When Columbia students began occupying Hamilton Hall early Tuesday morning, they said their “escalation” builds on past campus protests that “Columbia once repressed yet celebrates today.” There is an irony here. Columbia students often hear about the history of dissent on campus. The university explains the student sit-ins of 1968—when protesters occupied buildings (including Hamilton Hall) for a week to protest anti-Black racism, the Vietnam War, and Columbia’s expansion into the surrounding neighborhood of Morningside Heights—in promotional materials with a hopeful nostalgia.