During the late 1960s, when protests against the Vietnam War erupted across the country, college campuses emerged as places of more than intellectual debate over U.S foreign policy and the country’s deeply racist history.
Unlike the protesters against the Israel-Hamas War, many of the college-age demonstrators back then faced the very real possibility of being drafted by the U.S. military and forced to serve in what they considered an unjust war. I was one of the fortunate young Black men who had a deferment that enabled me to avoid compulsory military service because I was enrolled in college.
