A historic six-day campus occupation at Columbia University in 1968 saw 700 people arrested and pushed the school to cut ties with institutions supporting the Vietnam war.

More than four decades later, 1,200 Columbia students are fighting a different sort of battle: one against the placement of a “hideous” Henry Moore sculpture that they say looks like “a poorly formed pterodactyl”.

Moore’s Reclining Figure (1969-70) was donated to the school more than 20 years ago, but late last month, the university announced final approval had been granted for the sculpture to be installed in front of the school’s Butler Library.

Though Moore is one of the 20th century’s most celebrated British artists, students said the 9x11x7ft sculpture was “a lumpy hulk of metal” that interrupts the library’s symmetrical landscape. “As both inheritors and wards of our beautiful campus, we object to this desecration of our home,” wrote three students and one alumnus, who started a petition against the sculpture.

The petition creators – Jeremy Liss, Alex Randall, Daniel Stone and Hallie Nell Swanson – said in an op-ed for the school newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, that the sculpture “suggests a dying mantis or a poorly formed pterodactyl”.

Protesters also expressed anger over how the installation of the sculpture was announced – in a blogpost by Roberto Ferrari, curator of art properties at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. “Either those responsible for this move were oblivious to the significance of this decision, or they wanted to preclude any discussion of it,” they wrote.

The opinion piece angered commenters, who referred to the authors as “lunkheads”, “entitled little shits”, and “spoiled Columbia nitwits”.

The Henry Moore Foundation, which maintains the sculptor’s estate, was more gentle in its reaction to the protest. The foundation posted a link to a story about the petition on its Facebook page and wrote: “We’re not sure whether this is an April Fool or not …” And later added in the comments: “Thanks for your support. They are, of course entitled to their opinions and taste in art.”

Henry Moore Foundation director, Godfrey Worsdale, said: “The activity at Columbia opens up a debate that I feel sure Henry Moore would have been very interested in.

“He spoke often about the relationship between art and architecture and the challenges of bringing biomorphic and geometric forms into dialogue with one another.”

Worsdale said that Moore’s Reclining Figure sculptures in front of the Unesco headquarters in Paris and in New York’s Lincoln Center address that tension with “much success”.

“As to some of the more direct criticisms of Reclining Figure 1969-70 at Columbia, these are surprisingly reminiscent of the reactionary responses Henry Moore faced back in the 1920s and 30s,” Worsdale said. “I think the fact that Moore’s work can still garner such an outcry almost a century after he began his training as a sculptor would have brought a smile to his face.”

If the school continues with the installation as planned, it will be the second US university to have two outdoor Moore sculptures on permanent display. Another Moore sculpture, Three-Way Piece, No 1: Points, is located in Columbia’s Revson Plaza.

“Discussing the merits of Moore’s sculpture is a conversation quintessentially appropriate for a university community,” Columbia said in a statement. “Successive generations of Columbia students, with their own strong opinions, will no doubt continue debating whether this modernist work of art enhances or diminishes our classically beautiful Morningside campus.”

Jennifer Wulffson Bedford, an art historian working at the Rose art museum at Brandeis University, said in an email that the protest was “oddly reactionary in its aesthetic basis” and was probably tied with more broad grievances with Columbia’s administration. If this was the case, Bedford said, it would be more effective to address that more directly.

“If it is truly about the value of a public sculpture by Moore on campus, lively debate should be encouraged, with various constituencies coming together to be heard, even if the installation isn’t ultimately negotiable,” Bedford said.

“Gathering signatures agreeing that a sculpture is unattractive in the opinion of the signatories does not in any way translate to the sculpture not being an excellent addition to the campus, both in terms of aesthetics and, more importantly, to its teaching of the humanities,” Bedford said. “Moore’s sculpture has long been in the public eye and the present is an excellent point at which to evaluate trends in the history of public sculpture; I hope Columbia University takes advantage of this moment to create programming and encourage discussion of such topics as public sculpture, aesthetic protest and the work of Henry Moore.”