ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers student political and social activism in the United States from 1900 to 1960. It focuses on the periods during which students were most heavily committed to politics, notably the thirties, the late fifties, and the early sixties. The book provides the reader with a picture of organized student activism in the United States during the period of its development as a social force. It also focuses on organizations—those manifestations of student activism or social concern which have taken on readily definable formal characteristics and which have some continuity over time. The book looks at placing the New Left in historical perspective and analyzing the various forces which interacted with the campus to create, and destroy, student organizations and movements during the first part of the twentieth century in the United States.
