The war is in Gaza, not Vietnam, as it was when Mark Rudd became the iconic leader of the protests that rocked Columbia University more than a half century ago.
But 76-year-old Rudd says the anti-war protesters who are now encamped on a lawn in the heart of the Columbia campus share an essential motivation with those of his time.
“They’re pretty much the same as we were,” Rudd told The Daily Beast. “The basic impetus of the students, I think it’s not that complicated. It’s that they see a moral tragedy and moral crime going on, and they want to try to do something to stop it.”
Rudd says that in 1968, he and his fellow activists were driven to protest such horrors as American carpet bombing and Agent Orange defoliation.
As Rudd sees it, the current protesters feel compelled to do what they can to stop what they view as an Israeli war against a civilian population.
“For me, it’s the most normal thing in the world to look at the murder of 34,000 people and the displacement of close to 2 million in Gaza and say, ‘Hey, stop!” he said.
He has had little contact with the current protesters beyond a teach-in over Zoom that was hampered because he is hard of hearing. But he did notice there are more women leaders than there were when he was a junior and head of Students for a Democratic Society. That, he said, means fewer “guys trying to be macho.”
“There’s less potential for violence,” he said. “These protesters are more careful not to blur the line between violence and non-violence. As far as I know, they are completely non-violent.”
In his time as a macho leader, Rudd moved from campus protests to co–founding the Weather Underground to “bring the war home.” The Weathermen staged “days of rage,” smashing store windows as they rampaged through a business district in Chicago. They bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Three of them were killed when a bomb they were building in a Greenwich Village townhouse exploded.
But Rudd decided after a year that violence was not going to achieve anything and he became what he once termed “a total pacifist for completely practical reasons.” He spent seven years underground before turning himself in and serving a brief jail term. He has since moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he taught mathematics at a community college.