A Time to Stir

In April 1968, hundreds of impassioned students at Columbia University in New York take action against what they perceive to be racist and imperialist policies of that institution by barricading themselves inside five campus buildings. They remain behind locked doors, alongside a host of “outside agitators” sympathetic to their cause, for nearly a week. Faculty and administration attempt to defuse the tense situation as enraged Columbia undergraduates opposed to the protestors respond. Eventually hundreds of New York City police arrive on the scene and the occupiers are forcibly removed from university property.

Paul Cronin’s A Time to Stir is a 15½-hour illustrated history built from hundreds of newly filmed interviews, documents and other archival material, hours of historical footage and audio recordings, and thousands of never-seen photographs. It tells the story of the Columbia protest, when two key issues of the era — civil rights and the Vietnam War — collided. This is the complete transcript of the film, which is free to watch online at www.atimetostir.com.

Here for Paul Cronin’s edited collection of essays about Columbia ’68.

^{A Time to Stir: Columbia University, 1968 (2024)
Paperback ISBN 978-1-942782-63-6 668pp 5×8 inches}