Calls for divestment from apartheid South Africa gave today’s pro-Palestinian student activists a blueprint to follow

Students erect 'shantytowns' at Johns Hopkins University in 1986 to call for divestment from South Africa. JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado via Getty Images

In recent weeks, college campuses across the U.S. have been roiled by pro-Palestinian protests, with the police called in to arrest demonstrators and students threatened with expulsion.

But there’s nothing unusual about the protesters’ tactics of taking over university buildings and erecting tent encampments on college lawns and quads.