ABSTRACT
Studies on the Left, the first major theoretical journal of the New Left in the United States, moved from the academic confines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to the streets of New York City in 1963, four years after it was founded. The intent, as noted by historian Russell Jacoby, was “to breathe the air, if not partake of urban political ferment” (Jacoby, 1987, p. 119). In 1967, Studies folded, torn apart by tensions about its purpose: Was it a journal to theorize and analyze social crises or a journal to strategize and act on those crises (Mattson, 2003; Studies on the Left, 1966)? The folding marked a shift in the relationship between the New Left and the academy. Instead of moving away from academic intellectual life, as Studies and many activists had done in the early days of the New Left, by 1967 the movement had reversed. The academy, which students at UC Berkeley had so recently damned as a “knowledge factory” churning out elites, was increasingly embraced as a central site for the production of radical ideas (Aronowitz, 1996; Biondi, 2012; Brick & Phelps, 2015; Denning, 2004; Diggins, 1992; Epstein, 1991; Flacks, 1988; Loss, 2012; Rodgers, 2011; Savio, 2005).
