The New Student Left Introduction

The student movement in the U.S. as it reemerged in 1960 is the first topic covered in this reading. It was an effort to bring about a fundamental shift in American culture, student activists held protests around the state and tried out different lifestyles during the student movement. It had not yet seen the strategic importance of the civil rights movement’s fusion with its own generational fight. It was marked by all the generational mission, generational conflict, and student elitist characteristics that originated on the University of California campus in its search for a strategic issue. Numerous instances of student movements that addressed current global issues were provided throughout the reading, including the Mississipi Project, the Negro-Student Movement, and the Civil Rights Struggle. Feuer’s key argument about students and their movements is in regards to the students and their movements is that the movements were always a source of intellectual ferment on the campuses and had a sense of the drama of ideas. They exposed the typical college student and lecturer to current issues and global realities. They served as a pipeline for adolescence’s highest idealistic ambitions. They also served as a pipeline for generational revolt feelings at the same time. As a result, they tended to hold doctrines that were extremist, rejecting the liberal principles of the elders, and opting for destructive political tactics. Between 1905 and 1940, there was hardly a single accomplishment that the student movements could take credit for. The student civil rights movement and the older generation’s leadership frequently clashed. The student movements are said to have served as a noteworthy incubator for political initiative and action. But much too frequently, they exhausted their participants. The activist had a degree of excitement that he could not sustain for very long. According to him, student movements have always been filled with sentiment and ideology that sees them as the elegant creators of history.

The divide between the Old and New Left is another subject this reading touches on. The New Left was a large political movement that primarily existed in the 1960s and 1970s. It was made up of activists from the West who fought for a variety of social causes, including changes in drug laws, environmental protection, feminism, LGBT rights, and civil and political rights. The Old Left, on the other hand, is less concerned with social concerns including abortion, drug use, feminism, LGBT rights, gender norms, immigration, and the elimination of the death penalty. Feuer made the point of how the student civil rights movement came repeatedly into conflict with the leadership of the older generation, in this case the students being the new left and the older generation being the old left. The New Left differed in one basic respect from the Old; more elitist, disenchanted with the working class, looking elsewhere to satisfy its needs for a populist identification, it was prepared, if need be, to look finally to the intellectuals themselves. It also rose predominantly out of an “affluent society” and moreover out of a relatively stable system; it therefore tended, when it was thought critically, to do so in moralistic rather than economic terms. The New Left also was an indicator of the pattern.

Questions:

1. Is there anything that the young intelligentsia could have done to avoid the clash with the older generation? What could the intellectuals have done better to avoid the clash with the older generation?

2. Can the Old left be described as the current right?