54 Years After Kent State, What’s Been Learned on US Campuses?

Monday, May 27, 2024 - 1:00pm
CST
Bob Datz

The rhetoric and repression surrounding campus protest against the Palestine Genocide sound hauntingly familiar. Hopefully they do not lead to a fatal reprise of events from May 4, 1970 when 4 students were gunned down in 13 seconds by agents of the US and state governments responsible for the Vietnam War being protested. Events in Kent, Ohio before the massacre were complex and later heavily documented. Repercussions in the years that followed are less explored but can be seen as signs of a continuing cultural response and a budding security state that asserted itself into the Reagan years and beyond. Bob Datz, the Center’s presenter for May 27 entered those years as a wide-eyed college freshman who entered KSU majoring in law enforcement. Developing a critical eye prior to the shooting, he honed that reflex over decades in journalism and, finally environmental science. He worked for daily newspapers in Maine and Massachusetts after leaving college to work in the once-lively alternative press until 1980. His street and rural activities over the decades have included activism for peace, human rights, sane technology and economics, labor justice and maintaining a habitable planet.

UPCOMING TOURS

June 15, 2025 to June 25, 2025
Join us in an exciting visit to Cuba--a country committed to building socialism. We will learn about Cuba’s stunning accomplishments such as free health care and education, its collective production in agricultural and urban cooperatives, We will dialogue with leading thinkers about their visions... Read more
April 7, 2025 to April 11, 2025
Join us for an amazing trip to the old mining town of Zacatecas which was founded in 1546 after the discovery of silver deposits in the area by 4 Spaniards who risked their lives looking for gold, but instead ended up finding silver. This remote territory was inhabited by indigenous Zacateco... Read more

Upcoming Forums & Films

Monday, March 10, 2025 - 1:00pm
CST
Laura Carlsen
Location:
Join in person at the Hotel Quinta Loreto Community Room

Laura Carlsen is the Director of the Meixco City-based international relations think tank, Mira: Feminisms and Democracies, and Coordinator of Political Analysis and Global Solidarity with Just Associates. She holds an interdisciplinary degree in Women’s Studies and a Masters in Latin American Studies, both from Stanford University. A dual... Read more

Monday, March 17, 2025 - 1:00pm
CST
Harry Targ
Location:
Join in person at the Hotel Quinta Loreto Community Room

Behind the turmoil of the Ukraine and Israeli wars, tensions between the United States and China, African contestation over neo-colonial political, economic, and military influence, and US meddling in the politics of Latin America, there are fundamental forces in play that seek to rearrange and change the architectures of global social... Read more