Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. It was first established in 1754 as King's College by royal charter under George II of Great Britain on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan.

In 1968, a series of protests at Columbia University in New York City were one among the various student demonstrations that occurred around the globe in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the spring of that year after students discovered links between the university and the institutional apparatus supporting the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as their concern over an allegedly segregated gymnasium to be constructed in the nearby Morningside Park. The protests led to student occupations of Hamilton Hall and many university buildings, starting with Hamilton Hall, and the eventual violent removal of protesters by the New York City Police Department.