A student is arrested during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Texas at Austin on April 24, 2024.
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Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, conservative activists led a counterattack against campus antiwar and civil rights demonstrators by demanding action from college presidents, the courts and the police.
Claudine Gay will become Harvard’s second female president and first Black president in July 2023.
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Despite what’s happening on the most prestigious campuses, fewer than a third of presidents at American colleges and universities are women.
Some Black college presidents stood at the forefront of the civil rights movement.
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College presidents worked both at the forefront and behind the scenes in fighting for African Americans’ civil rights in the 1960s.