When the old left was young student radicals and America's first mass student movement, 1929-1941 - Cohen, Robert (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-418) and index
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano -- - Cafeteria Commies -- - Springtime of Revolt -- - The Making of a Mass Movement -- - Spies, Suppression, and Free Speech on Campus -- - The Popular Front on Campus -- - Beyond the New Deal? Egalitarian Dreams and Communist Schemes -- - Activist Impulses -- - From Popular Front to Unpopular Sect -- - The FBI Goes to College
The Depression era saw the first mass student movement in American history. The crusade, led in large part by young Communists, was both an anti-war campaign and a movement championing a broader and more egalitarian vision of the welfare state than that of the New Dealers. The movement arose from a massive political awakening on campus, caused by the economic crisis of the 1930s and the escalating international tensions and threat of world war wrought by fascism. This book makes an important contribution to the emerging portrait of political life in the 1930s.American college students during the Age of Roosevelt confronted two of the gravest crises in the twentieth century: the Great Depression and the growing international tensions that ultimately led to World War II. These crises generated more idealism than despair, politicizing undergraduates, who built the first mass student movement in American history.
Led by leftists, this movement responded to the crisis in international relations by organizing national student strikes against war and fascism - which at their height in the mid-1930s mobilized almost half of the undergraduate population in the United States. While battling for peace in the international arena, the student movement responded to the Depression in America by waging a war on poverty. The movement championed a broader and more egalitarian vision of the welfare state than that of the New Dealers. Demanding "scholarships not battleships," Depression-era student activists pushed for federal educational funding and job programs for all needy young Americans. The student movement tested the limits of free speech on campus. Anti-radical college administrators sought to suppress the movement, provoking major battles over political expression.