1968 - Education

Education

Ireland's minister for education Donagh O'Malley dies suddenly at his native Limerick March 10 at age 46, but the government will implement his vision for free secondary education (see 1967).

French universities have turbulent disorders; President de Gaulle appoints former agriculture minister Edgar (-Jean) Faure, 59, minister of education, Parlement enacts a new law to reform higher education, and Faure will transform the nation's university system within a year, whereupon he will be named minister of state for social affairs (see Lille, 1970).

U.S. universities shut down as students demonstrate against the Vietnam War.

Militant Columbia University students shut down the school to protest its involvement in the war and its construction of a gymnasium in an area needed for low-cost housing. The protesters include members of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and black activists H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. Evanston, Ill.-born political scientist David (Bicknell) Truman, 54, has been provost since last year and has liberalized rules governing the 17,500-student campus, speaking out for civil rights, instituting a 2-week break between the end of classes and final exams, allowing men to close their doors when they had women in their rooms, and challenging his colleague Jacques Barzun's assertion that the liberal arts are "dead or dying." Gym construction is halted April 25, but students led by Mark Rudd, 20, of the SDS take over five buildings in a week-long sit-in, demanding amnesty for protesters; Truman calls in the police, they storm the buildings April 30 after wanton destruction of property and make 628 arrests; classes are formally suspended May 5, and a second occupation of Hamilton Hall ends with a police raid May 22, 17 officers are injured, 81 students. A commission appointed by the faculty reports later in the year that "the seizure of the buildings was not simply the work of a few radicals" but "involved a significant portion of the student body who had become disenchanted with the operation of their university."

San Francisco State College students strike November 6, demanding open admission and a Third World Studies Department. The college is closed November 19 following daily confrontations between students and police. Semanticist S. I. Hayakawa is named president of the college, reopens it December 2, then closes it early for the Christmas vacation to avoid having high school students join the protest. The strike will continue for 5 months.

Helen Keller dies after a mild stroke at Westport, Conn., June 1 at age 87, having had earlier diabetes-related strokes; educator Carleton W. Washburne of 1919 Winnetka Plan fame dies at Okemos, Mich., November 17 at age 78.