The Student Movement

In the last few months, especially since the war in Vietnam and protests against it have both escalated, a number of commentators from many wings of opinion—right, center, and socialist—have expressed a great deal of doubt about and disapproval of developments within the student movement. Most of these commentators have been from an older generation of American political activity. For what it is worth, it may be useful to compare their perceptions with the perceptions of someone whose basic political ideas were formed before, but only slightly before, the student movement received its great impetus from the 1960 sit-ins; who considers himself a “liberal”—a real liberal—rather than a “socialist,” a “radical,” a “progressive,” a “New Frontiersman,” or a “Great Society” man; and who has had a chance to get to know many of the student activists reasonably well because of his work on the issues that exercise them most—racial conflict and world peace.

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