In 1985 I went to a sit-in at Columbia University in New York, I photographed the students who blocked Hamilton Hall in a protest demanding that the school divest from its holdings in apartheid South Africa.
The atmosphere was charged with youthful energy challenging an entrenched establishment that fully supported the racist state. History has unfolded to reveal that the students were on the right side of the moral divide.
Thirty nine years later, on the same campus, the same forces are aligned in opposition to one another and at least one hundred students are reported to have been arrested on the first day of the protest.
Do we not learn? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
