They walked in quickly and quietly, before most of the university administration staff had arrived. The small group of students chained the doors to Tolley Hall, and there they sat, waiting. Several hours later, they were told that then-Chancellor John Corbally would see them. He would hear their demands to remove the ROTC program from campus and their concerns about the Vietnam War and the world around them. It was February 19, 1970.

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Today, exactly 38 years later, Syracuse University graduate David Ifshin, the man who organized this student strike – which triggered a significant halt in the university’s functioning – is being honored as “the voice of the right to protest” as a part of the S.I Newhouse Year of the First Amendment.

‘This guy had an incredible life,” said Larry Elin, a television, radio and film professor and organizer of the event. “You could not make it up, couldn’t write a movie with this character in it. You would never think of it.”

Ifshin was described by those who knew him as an independent thinker, unpredictable and passionate. He acted as an anti-war leader as a student at the SU campus, became famous as a national traitor after a defamatory speech broadcast from Hanoi, North Vietnam, served as a chief adviser in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and spent a lifetime fighting for human rights around the world. He died on April 30, 1996 at only 47 years old. This man who “lived his convictions” left behind a legacy of protest, passion and determination that all began at Syracuse in 1969.

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In his senior year at Syracuse from 1969-70, Ifshin served as Student Association president. While running for office during the spring of his junior year, his campaign goals were based around improving the quality of life for students – like removing “parietal hours,” times in which men and women were not able to interact with the other gender in campus dorms.

Upon his return in the fall of that same year, Ifshin’s goals for the campus had radically changed. The world around him had changed.

In just a few years, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated, and both the civil rights and the women’s movement paralleled the larger anti-Vietnam war movement. It was hard not to get swept up, Elin said.

SU grad Steve Tober worked with Ifshin briefly in SA. He later resigned because he felt uncomfortable about the requirements of his job, which would have positioned him between the radical Ifshin and Corbally.

“War was going on the whole time,” Tober said. “Everybody was very concerned with what was going on. There was a growing sense of unease, and the draft was looming large. When we came back to school, that was clearly his number-one priority.”

In the next months, Ifshin spent significant energy and SA funds on anti-war efforts, from distributing leaflets and holding open forums to discuss the Vietnam War. A main concern was the presence of the ROTC program, which to Ifshin, only brought the war closer to home.

Chancellor Corbally refused to hear Ifshin’s argument, and so on Feb. 19, 1970, Ifshin, along with supporters, both involved with SA and not, proceeded to shut down Tolley Hall.

“We wanted to protest until our voices were heard,” Tober said.

That lock-in led Corbally to allow an open debate on the subject, which was first held later that day when 1,500 Syracuse students crammed into Hendricks Chapel.

Two days later, the debate was moved to Manley Field, where 10,000 students showed up to back Ifshin.

“He was incredibly dedicated to the social politics of the time,” SU grad Paul Finkelman said. A year younger than Ifshin, Finkelman also participated in the protests.

“He was incredibly dedicated to opposing American participation in the war. He was charismatic, with lots of followers,” Finkelman said. “He had qualities of leadership, he knew what to say, how to organize people, how to get things done.”

Only a few months later – May 4 – a national event “struck the campus like lightening,” and provided Ifshin with another chance to voice his opinions.

Kent State students protesting the American invasion of Cambodia had been shot and killed by national guardsmen. With this news, Ifshin again took the lead to stir the campus to action.

“Students poured out of their dorms to protest,” Elin said.

During ‘The Strike,” all entrances to the campus were barricaded with furniture from dorms, students refused to go to class, grades “ceased to exist” and the graduation ceremony was cancelled. Ifshin, through SA, even created Peace Marshals, students who would patrol campus with the local Syracuse police department to ensure the protesting didn’t become violent. Ifshin became the spokesman for ‘The Strike,’ giving speeches about the war during the last weeks of school – or what was left of it – and staying up all night talking with administration about what students should be doing to prevent the war’s continuation.

“He is one legacy of that whole period,” Finkelman said. “David becomes not the person then that originated this whole protest, as every campus in the country was protesting, but he was the symbol because he was student body president. He was a leader of doing things for non-self interest goals, and he was willing to stick himself out there for the greater good.”

Ifshin graduated that spring and was elected National Student Association president, a job that oversaw all college student governments in the country. As president, Ifshin traveled to Hanoi, the former capital of North Vietnam. While attending a rally there, he was handed a microphone and was told to address the American soldiers. That speech was broadcast over and over again on Radio Hanoi and even into the cells of prisoners of war, including that of current presidential candidate John McCain.

“David basically denounced American policy,” Finkelman said. “A big difference between then and now is that most people who opposed the war in Vietnam had great sympathy for the Vietnamese. Today you find people who are utterly against the Iraq War, but are not saying that they support al-Qaeda. We are not hoping that America loses. That is what Ifshin’s speech was, essentially.”

Years later, Ifshin would come to regret what he had said in Hanoi, Finkelman said. As Ifshin worked his way up the political ladder, becoming active in the Democratic Party, his relationship with the now presidential candidate McCain – moving up on the opposite, Republican side – was tense, as the two often had to be separated at events.

In 1986, Ifshin worked up the courage to apologize for his harsh words against America during the Vietnam War. But, McCain beat him to it, and at an event, held out his hand for Ifshin to shake, an attempt to work toward friendship, though they disagreed on almost every issue.

“What struck me about David was that those people who cared about him didn’t fit into a mold,” Gail Ifshin, his widow, said. ‘They were from all political and economic spectrums. They all admired David’s character, whether or not they agree with him or not, and they all knew that he respected them. He was just a very loyal friend, and that had meaning.”

Former President Bill Clinton credited Ifshin’s loyalty as a factor in his 1992 presidential win. Having struck up a friendship in college – Ifshin at law school at Stanford University and Clinton at Yale University – they continued the relationship, and Ifshin later served as a chief lawyer during the campaign.

“David thought Clinton could be president when only his mother thought he could be,” Gail said.

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He had a cough and had been getting thinner for a while. And when the tests came back, Ifshin was told he had a form of kidney cancer.

It was November 1995, and he was 47 years old. He had three children – Jacob, Ben and Chloe (who is now a freshman at SU) – and a thriving, and mostly pro-bono, law position in Washington, D.C.

At this point, 13 years ago, Ifshin had survived the ramifications of the anti-war speech in Hanoi. He had gone to Latin America, been thrown into prison and escaped up the Amazon in a banana boat (This is one of the many stories his wife had to unravel as the years went on. She’s still not sure of all the details.). He had gone to Israel and worked in cotton fields during the Yom Kippur War. He had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa and the political ladder in D.C.

It is this multi-layered and short life that will be honored today as one that exemplifies the right to peacefully assemble and fight with passion for justice.

“It’s an example of someone who lives their convictions,” Gail Ifshin said. “An example of someone who took action when he cared deeply about something. Someone who was an independent thinker and someone who was their own independent thought. He had principles, and he lived by them. That’s just a certain strength and commitment to the world that is a good model to us all.”

Published on February 18, 2008 at 12:00 pm