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This chapter shows that while most West German officials believed that the apparent “anti-German wave” signified an upsurge in anti-German feeling, an examination of the constituent parts of the wave reveals that the story was far more complex. The various events in and about Germany—the swastika daubings of 1959–1960, the Eichmann trial, the publication of William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—offered a new set of symbols for Americans to use in discussing their current and future foreign and domestic policies. Most important, with the fragmentation of the postwar consensus in light of civil rights activism, increasingly violent riots, open dissent against American foreign policy, and outright cultural rebellion, the state's ability both to contain alternative narratives of Germany and maintain a media monopoly on Germany's meaning for America faltered. Conjuring the Cold War narrative failed to persuade many Americans to stay within the fold. Although the state-sanctioned narrative endured and remained evident in mainstream products such as Hogan's Heroes and Combat! Germany was remembered and deployed by different groups to critique the Cold War consensus itself.

This chapter deals with the final developments of the Volozhin yeshiva. By the 1880s and 1890s, the Volozhin yeshiva found itself in difficult circumstances. Its finances were catastrophic, its relations with the Jewish community at large were deteriorating, and it faced many calls for far-reaching structural changes in the institution. There was also an internal split over the question of R. Berlin's successor. These challenges did not significantly change the atmosphere of the yeshiva, though the increasing importance of student societies was a noteworthy development. By surveying these organizations and other aspects of student life in the last years of the Volozhin yeshiva and giving a careful look at the finances of the yeshiva it is possible to come to some important insights into the changing realities of yeshiva life during these critical years.

This chapter examines student activism at Cornell University that began in early 1965. Nathaniel Pierce convened the first meeting of Students for Education (SFE) on March 8 to air students' grievances, including lack of contact with faculty, the grading system, and James Perkins's recurring absences from campus. Perkins declined to meet with anyone from SFE, but Dale Corson decided to talk to six students. Changes came quickly, such as increasing faculty numbers to reduce the size of classes. This chapter considers how Cornell became a key venue for student antiwar activism on America's campuses because of the moral and strategic leadership provided by Cornell United Religious Work (CURW) and the Cornell chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society. In particular, it discusses the ways that Cornell students staged Vietnam War protests and how Cornell addressed the issue of drug use on campus.

The Cold War in effect delegitimates an entire range of the political spectrum. At the same time, the country is becoming more of one piece as technological advances improve. Into this new world come five forces: rock and roll; the civil rights movement; anti-anti Communism; expansion of higher education; a generational divide fueled by the above and on the availability of reliable contraception and, somewhat later, recreational drugs. The most important movement for whites were the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). For blacks, most likely the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party, as well as the civil rights organizations.1964 saw the Freedom Summer – an attempt at registering blacks in the South to vote. Tragically, three (two white and a black) were murdered. National media made this unavoidable and led to the Voting and Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Over time, successes were fewer and fewer and some groups (white and black) turned to serious violence. Meantime American involvement in the war in Vietnam eventually led President Johnson to refuse to stand for another term. Demonstrations at the Democratic convention in 1968 were repressed very violently – all covered on national television.

Chapter 4 explores what students studied at Irish medical schools from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, a period when medical curriculum underwent a series of reforms. Furthermore, the chapter examines the importance of educational tools such as medical museums, laboratories and specimens in the context of students’ educational experiences and whether the role of science in medical curricula was affected by the differing philosophies of Irish universities. The transition from the lecture theatre to the hospital ward appears to have been a turning point in the educational experiences of many Irish doctors. Drawing primarily on doctors’ memoirs, student magazines and the surviving records of Irish hospitals relating to clinical education, this chapter illuminates this important facet of medical student experience and how it helped to shape professional identity. This chapter examines the type of hospital experience received by Irish students in addition to assessing the regional differences that existed. Religious persuasion also impacted on students’ choice of hospital, well into the twentieth century. Medical student societies were also an important educational agent for students. These societies helped to groom students into respectable future practitioners and instilled them with the ideals and values of the profession.

The author talks about Cornell University’s dispute with the Afro-American Society (AAS) and black students in 1969 that put the school on the brink of a revolution. He begins by discussing the AAS’s takeover of Willard Straight Hall (also known as The Straight, the student union at Cornell) on April 19 and its negotiations with Cornell officials to end the occupation. He then turns to the AAS’s seizure of the Barton Hall on April 22, James Perkins’s speech at a convocation, and the internal disputes about ideology and tactics within the Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) Cornell chapter. He also recounts the arrest of the so-called May Day Ten after the SDS launched protests during a practice by the army ROTC cadets for their annual Presidential Review. Finally, he comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision denying certiorari in the appeal of his prison sentence.

The author discusses the Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) involvement in the dispute between Cornell University and black students. The period from January to May 1969 witnessed Cornell getting embroiled in various issues over its responsibility for Ithaca’s housing shortage, its complicity with South Africa’s apartheid regime, and the presence of ROTC on campus. Here the author talks about the dispute involving the Cornell Afro-American Society versus the university administration and faculty, along with the SDS’s support for Cornell’s black student activists; the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City rejecting the appeal of his conviction and sentence in Syracuse; Cornell SDS’s housing program; the reemergence of the debate over apartheid in South Africa; his confrontation with James Perkins over the university’s investments in South Africa; and Cornell SDS’s criticism of Chase Manhattan Bank over the issue of recruitment on campus.

The author recalls his first year at Cornell University, where his involvement with the draft resistance and antiwar movements began. He arrived at Cornell in September 1965, but during his first year he engaged in the usual collegiate pursuits, such as joining a sports team (the freshman cross-country team) and the Folk Music Club. He also attended live concerts on campus by the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. The author recounts two events in early November 1965 that had a profound impact on him: one involved a Baltimore Quaker named Norman Morrison, the other a Catholic pacifist named Roger LaPorte. He also talks about his role in starting a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society; his involvement with the War Resisters League; and the emergence of a draft resistance movement at Cornell. Finally, he discusses his participation in a sit-in in the office of Cornell President James Perkins on May 17, 1966.

The author discusses the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) decision to place him and other draft resisters on the Security Index, along with Cornell SDS’s program calling for the university’s “economic disengagement of Cornell from South African banks” due to the country’s apartheid policy. He first provides a background on the FBI’s Security Index before focusing on two developments that apparently stoked the FBI’s interest in him: he was among those who reenergized the Cornell chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and he became the editor of a new radical magazine called First Issue. He then recounts the case of Mike Singer, an antiwar student of Cornell; the Tet Offensive and its impact on U.S. policy in Vietnam; the draft resistance movement’s antiapartheid campaign at Cornell University; and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Finally, he recounts his induction refusal on April 18, 1968 and the student protests that rocked Columbia University.

The author recounts his trial and imprisonment as a result of his resistance to the draft. He first talks about his one-day trial before the U.S. District Court in Syracuse, presided by Judge Edmund Port, along with his legal team’s defense strategy. He then discusses the growth of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter at Cornell University; the trial of Dan Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine in Baltimore; the 1968 presidential election involving Republican Richard Nixon, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, and independent George Wallace; his incarceration at the Onondaga County Jail in Syracuse after he was sentenced with a felony conviction by Port; and his eventual release on bail with the help of James Perkins. He also recounts the fissures in the national SDS, the growth at Cornell, the impact of the Cuban Revolution on the SDS, and his dispute with animal control authorities over a dog named All Right.

This chapter traces the Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) relationship to the black struggle through the most tumultuous years of the black movement’s existence: Black Power’s proclamation, the great urban rebellions of 1967, the Black Panther Party’s rise to prominence, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. More than at any other time in SDS’s brief life, these were the years that SDS’s young white activists were challenged to understand their own racialization and, in bits and pieces, slowly began to see the “constructedness” of their own identities.

This chapter examines how the New Left received the social struggles of white women; how that struggle opened new vistas for the New Left, particularly female members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); and how, simultaneously, the pull of traditional American gender relations distorted those new understandings and kept them within the orbit of white male domination. It shows that the New Left refused to examine gender seriously, and, in so doing, continued to accept uncritically as natural U.S. society’s definitions of gender.

The author reflects on the revolutionary posturing that he and many other draft resisters adopted during the late 1960s. He describes himself as anti-Leninist and a pacifist, even as his commitment to nonviolence was starting to waver. Here he talks about what New Left authors Barbara and John Ehrenreich called the “new specter of revolutionary students” that was emerging worldwide in 1968; the involvement of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the 1968 discussions and debates about revolution; the conflicts within the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and its sentiments against the Progressive Labor Party; Cornell SDS’s efforts during the summer; the rise of a renewed feminist movement throughout the United States and within the New Left; and the antiwar demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Finally, he recounts the Budapest conference between American radicals and Vietnamese revolutionaries.

This chapter explores how the Students for a Democratic Society’ (SDS) came to understand the United States as an empire. It discusses how New Leftists saw in U.S. policy the outlines of a great empire protecting itself in Vietnam. Meetings with Vietnamese and Cuban revolutionaries reinforced the vision that the needs of American empire drove the Vietnam War. Meetings with Third World revolutionaries also gave New Leftists a sense of the “enemy” as profoundly human and as struggling for the positive goal of self-determination.

This chapter examines the struggles between Old Left understandings of race, gender, and empire, and New Left understandings in the period between the end of 1968 and the fall of 1969. During these years, the Old Left Progressive Labor Party (PL) sought to take over Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). At the heart of PL’s program stood the Old Left notion that black nationalism was a diversion from the all-important class struggle. To save SDS from PL’s clutches, SDS leaders were compelled to strengthen their ties to and understanding of black nationalism. By the spring of 1969, SDS, for the first time, clearly articulated a mission for itself that corresponded with the one that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had laid down three years earlier: that SDS would organize white communities against racism.

American universities were unprepared for the explosion of student protests on their campuses in the mid-1960s. Consequently, trustees of many leading universities appointed their industrial relations professors—the National War Labor Board vets and their protégés—as their new presidents, chancellors, and top deans. Clark Kerr botched the job at the University of California at Berkeley, but the Labor Board vets were more successful elsewhere. They not only mediated conflicts on their campuses but designed conflict-resolution systems that remain in place at universities and colleges throughout the nation. Their systems drew on the models they created with unions and management in the 1940s. This chapter explains the development by focusing on Robben Fleming at the University of Michigan, John McConnell at the University of New Hampshire, and John Dunlop at Harvard University.

The author talks about how he became involved with the draft resistance movement while studying at Cornell University. During his sophomore year at Cornell in September 1966, he began conferring with Tom Bell, a fellow member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), about organizing a draft resistance union in Ithaca. The author discusses important developments that further linked the draft resistance and antiwar movements during his time at Cornell, including the establishment of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (“the Mobe”). He also recounts his election as president of Cornell SDS; his involvement in the so-called “Button Incident” at Cornell; his decision to destroy his draft card and severe his ties to the Selective Service System; his romance with a fellow Cornell student; and the controversy surrounding the campus literary magazine The Trojan Horse.

Chapter One illuminates Cuba’s influence on the American Left at the height of the sixties era by examining the history of the Venceremos Brigade, an anti-imperialist Cuba solidarity organization formed in the United States in 1969. Initiated by New Left antiwar and civil rights activists from Students for a Democratic Society and incorporating a broad spectrum of social movements, including women’s liberation, veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and elements of Puerto Rican, Chicana/o, and Asian American movements, the Venceremos Brigade sent several thousand U.S. leftwing activists to Cuba during the next decade as volunteer laborers. Working in agricultural and construction projects on the island to support Cuban socialism and publicizing the nation’s achievements in universal education and healthcare, the Venceremos Brigade built a grassroots counterpoint to the Washington consensus of antagonism toward the Cuba.