We cannot here survey the record of university protest, compromise, retrenchment, and innovation during what has come to be known as the “student movement” of the 1960s. Media and politicians continue to focus on its most famous episodes: the student revolts at Columbia in 1968, Cornell and Harvard in 1969, and at Kent State and Jackson State in 1970, decried by both right and left for violent upheaval and its suppression. Yet for those who were there, who saw and remember, the 1960s are best remembered for their nonviolent organizing, petitioning, political engagement, silent witness, marches, sit-ins and teach-ins on hundreds of campuses, involving hundreds of thousands of students in support of civil rights and women’s rights and for an end to the military draft and the war in Vietnam. Memories, official pronouncements, and histories did, and will continue to, diverge.1 Here, however, we will focus on two incidents. The first is the 1968 student occupation at Columbia University and the ensuing reaction. The second includes two incidents at Cornell University.2 All were real events, involving the aspirations and actions of real protagonists. They fit into a far larger historical context and interpretive schema, but I hope that their uses here will be seen again as apt and useful metaphors, humanist exempla of larger historical forces and personalities at work.