The 1970 Cambodian Incursion

On 30 April 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the opening of a new front in the Vietnam War by sending troops into Cambodia. Within days, protests erupted on U.S. college campuses. A recent change to the Military Selective Service Act inducted battlefield recruits through a lottery system, eliminating the student deferments that had shielded anyone enrolled in college from duty (and which had put young men of color and from working class backgrounds, who remained underrepresented on campus, at disproportionate risk). The threat of conscription increased aversion for a war seen on many campuses as reckless, immoral, or imperialistic.