Congratulations to the three Case Western Reserve University writers for “CWRU’s history of protest: The response to the Vietnam War on campus.” Their article is a very important contribution, shedding light on the current campus crisis over the Gaza war. This historical review from Observer archives of student protest in another era suggests what is possible today.

Protests at CWRU and nationwide were arguably the primary factor leading to the political downfall of President Richard Nixon and then Congress defunding Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers are often cited, but Daniel Ellsberg was inspired to release these documents by the earlier student protests. The killings at Kent State University in 1970 were obviously the precipitating event.

We must also mention the role of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in opposing the war. And we should not forget University Hospital’s famous pediatrician Benjamin Spock, who sided with the students and went to jail. Professor Sidney Peck also sided with the students. Robert Morse, the president of the university at the time, had to resign for doing the same.

There is more in The Observer archive precisely pertinent to the current situation in Gaza. In the aftermath of Israel’s massive attacks on Lebanon in 2006, Students for Justice in Palestine, led by Rami Mikati, Zayed Schwen and Uri Strauss, started organizing on campus—curiously, Strauss was a law student who had grown up in a West Bank settlement.

CWRU’s president at the time, Barbara Snyder, was much more even-handed with student protesters than the administration now. She was under great pressure, for example, to disallow the authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from speaking on CWRU campus. They had been prevented from speaking in New York and Chicago about their new book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” Snyder stood up to the pressure, and the authors were allowed to speak. The Observer was the focal point for much of the debate.

The Observer graciously published an op-ed I wrote on Oct. 5, 2007: “‘Israel Lobby’ authors’ appearance breakthrough for free speech.” I described how the liberal magazine The Atlantic had broken a contract with the authors, forcing them to publish an early article on their research in the London Review of Books. It was about the same time former President Jimmy Carter was also condemned as an anti-Semite for his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

To finish this story, along with SJP, it was CWRU Professor Alice Bach, the director of the Hallinan Center, who brought “The Israel Lobby” authors to speak at CWRU. She also scheduled Ali Abunimah, Norman Finkelstein, Alison Weir, Noura Erakat, poet Suhier Hamid and many more. It was an exciting time for political consciousness-raising at the university. My favorite memory is the dramatic film “Slingshot Hip Hop” shown on campus. Young people in Palestine often shot stones at Israeli tanks, and three different groups of rappers—in the West Bank, in Gaza and inside Israel—competed to produce the best lyrics. They could not, however, meet in person because of Israel’s barrier-walls and travel restrictions. They did finally meet when they were flown to a U.S. film festival to perform together for an audience here. Movements for peace and justice run on music!