ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the major themes in American student activism and links the movement of the past to the New Left of the sixties. During the 1960s, a significant portion of the student community was highly critical of the nature of higher education and of the direction of the university, but few proposals for change were forthcoming. While American student activism shows a good deal of historical continuity in terms of key issues and concerns, it also displays it in its ideological orientation. Many of the ideological orientations of radical student activism can be traced to during 1960s, although the dominance of adult groups has substantially diminished. Only a minority of American students have been active in student movements. During periods of activism, the political minority of American students had quite an impressive impact on the campus.
