wreckage. Caused by American planes. I'm bringing this up because I think it's very easy to focus on radical rhetoric from 1968 and say, Oh, well, that's that was silly.
That was that was, you know, short sighted and wrong, but you need to place yourself within the context. And so, even though Tom Hayden, who was often described as one of the more pragmatic SDS errs, he's still going through a lot. He has seen violence in Vietnam, violence in Newark, and in the spring of '68, remember, the Columbia protests take place just weeks after Martin Luther King is killed.
Weeks [00:35:00] later, Robert F. Kennedy, who Tom Hayden admittedly romanticized because, Regardless of what he thought about the individual, he saw a working class, interracial coalition backing this new candidate who at least is saying good things about the entire war movement. He's killed in June of 1968.
And so Tom is, like I said, really kind of willing. To kind of go head to head with the U. S. War machine, and that is going to shape his actions at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. So Columbia is a big piece of that because Columbia offered up something that he thought was a better future where students would have a greater say over campus.
Life would actually be. enact Participatory democracy into campus culture, and it is one of the reasons why he used this very provocative phrase to three many Columbia's in the spring and summer of 1968 borrowing that phrase from Che Guevara, who the previous year called for 2,3 many Vietnam's. [00:36:00] He saw Columbia as the model years later.
I think he thought something different, but in the context of 1968 with where everything would start, Everything that's going on both in, you know, his own personal life, but around the world, he saw Columbia as kind of a symbol of a potential future.
Ola: In your previous response, you mentioned very briefly, another thing that happened in 1968, and that was the democratic national convention in Chicago, and you also mentioned. That this is the same location for the upcoming National Convention. And the interesting thing about the 1968 Convention was, of course, the violent clashes between protesters and the police.
And this is where the chant, the whole world is watching, sort of, you know, encapsulates that event.
Chicago 7 Trailer: You know why you're on trial here? The whole world is watching![00:37:00]
You alright? No words until I saw that. The whole world is watching!
Martin's dead. The whole world is watching! Bobby's dead. The whole world is watching! Jesus is dead. The whole world is watching! They tried it peacefully, we gonna try something else. These rebels without a job, they're a threat to national security. This revolution, we may have to hurt somebody's feelings.
When you came to Chicago, were you hoping to draw the police into a confrontation?
Ola: Now, Given the current climate of political unrest and protest today, could we see a similar [00:38:00] outcome in the upcoming elections?
Michael: We certainly could. I don't want to say that we're going to see, you know, a sequel or a carbon copy of the 1968 protests.
We very rarely do, but, but the issues are, are similar. What I will say, though, is that because of clear differences between , the Democratic Party coalition of the 1960s and the coalition today, the fractures perhaps won't be quite as deep, but given the fact that we are in such a close election, and every poll shows that it's going to be very close and it could come down to just, you know, 10, votes in a few states significant protests, in Chicago could have some sort of an impact on the election.
You cannot rule that out. But I will say that while the Vietnam War was a very important issue in Chicago in 1968, so was the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, the Democratic Party, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, that coalition is, is significantly more fragile, and it's a bit [00:39:00] more of a tenuous alliance.
And so, There's, there's a few different issues that are leading to kind of the weakness of that New Deal coalition that had shaped American politics for 30 years going into the 1968 convention. So , that's one clear difference. The other is we, well, we don't know what Joe Biden will do between now and August.
I think the idea that Lyndon Johnson could fully pull the United States out of Vietnam that summer was there's signs that he was trying. But, , it was a far more difficult task, given that you had hundreds of thousands of U. S. troops on the ground. And you always, of course, had concerns about Relations with the Soviet Union and China.
This is a different situation. And so it's, it remains to be seen what Joe Biden feels like he can do and what he will do between well, May of 2024 and, and, and August. So. I guess that's a long way of saying I don't know as a historian. I hesitate to predict. But what I [00:40:00] will say is that there is clearly a lot of momentum for anti war protests to to occur in Chicago.
There's also, even though there's, I guess, less blatant, grotesque police violence that you had in the 1960s, you have far more far more militarized police presence and far more surveillance. What will that lead to? I don't know. But it has, you know, it has led to very similar looking images that are still I, I guess a little, the differences, the differences matter, the differences should not be ignored, but the echoes are pretty eerie.
I'm just, as a historian, I'm always hesitant to like fully embraced similarities.
Vin: Definitely in tune with that or in touch with that as a historian do you think, that what happened with the anti war movement did play a role in getting Nixon elected? Did Tom think that or is that again, way too simplistic of a way to look [00:41:00] at things. It's easy to go back in hindsight. What else were they supposed to do if RFK was not killed, that would have obviously changed things.
But I'm just curious for those that are thinking already, if there's a mass protest movement against Biden, , is it helping Trump get in power? That's the wrong way to go. Cause as bad as Humphrey was, he wasn't Nixon.
Michael: I'm still wrestling with those questions to be quite candid with you.
What I will say is to I'll return to my previous answer is Tom always centered those who were in power as the beginning of the story. That doesn't leave social movements out of the story because they, of course, are very important, but. I think he, his tendency was to always push back against some of his contemporaries, you know, not to pick on him, but Todd Gitlin a scholar of, of, you know, a sociologist who comes from SDS.
He was one of the leaders, actually former president of SDS becomes a very renowned [00:42:00] scholar scholar of, of media and protests. He writes this definitive book about the sixties. It's called the sixties. And the tone of it is just filled. It's just filled with regrets about. Missed opportunities and mistakes that were made, and it's born out of his own personal experiences, but Tom Hayden would always push back against kind of the narrative pushed forward by Todd Gitlin and others who said, you know, we, we really messed up in 1968.
You know, we should have embraced Hubert Humphrey. And then we could have prevented. Richard Nixon from ever coming into office and maybe even prevent the rise of conservatism in America. So that narrative is out there and it's quite powerful. And at the surface level, you can see why it's, it's convincing.
Nevertheless, it ignores, you know, kind of long term structural forces that I don't think we have time to talk talk about here. It also, like I said, it just leaves out any responsibility that Lyndon Johnson has, or even Hubert Humphrey. I mean, many [00:43:00] people have pointed out that Hubert Humphrey's poll numbers actually improve once he starts to distance himself from Lyndon Johnson's support of the Vietnam War.
If he did that earlier, that could have made a difference. So what I would encourage is is people to, if, if they want to adopt a kind of critical take on the 68ers, the protesters who maybe didn't see the full extent of their actions, fine. But also, like I said, make sure that Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and the people who are actually Carrying out the war are also part of that analysis, and I think that's something that that Tom Hayden thought to there were there were signs later in his life that he he maybe had some regrets about, you know, how the movement talked about Hubert Humphrey.
But it's not something that he he dwelled on, and it's not something that he saw much use in promoting and and that was his own perspective. I mean, I think Tom was much more of a [00:44:00] kind of a pamphleteer, someone of a promoter of causes and in a great way. I think his analysis was spot on is that you always have to begin with the war makers.
, They are at least the central drivers of the outcome of 1968. And then also the poll numbers from the summer of 1968, tell a far more complicated story. You don't see a major shift after Chicago. Humphrey was already a little bit behind Nixon. So it's not like this was going to be easy campaign for him.
I mean, he's, he's the vice president for a president who's leading an unpopular war. I think there's a much more convincing case to be made that there was this general. Backlash against social unrest and perhaps even the urban uprisings in the 1960s, then, a, a few days of protests in Chicago as significant as they were, and they have may have played.
They make that they probably played some sort of a factor. I just like to push back against any narrative that says violence in Chicago caused by the [00:45:00] protesters led to Richard Nixon being elected. It's a factor, but I encourage other people to it to look at other cases. Individuals, movements, and social trends.
Ola: Hayden's legacy continues to be relevant in discussions about social justice and activism. What do you think Tom Hayden would make of today's social and political landscape, given that there isn't a single prominent figure like him today? Do you see this as a positive or a negative development for contemporary activism?
Michael: Oh, that's, that's a very hard question. That, I mean, that we could take up a whole hour about, you know, the issue of leaders and structure and horizontalism.
Anyways what I think he would think well, I would say that publicly he would, he would praise today's protesters and he would point out, as some other SDSers have already, have [00:46:00] Pointing out that they are perhaps smarter and more media savvy and even maybe more creative but they're also facing arguably , a more daunting challenge that a lot of peace activists face in the 21st century.
So I think , any analysis today in 2024 would be filled with a lot of praise. I think privately, he would probably, you know, Be interested in engaging with many of today's protesters. There would probably be even some debates about tactics and messaging. You know, I think in his later years, he, liked to not fully embrace, you know, purposely confrontational, like rhetoric.
But I think there would be a lot of patience and a lot of like I said, a lot of really interesting passionate interactions with today's protesters. Now on the issue of leadership. As one of the leaders of SDS, Tom and others in the 1960s, you know, they called for participatory democracy and their version of participatory democracy [00:47:00] sought to de emphasize the need for leaders.
Nevertheless, it's the 1960s. So there were still plenty of white male new left leaders. There's a great CBS documentary about the new left. That's fascinating. But one clear thing that you cannot ignore is they interview 15 individuals. And 14 out of the 15 are white guys in their 20s. The, the only person who's not a white guy is Fannie Lou Hamer famed civil rights activists and singer.
But everyone else is like you know, it's Tom Hayden, it's Robert Shear, it's Carl Oglesby, you just go down the list. It's, you know, charismatic, very, you know, inspirational guys, but they are, they are white guys based on college campuses or mostly college campuses. So I think This was an issue that Tom really kind of went back and forth on throughout his life, as many movement leaders do.
I think by the 1970s, he was so exhausted. By self criticism sessions and [00:48:00] any attempt to kind of deemphasize the need for leaders that by the late 1970s, he started to argue for the importance of leaders. He does this at an SDS reunion where they're, they're entering middle age and he's saying, why didn't we have more leaders?
Why couldn't we have a greater space for leaders? Nevertheless, I think he always saw that social movements. Particularly early on, need to have the freedom to operate without kind of very well defined structures. Tom, in addition to being a participant, was a scholar of social movements, and so I think he would always try to look at this in an even handed scholarly way.
But it was shaped by his own personal experiences as this, you know, charismatic white male new left leader who people would often question. You know, why is that guy the leader and not me? Or why do we even have a leader? And, you know, I think those discussions remain in American left spaces and and arguably around the world in terms of [00:49:00] how much structure do you need and how much structure do you need?
You know, what's what are the kind of strengths and maybe even pitfalls of horizontal organizing? That's something that I think has been quite prevalent in American left spaces, particularly since occupy the occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, which were very defined , as a leaderless, , Movement.
But I think there are a lot of American activists, even young ones who recognize that there are limitations to what you can actually achieve in American politics without some sort of structure. And Tom certainly recognized that
Vin: in his later
Michael: years,
Vin: I've done a lot of. , thinking about the comparisons of occupy to what we're seeing today.
And , that Ella Baker approach or that horizontal approach you're talking about. And that was something I was very critical of when occupy came out, that there was no leader, no hierarchy. I know they want to be, but everything had to be Mike checked and everything had to go through, , all these voting and it didn't seem like there was a, a set amount of demands.
And so what I see today is so much more [00:50:00] organized in terms of having a media tent and having a medical tent and then having like. Demands of divestment and ceasefire. , it does seem, you know, that they were preparing for a long time for this moment and how they were going to handle it. So, yeah, I think that's really important.
Michael: Yeah, I think it's fair to say that some of that spirit, that kind of Ella Baker Baker occupy spirit remains in today's activism, but it has been modified. And so that's that's encouraging to see, because I think that that's a sign of pragmatism that's guiding today's protests.
Vin: One thing that we also saw in the sixties that we don't see as much today is, you know, You had mentioned the culture and especially I think of music and artists and how important that was in the sixties and how today so much music is very apolitical, Seeing or hearing Macklemore come out with Hind's Hall and how that's been embraced by this.
And so I just wondered what your thought was or on the kind of culture in terms of [00:51:00] music back then. And then that kind of lack thereof that we see today
Michael: You had a very clear black and white generational divide in the 1960s, where, you know, if you were a, an 18 year old at Columbia, your, your music collection was dramatically different from your 45 year old parents. That's probably still a little true these days, but It's not nearly as dramatic these days.
I think musicians, whether they're musicians or filmmakers or, television producers, they're far more interested. And I think well, for one, our media landscape is far more fragmented. And so I think pop culture is, is radically different than it was in the 1960s where you had these clear choices.
You either listen to this or you listen to this, you know, you either listen to, listen to Jimi Hendrix or you, you buy the, The Ballad of the Green Berets by Sergeant Barry Sadler. Yeah. I mean, that's just a very extreme [00:52:00] example, but still, you get my point. There was adult music and there was youth music, and I think that's, I think, a little less dramatic these days or significantly less dramatic these days.
And I think it may partially explain why, why music is maybe a little less political. I mean, side note, I think it's also really hard to write an effective political song. Like,
Vin: I'm sorry, a price to pay. Right. We saw what happened to Dixie chicks, Dixie chicks during the hour. Right. And so, yeah, I think there's also unless you are able to put out independently or, you know, or if you want to get on a label or you want to get those streams that, that, you know, there is a price to pay, but we did see while there's this, you know, Everybody's paying attention over here to this.
ridiculous beef of Kendrick and Drake, you have Macklemore saying, no, I'm going to do this. This is what we should be doing and seeing, , the success of it. So, , it is quite different from the 60s where it kind of was everywhere you turned you, you had a political message in a lot of this music.
Michael: Yeah, and I think there's also [00:53:00] economic reasons for this, you know, I mean, whether it's the music or film industry, , there was, it was a bit more freewheeling and supportive of experimentation on several fronts, and that included political activism in the 1960s and 70s with The consolidation of the music industry and the film industry, there's not really as much room to take chances to you know, well, if you're a musician, you're, you're not making as much money from album sales, so you kind of have to cling, unless you're at the elite of the music industry, you have kind of have to, you know, make sure you're not pissing off that many people.
I realize that's a generalization, but I think it's largely true in the 21st century. So I think there's that too. Yeah. What I think is really interesting, though, is that as someone who's listened to the Nixon tapes quite a bit too many, Nixon is also trying to understand changes in youth culture.
And is very distressed by like , what kids look like, what they're listening to what TV shows pop up on, you know, on the three major networks. [00:54:00] And so he is certainly lumping it together with his, his concerns about the new left.
Vin: What do you think about in, , as years went on, how that anti war movement and those people , are viewed today and you know, where, where we think , this movement will go, maybe how they'll be viewed, , in the history books years from now that you were part of this, , movement to stop a genocide in Gaza.
Michael: Historians are, are, you know, usually hesitant to, to predict the future. What I will say is by studying the 60s generation is no matter what, we can't forget that most, or at least a large number of today's peace activists will remain in progressive causes. And that's, that's a trend that cannot be ignored.
The surface level kind of really, well, this really superficial narrative about baby boomers in the 1960s is that they protested against the Vietnam War. They fought for civil rights and then they sold out once Reagan became president. And there's certainly some prominent examples [00:55:00] of that that, you can't dispute.
But what is also true is that if you look at just the numbers of SDSers, the number of, you know, these white Northern kids who went down South and then organized protests against the war, you know, fought. Injustice at home and abroad. A lot of them remained in progressive causes. And even though they perhaps weren't nearly as famous as some of these like prominent examples of, you know, hypocrites or whatever you want to call them.
They're there and they remain active even to this day in fighting for social justice. And I think that's one another difference. I pointed this out when I was talking to a reporter from the Guardian. And I think unlike the 1960s where you had this clear generational divide, you had an old left that was very hesitant.
Not all of them, but a lot of them were very hesitant to embrace anti war activism. That's less true today. And so I think what's one nice thing is you have a fair number of elders, you know, people who came of age during the Vietnam [00:56:00] era who are, who have either a sympathetic or outright supportive take on On today's peace movement.
And the reason I think that's important to bring up is that, you know, today's kids will become elders at some point. And I think it's, it's safe to assume that the experiences of today will shape their future activism.
Vin: All right. Before we let you go we always ask our guests and we also do it ourselves to give our listeners one book that you recommend.
So if you were to recommend, doesn't have to be about this topic. It can be any book you want that you would recommend to readers. What do you, or to listeners, what do you, what do you got? Oh, I'll get why you're thinking about it. Well, I've put you on the spot. I know I'll give you my, I will tell you folks that I would recommend Francis Gavin's nuclear statecraft.
That would be a lot of stuff on what we talked about Nixon in the beginning with nuclear weapons. Of course I would say, go out and get Michael's book, no to Nixon. And and also grab a, maybe Tom Hayden's rebel. Get your, get your [00:57:00] stuff going before you read Michael's great book. So
Michael: Tom, Tom wrote more than 20 books.
And so there's a lot to choose from. I would recommend, I would recommend this one. It's by a reporter by the name of Lawrence Roberts, Mayday, 1971. It tells the story of one of the largest protests of the Vietnam era that took place in May of 1971 organized by Rennie Davis, one of the, you know, Chicago eight very close friend of Tom Hayden's.
But what I think is really important about this book, it's well researched, but it also shows it's one of a few books that really shows how close just the level of attention paid to the anti war movement from the Nixon White House. It makes great use of the Nixon records that have been released over the last 10 to 15 years.
It shows you how Nixon is particularly obsessed with anti war GIs. In 1971, he recognizes how powerful of a narrative that is for the movement, and he's trying to find ways to push back [00:58:00] against that momentum. So Mayday 1971 by Lawrence Roberts.
Vin: We got, what do you got for us?
Ola: So my recommendation is not a book, of course, being a rebel. It's actually a one hour YouTube video. And it's by a lady called Leah Miller and it's titled how student protesters would save democracy.
And it's a really good exploration of, , the. Current situation of student protesters all across campuses all around the world, and I think it's a good accompaniment to our discussion today, which gives a lot more of the historical context. So, yeah, that's my recommendation for, you
Vin: know, Michael, I could do this.
We could do this all day long. But we've taken up enough of your time. So I encourage everybody to read Michael's first book. When your next book drops on Tom, we would love to have you back to promote that and get people to buy that book as well. You could follow Michael at Mike Kontowicz on Twitter and other socials.
And, we [00:59:00] just want to thank you again for, , telling our listeners, taking them down this, this path and you know, giving them a little bit of this history. Really, really appreciate your time today.
Michael: Thank you both for having me on. It was an
Vin: honor. We will end it there. So again, always thanks to Jason Lex international and our team for putting this together.
And we will be seeing you guys shortly on another podcast, looking at the history of Memorial day and looking at war memorials. And until then, thanks again for listening. Give us a follow, give us a subscribe or wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you soon. Thank you.
Ola: See you next time.
Hind's Hall Live: let's go Put those hands up The
What you willing to risk? What you willing to give? What if your kids were Gaza? What if those were their kids? If the West was pretending that you didn't exist. You want the world? [01:00:00] The students finally did.
Let's get.
My people repeat after me. Palestine. Free Palestine.