Duncan M. Kennedy ’64, a Harvard Law school professor at the time, recalls that several faculty members—including Kennedy himself—organized classes in the shantytown among the encamped students.

According to Kennedy, fifteen or sixteen of the twenty students in his class attended the lecture in the shantytown—”higher than normal attendance,” Kennedy says.

“[The protests] gave [faculty] a sense that the students we spent our time teaching had a real moral core and in some ways were more committed than our colleagues,” Kennedy says.

LASTING EFFECTS

The constant pressure on the University ultimately resulted in partial divestment from South Africa, as well as the cancellation of the internship program.

“In the past, there have been attempts at divestment that were inappropriately swayed by particular points of view on campus where the students were manipulated,” says South African native Nicolette D. Mayer ’88, citing Saudi Arabia and Israel as modern examples. “[But] in the case of South Africa, something fantastic was achieved.”

Kramnick says that although the partial divestment was largely a result of alumni criticism—rather than student activism—the student movement played an important role in raising awareness of the issue.

And while the shantytown was eventually taken down, and rallies faded away, the movement for South African divestment had a lasting influence on the lives of many involved.

According to Raskin, some of the undergraduates involved in the rallies continued to advocate for civil rights in their careers.

For example, Raskin—a state Senator in Maryland—notes that he and other politicians discussed the apartheid protest movement as part of their political campaigns.

“The experience of the divestment movement taught us all a lot of political skills,” he says. “We learned how to organize events and we learned how to debate and to write for a political purpose, so it propelled a number of my friends into careers in law and public life.”

Anderson says the experience gave students a taste of the power of activism.

“The exhilarating part of the movement was feeling like we were engaged in a chess game with the administration,” says Anderson. “It gave everybody that was involved some kind of idea that these institutions are not all powerful—that they can be pushed and even provoked.”

—Staff writer Rediet T. Abebe can be reached at rtesfaye@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Julia L. Ryan can be reached at jryan@college.harvard.edu.