The '80s Student Movement: Persistence Without Idealism

A new wave of student activism is spreading across college campuses, say scholars of the 1960s student movement. They find that today's students, though stigmatized as selfish, are finding new ways to fight prejudice and economic injustice.

These veterans of radical politics compare the current surge in interest to that of the early 1960s, but they say students are now more sober and pessimistic than their predecessors. They want to change their campuses, not the world; they try to change specific attitudes, not human nature itself.

"Compared to four or five years ago, there is a stirring among students," says James E. Miller, a lecturer in Social Studies and author of Democracy Is In The Streets; From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, one of the first books in the recent wave of studies on the 1960s. "Students today are looking for alternatives in a way which I have not seen in a while," he says.

"There is at least an undertone of things warming up," agrees Todd Gitlin '63, author of The '60s: Days of Hope, Days of Rage, and an associate professor of sociology at UC/Berkeley.

"The interest in student activism picked up with the collapse of Reaganistic policies," says Miller. He sees a similarity between the state of the country today, as Reagan's presidency nears its end, and the political climate of the early 1960s, when a comparatively liberal Democratic government replaced McCarthyism and the Eisenhower administration.

"If a Democrat is elected president, we could possibly be in a situation similar to the early 1960s," says Gitlin.

But many professors warn that a lack of optimism among students today prevents them from devoting themselves to political change in the same way that students in the 1960s did.

"There is an irony that today more kids are doing stuff in the U.S. than in 1960, but it does not add up to the same kind of mood," says Miller.

"The movement today lacks a single, emotional force that would ignite the feelings of larger numbers of students. Activists today have not found the language that speaks to the larger student body," says Gitlin. "They have not found a way of expressing their concerns that captures the sensibility of those outside the movement."

Robert Flacks, professor of sociology at UC/Santa Barbara, says he has noticed a definite increase in activism among his students in the last few years. But he says these new activists have very negative views of the world.

"The activists I am talking about are pessimistic," he says. "They see a world of crisis and horror. I see a lot of promising things going on, but in them I see almost despair," he says.

The optimism of the 1960s grew out of an affluent stable economy, in which students had the economic freedom to devote themselves to politics, says Miller.

"The early 1960s followed the most sustained period of affluence and growth in American history. My generation was heir to that affluence, and everybody thought that the world was America's oyster. With that kind of economy, almost anything seemed possible," says Miller.

"Kids today are real concerned with what they are going to do, with getting a job. It is harder to be carefree and experiment," says Miller.

The economic pressures on students today do not allow them the time to devote themselves to political issues, say many professors.

"The economy is so different now. There is a different kind of pressure on students today. There is a need for young people to get out and make money--a lot of money. They do not have the freedom of the 1960s, when students were able to live on the fringes of the economy," says former Black Power leader Julius Lester, a professor of Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Such members of the last activist generation say that because the student of the 1980s are more practical, they have chosen smaller goals and single-issue projects, instead of working for major political change.

Although most say it is more effective politically for groups to focus their efforts in this way, Miller says, activists who do so may be missing the message of the 1960s.

"In a way, activists can do a better job by organizing in a single issue way," says Miller. "But there is something over and above just that--they need to raise the collective imagination of the students."

"There is no unifying spirit within the movement today," says Gitlin.

One effort to unify contemporary student activists took the form of a national student conference at Rutgers University last February, when more than 700 student representatives gathered in hopes of creating a national coalition.

Some initially compared the meeting to the Port Huron conference of 1960, where 55 students wrote a statement of intent that many activists of the time considered the foundation of the movement that followed.

At Rutgers, however, disagreements on issues and power struggles among student leaders divided the conference. Minority students said that they felt underrepresented and withdrew from the convention. The three-day conference ended in confusion, say students, without a national coalition and with students unsure if one could be established.

"What happened at Rutgers is very depressing," says Miller. "In three days, the students managed to duplicate all of the most idiotic features of 1960s sectarianism."

"The kids at Rutgers who wanted to duplicate the Port Huron conference didn't get what Port Huron was about," says Miller. "Port Huron was not about building a coalition. It was really about a group of only 55 people who were questioning, "What is the Good Society?" and not knowing the answer. The kids at Rutgers thought they knew the answers."

Professor disagree about how students today should go about creating a new student movement Christopher Lasch, a professor of history at the University of Rochester, says students need to begin again, without trying to follow the model of the last generation, but others say students need to recapture the idealism of the 1960s.

Without the same feeling of hope and optimism that characterized the early 1960s, the student movement of the 1980s will not be the same, say many professors.

"A lot of people are missing the point about the 1960s. Then, people believed that anything and everything was possible. That belief bound together everything that was good and horrible within the movement," says Miller.

"That spark of intuitive hope is not something you can organize. It is there or it is not. It cannot be created out of acts of sheer will," he says.