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Student radicalization
- The foremost cause was student radicalization, with the Vietnam War being the catalyst. Politically passive students of the earlier 60s often became, in the late 60s, agitating war protesters who reviled the industrial-military-complex that seemed to promote the war.
www.keyreporter.org/book-reviews/2019/going-to-college-in-the-sixties/
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Dec 2, 2014 · In May 1960, hundreds of mostly college students protested outside San Francisco's City Hall when McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) planned hearings there.
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Nov 21, 2023 · What were college students protesting in the 1960s? Initially, college students protested against social injustices like poverty, the unfair treatment of African American citizens, and freedom...
- 9 min
- Overview
- Origins of the student movement
- Vietnam and the rise of the antiwar movement
- The role of the media in the antiwar movement
- What do you think?
Read about the student protests against the Cold War in the 1960s.
The student movement arose at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, when students involved in civil rights activism chafed at the university’s sudden attempt to prevent them from organizing politically on campus. The Free Speech Movement arose to challenge the university’s restrictions on political speech and assembly.1
Soon, other student groups were springing up across the nation with similar demands. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed at the University of Michigan and issued the Port Huron Statement, which criticized US foreign policy and attacked the Cold War assumptions underlying it.
[Read an excerpt from the Port Huron Statement]
Some of these student groups became a major part of the New Left, a broad-based political movement that challenged existing forms of authority, while others embraced a counterculture that promoted sexual liberation and unabashed drug use.2
As the US involvement in the Vietnam War intensified, so did antiwar sentiment. Especially after 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated the US troop presence and bombing campaigns in Vietnam, the war became the focal point for student political activism.
Student groups held protests and demonstrations, burned draft cards, and chanted slogans like “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Massive US spending on the war effort contributed to skyrocketing deficits and deteriorating economic conditions at home, which turned more segments of the American public, including religious groups, civil rights organizations, and eventually even some Vietnam veterans, against the war.
Although antiwar activism constrained the president’s ability to further escalate the war effort after 1965, it also lent credence to the conservative portrayal of a chaotic society desperately in need of “law and order.”3 In 1968, Richard Nixon successfully campaigned for the presidency on the basis of such rhetoric, which implied a harsh approach to dealing with antiwar activists and other challengers of the status quo.
Once in office, Nixon attempted to quash domestic dissent by reducing the US troop presence in Vietnam and reforming the draft. The elimination of the draft and its replacement with an all-volunteer professional army was a major lasting consequence of the antiwar movement. At the same time, Nixon authorized the FBI and the CIA to expand their surveillance and harassment of antiwar protest groups.4
The role of the news media in the antiwar movement increased both antiwar sentiment and hostility towards antiwar activists. As investigative journalists began digging into the official version of the US war effort, they began to uncover the truth of conditions in Southeast Asia. Graphic images of death and destruction displayed on the nightly news turned the American public ever more sharply against the war. At the same time, news media coverage was frequently hostile to the activists themselves, and thus contributed to the conservative backlash against the antiwar movement.5
In 1971, the New York Times broke the story of the Pentagon Papers, a Department of Defense report that concluded that the Johnson and Nixon administrations had systematically lied to the American people and Congress about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam war.6 Together with the Watergate scandal, which involved Nixon’s authorization of the illegal wiretapping of his political enemies, the Pentagon Papers undermined the trust of the American people in its president and government.
Why did US public opinion turn against the Vietnam war?
What are the key arguments of the Port Huron Statement?
Do you think the news media turned more people against the Vietnam war or against the antiwar activists?
What were the long-term consequences of antiwar activism?
Apr 20, 2018 · On April 23, 1968, protesters gathered in the center of campus for a rally. Then, students rushed into Hamilton Hall, home to Columbia’s administrative offices and some classrooms. As ...
- 6 min
Feb 24, 2017 · As the offspring of undergraduates of the 1960s themselves now enter college, they remind us that what was once the immediate present has receded into history. My own concerns as a historian lead me to focus on the impact of the events and processes of the 1960s on student cultures.
Nov 27, 2010 · Is a student movement starting in England in opposition to the Government's cuts and marketisation of higher education? If so, how does it compare to the first student movement in the late...
College authorities generally insisted that students regard college as a period of self-abnegation in which they denied present needs in the hope of future reward. Fearful of disruption, college masters forbade students the freedoms and pleasures generally accorded the youth of their era and subjected rule-breakers to censure and punishment ...
