On May 10, the history department hosted a teach-in panel about past protests on Dartmouth’s campus. Three history professors highlighted several protests in Dartmouth’s history that resulted in peaceful reactions from the administration.
The panel featured professors Edward Miller, Annelise Orleck — who was among the 89 people arrested at the pro-Palestinian protest on the Green on May 1 — and Julia Rabig. Approximately 175 people attended the event in Filene Auditorium while an additional 15 streamed the teach-in on Zoom, according to history department administrator Bruch Lehmann.
Miller — who opened the event with introductory remarks — said the panel was part of the department’s “ongoing response” to May 1.
“The mass arrests of Dartmouth students, faculty, staff and other community members on May 1 have raised all kinds of really pressing questions about protests, dissent, free speech and leadership at Dartmouth over the last 10 days,” Miller said. “Our event tonight aims to contribute to these conversations about these important questions.”
The panel came after the history department published an open statement to Beilock, Provost David Kotz and Dean of the Faculty Elizabeth Smith on its department website on May 3. The statement condemned the arrests and the administration’s claims that its reaction was “necessary to ensure safety and peace.”
“As historians, we also note that this decision [to resort to police violence] represents a radical break with Dartmouth’s long-standing pattern of seeking to promote community conversation and dialogue in moments of division and crisis,” the statement wrote.
During the panel, Rabig spoke about the College’s protests in 1963 and 1967 against former Alabama governor George Wallace, an avowed segregationist, when he visited Dartmouth.
In 1963, during the first of Wallace’s two visits, law professor Henry Ehrmann called for faculty members to wear black armbands and join student protesters standing silently while Wallace entered Leverone Field House, Rabig said.
“Some students did bring posters,” Rabig said. “Like in the rest of the civil rights movement, they yelled, ‘Shame!’ when Wallace entered the building. … No one was arrested. No one was suspended.”
According to Rabig, the Dartmouth Christian Union and the Afro-American Society planned to protest Wallace’s second visit in 1967. The administration asked police to stand outside the building in that instance.
Members of the Afro-American Society — eventually joined by some white students — rushed the stage and forced Wallace off, according to Rabig. Students then prevented Wallace’s car from leaving Dartmouth before withdrawing.
“At any rate, nobody was injured,” Rabig said. “Nobody was arrested as a result of this.”
Miller spoke about two waves of anti-Vietnam War protests that occurred under the presidencies of John Sloan Dickey and John Kemeny, who succeeded Dickey in 1970.
According to Miller, many anti-war students opposed the presence of a Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Dartmouth, which prepared students to become commissioned officers in the military after graduation. Approximately one-third of the College’s student body was involved with ROTC at the time, according to Miller.
“Many anti-war protesters began to see the presence of ROTC as evidence of Dartmouth’s support for and participation in the U.S. war in Vietnam,” Miller said.
In 1969, a plurality of the student body voted to phase out the program after the last participating students graduated. However, dissatisfied anti-war protesters who advocated for the elimination of the program sooner then occupied Parkhurst Hall, according to Miller. Dickey publicly announced his intentions to call in the police to arrest the protesters and obtained an injunction against the students from the New Hampshire Superior Court, Miller said.
According to Miller, 56 people — including 40 undergraduates and two faculty members — were arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison for violating the injunction.
Miller said the start of Kemeny’s tenure coincided with the expansion of the war into Cambodia and the killings of four students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen, who had been summoned to respond to anti-war protests, two months after Kemeny’s inauguration.
After Kemeny heard about students’ plans to strike in 1970, he took an unprecedented stance as College President against the war during his monthly radio address, Miller said. Kemeny also canceled classes for the remainder of the week, which many students and faculty instead spent at teach-ins and discussions.
Orleck spoke about the various examples of student activism she has witnessed during her 34 years as a faculty member. According to Orleck, she began working at Dartmouth as a professor in 1990 during the emergence of queer activism.
“The only action that I saw students do in my 34 years here that got them arrested — and it was an action of tremendous courage — was to rush the football field during homecoming game with a ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it’ banner,” Orleck said.
Orleck said those arrests — which took place during the presidency of James Freedman — were conducted “with care taken for [the protesters] not to be arrested violently.”
Orleck also spoke about other movements under the administrations of Jim Yong Kim and Phil Hanlon that did not result in police action, including a protest by women against sexual violence on campus.
“They chained themselves to the banisters on the Parkhurst steps, and they made a square,” Orleck said. “They declared [it] … the only safe space for women on campus to tell their stories of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct.”
After the panel, the professors shifted the event into a forum for audience members to ask questions and share their experiences following the events of May 1.
In an interview after the event, Samantha Melgar ’24 said she attended because Beilock’s decision to call in police on May 1 “really affected” her “perception of Dartmouth.” Melgar added that she came to the event to learn about the perspectives of the people who were arrested.
“I appreciate the support and love especially because [May 1 is] rarely talked about in classes,” Melgar said. “It’s uncomfortable to bring it up especially when you see professors sign a letter in support of Beilock. You really feel alone, and I needed this to reassure myself.”
According to the department website, history professor Golnar Nikpour and history lecturer Robert Zeinstra will hold a second teach-in on May 14. Nikpour and Zeinstra will speak about the “histories of student protests in solidarity with movements across Africa and the Middle East,” the website wrote.
