CNN’s Cooper: Campuses Now Aren’t Like Anti-Apartheid Protests, People Are Threatening Each Other Now

During an interview with Harvard Professor and President Emeritus and former Harvard President Larry Summers on Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper stated that the current environment on campuses isn’t like the anti-apartheid protests of the 80s because those weren’t “turning students against one another and students feeling threatened by other protesters who were screaming at them.”

Cooper said, “[W]hen I was at school, in 1985 to 89, there were anti-apartheid protests on campus, but it wasn’t turning students against one another and students feeling threatened by other protesters who were screaming at them. Have you ever faced something like this?”

Summers responded, “I didn’t — there were not protests of this kind when I was at Harvard, I think largely that was a function of the circumstance and what the particular moment was. It may also have had to do with the fact that there was a sense that there would be a strong and vigorous response. I agree with you that the thing that’s most like this that I can remember is the events that took place during the Vietnam War period, where there were threats, epithets hurled at people who were in the military or who supported the Vietnam War and where there were active attempts to demonize people who were members of the community, and you are seeing that in the acts that are taking place towards Jewish and Zionist students, and that makes this a particularly repugnant form of speech in a way that was not the case in the apartheid protests or the living wage protests.”

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