Liberty and the New Left

Within the past year, all the news media--not only the little magazines and journals of opinion, but even the mass magazines and radio-and-television, have devoted a great deal of attention to the phenomenon of the New Left. And deservedly so, for here indeed is a truly new force in American life. Still basically a student movement, but now beginning to bring its new outlook to other groups in the community, the New Left may be said to have emerged with the formation of SNCC (the Student Non-Violent coordinating Committee) in 1960, grown to its present form with the Creation of SDS (the Students for a Democratic Society) in 1962, and burst into national consciousness and to critical importance in American political life with the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of late 1964 and the anti-Vietnam war March on Washington of April 17, 1965, led by SDS and aided by M-2-M (the May 2nd Movement). The New Left has accomplished far more, but these are the milestones of its growth. And even though the real upsurge of the New Left may be dated only from the summer and fall of 1964, it has already displaced the Old Left on the ideological spectrum; what is more, it has also clearly taken the place of the briefly-touted Conservative youth groups (YAF and ISI) as the Wave of the Future on campus.

Volume 1, Number 2; Autumn 1965