With over a thousand students and faculty protesting the war with Iraq this year, Harvard proved it is still a liberal campus.

While students led the take over of University Hall protesting the Vietnam War in 1969 and occupied Massachusetts Hall in 2001 demanding a “living wage” for Harvard workers, this time the activists’ ranks included both students and their professors.

But already a rift is growing between students and faculty over the methods and goals of the anti-war movement.

Professors have turned to overtly partisan stances on the war. Students, viewing heated partisan positions as divisive, have mostly evaded them.

The difference led to ideological and practical barriers to the formation of anti-war coalitions between students and their professors.

“We were never a team,” says Professor of English and Folklore and member of the Faculty Initiative for Peace and Justice (FIPJ) Joseph C. Harris. “There was really very little communication between us.”

The legacy of the Vietnam War and the accompanying distrust of government shaped professors’ views on war. By contrast, students focused on gaining adherents at the expense of ideological consistency.

Faculty maintained that protests ought to openly address divisive political issues, demanding action not only from the government, but also from the University.

Students focused their efforts on rallying the campus, not dividing it. No major student organization drafted an explicit statement categorically opposing the war.

Many say that such differences in strategy impeded the anti-war movement.

“Activism was down this year,” says Professor of the History of Science and FIPJ member Everett I. Mendelsohn. “We all seemed a little apathetic, a little apprehensive.”

Nearly everyone in the broad anti-war camp says that the protests did not reach their potential, and they are still trying to figure out why.

Taking Sides

Measuring the success of protests is always difficult, especially those against a war that took on an aura of inevitability in the months before it started.

Those most engaged in the protesting were quick to boast of its strength.