Student Activism Without Barricades : Absent Gunfire in the Gulf, Absent a Draft, Absent Body Bags, an Anti-war Movement has jump-started.

If President Bush goes to war against Iraq, he should count on being shadowed by a large, angry anti-war movement. Students will not necessarily lead, but commentators who see nothing but Republicans and hear nothing but silence on campuses may be surprised by the level of student activism.

The skeptics commonly invoke “the 1960s” as proof that today’s students are largely apathetic. But they wrongly compare the uncertain pre-war present to the high tide of campus protest in 1967-70, when U.S. casualties in the Vietnam War numbered in the tens of thousands. The more appropriate comparison is between today and the period stretching from 1963 through early 1965, when some 25,000 American “advisers” were in South Vietnam but the fighting was small-scale.

In 1963, there was some campus unease: The National Student Assn. condemned the repressive policies of South Vietnamese Premier Ngo Dinh Diem and supported the self-immolating Buddhists. But anti-war demonstrations were few. The war was remote, the country unmobilized and students were exempt from the draft. Even the dubious Tonkin Gulf incident and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s initial bombing of North Vietnam didn’t inspire much protest.

Not until the spring of 1965, after U.S. bombing of North Vietnam became routine, did college protest emerge as a regular feature of the political landscape. Even so, apathy on campus was the norm. That spring, though, 25,000 students marched in Washington; teach-ins began at the University of Michigan and spread to dozens of campuses--all at a time when students still felt insulated from the draft.

From then on, military deployment and anti-war demonstrations escalated in parallel. By 1969, when most students were touched by the threat of the draft (vastly more than were actually drafted), and 500,000 American troops were deployed in Vietnam, the same number of protesters marched on Washington, joined by millions from around the country.

What is striking is that today--absent a draft, absent a shooting war, absent body bags--an anti-war movement has jump-started. For all the hesitations and cross-currents, there is already more protest than meets most eyes, and in the wake of Bush’s decision to double the size of the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, it has begun to cross the media threshold.

Even before the President’s decision, teach-ins were being reinvented, sometimes by veterans of the Vietnam teach-ins of 1965, sometimes by minority faculty, sometimes by students who had never heard the term. By now, teach-ins have brought out 1,200 students at UC Santa Barbara, 400 and then 500 at UC Davis, 300 and then 900 at UC Berkeley, 300 and another 500 at San Jose State, 1,500 at the University of Michigan. Rallies have drawn 1,000 at Stanford and the University of Minnesota, 250 at Indiana, 100 at Chicago’s Loyola and 50 at Texas A&M--where; the managing editor of the student newspaper said that “the fact that it happened at all is pretty significant.” In mid-October, there were anti-war demonstrations in 20 cities. Fifteen hundred signed an anti-war petition at Notre Dame. There have been anti-war vigils at Western Michigan University, hunger strikes at Juniata College in Pennsylvania and at Stanford.

Perhaps the most remarkable protests have taken place at the University of Montana. On a cold and rainy Halloween, 600 students marched through downtown Missoula chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go, we won’t fight for Texaco,” and singing, “Give Peace a Chance.” Back on campus, they marched through school buildings and disrupted classes, sparking a controversy. But they also succeeded in getting a resolution through the student senate supporting negotiations in the Persian Gulf.

The Montana anti-war coalition embraces pro-life as well as pro-choice groups (at one meeting, they both agreed to take down their signs), fraternities, Central American, black and women activists. It has already mobilized as high as percentage of students against war as at most campuses during most of the Vietnam War. The anti-war leaders have urged their people to send gifts to the soldiers camped in the Saudi desert--a stunning turnabout from the ‘60s.

What do these students want? The consensus is simple: No war; negotiate a settlement.

“You can’t believe the government,” says Nicholas Tripcevich, 20, a journalism major. “They have ulterior motives.”

Lisa Parks, 23, a recent graduate and now a research assistant in political science, and one of the organizers of the protests, supports the U.N. economic embargo of Iraq but doesn’t think “the U.S. should be policing the world.” As for Saddam Hussein: “He is a fascist dictator, a torturer.” But she is unequivocal about wanting the American troops out, perhaps to be replaced by U.N. forces.

None of this is to say that the majority of students are anti-war--or pro-war. While campus groups have organized to send gifts to the troops, few campuses have seen vociferous pro-war sentiment. The more common reactions are bafflement, concern, ambivalence, apprehension lest the draft return and annoyance that the prospect of war may disrupt personal plans.

The prospect of war is not on every lip; as usual, many students do not follow the news much. “The thing that upsets me,” says Rosa Ehrenreich, an organizer of Harvard protests, “is that Harvard students just aren’t worried about the possibility of a war occurring. They say that Harvard students are the future leaders of the world, but I think it would be nice if they paid more attention to important world issues now.”

Where are the 1960s activists? Anti-war Vietnam vets mobilized quickly. Ron Kovic, the most celebrated, speaks at rallies and has taped an anti-war TV spot. On Dec. 3, 80 Bay Area anti-war veterans blocked morning traffic into the Alameda Air Station; 16 were arrested. Their coalition, which includes Republicans, continues and expands; future actions are planned. Veterans of the anti-war movement, many of them now faculty, have spoken at teach-ins and counseled students on tactics. Some parents have encouraged their student sons and/or daughters to take action.

But many veterans of the ‘60s anti-war movement, especially men, were late to oppose the U.S. deployment in the gulf--as long as it was small, tied to U.N. sanctions, nominally defensive and multilateral. Furthermore, the vicious Hussein could never be kindly old Uncle Saddam. Many former anti-war activists thus felt caught between paradigms--wondering whether the closer analog was World War II or Vietnam, collective security or U.S. aggression. Protectiveness toward Israel played a part in muting protest as well. Some early protesters alienated potential support by refusing to condemn the seizure of Kuwait.

But as the military deployment swells, especially after the midterm elections, many activists who had supported the defense of Saudi Arabia in August were changing their minds in November. If the U.S. objective was to stop aggression, they asked, why not keep up the sanctions, enforce them with troops under U.N. command and contain Hussein?

As in Vietnam, it is not elite students, or their friends or relatives, who are slogging through the Arabian sand. But new anti-war fronts have mobilized, partly because of the changing profile of student activism since the ‘60s and partly because of the unisex and disproportionately black armed forces. Women and minorities are conspicuous in the anti-war leadership; so are students at non-elite colleges, where many reservists began to question the saintliness of U.S. foreign policy.

The protests are centered in the West and Midwest, where anti-war sentiment traditionally ran strong before the Cold War. Still, today, a troubled economy discourages many students from stepping out of line. The prospect of war is not the same as war--most students do not disrupt their lives because of even odds. But these factors will not keep the campuses from exploding if U.S. forces go to war.

True, most students might well support the President in the early days of a shooting war--just as most students supported Johnson’s escalation in 1965. But if body bags start arriving at Dover Air Force Base, student bodies will quickly polarize, with the potential for violent clashes. Anti-war sentiment will mushroom, taking a variety and sometimes a muddle of forms--pacifist, multilateralist, anti-imperialist, isolationist, even anti-Semitic (unfortunately, there are already those who mutter about the prospect of “Jew war”).

Still, as in the mid-but-not-late ‘60s, most of today’s student anti-warriors are sophisticated about cementing alliances on a single common principle: prevent war. Unlike their ‘60s counterparts, they start with the understanding that America is not their enemy (the public is divided about the wisdom of going to war in the gulf). Some radicals, meanwhile, want to seize the chance to change the overall political temper, but the majority of student activists will be content to secure peace.

The Montana experience suggests how quickly militancy can escalate even on a campus where many, perhaps most, students are apathetic. And, of course, campuses will not be the only sites of protest. Minorities are already in evidence at anti-war rallies; churches will mobilize, too.

Lisa Parks at Montana says: “I know a lot of people who are against the Bush Administration’s deployment, but until an actual shot is fired, those people will not come out of their closets. ‘I’m not going to demonstrate until people start dying’--they’ve told me that. Which I think is idiocy. If we do go to a full-fledged war, it’ll be interesting to see them join us.” The Montana protesters already have a plan: As soon as the first shot is fired, boycott classes and march to City Hall. The same idea is circulating around the country.