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6. Endings and Beginnings: The New Left in the Late Sixties
- University of Wisconsin Press
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160 6 End ings and Be gin nings The New Left in the Late Six ties Oc to ber 1967 was a cli max of the ten sions in Cold War–era higher ed u ca- tion that had been build ing for more than two decades, but it was hardly the end of the New Left in Mad i son. Pro tests con tin ued to shake the Wis con sin cam pus for the next sev eral years, spurred by the con tin u ing war in Viet nam and the per sis tent cri tique of the university’s ties to the Cold War; at the same time, the move ment, even more than be fore, si mul ta ne ously branched out in a num ber of dif fer ent di rec tions. Many in the New Left con tin ued to work to rad i cally trans form Amer ica, at tempt ing es pe cially to over turn the nation’s ra cial hier archies, its class system, and its im pe ri al ist foreign pol icy, while new move ments de vel oped as well, in clud ing those for women’s rights, gay rights, and en vi ron men tal con ser va tion. Con ser va tive stu dents, too, as serted them selves more force fully in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were often over shad owed by hap pen ings on the left, but their emer gence helped fuel a na tional con ser va tive pol i tics that con tin ues to be felt today. Fi nally, the counter cul ture blended with all of these move ments, em pha siz ing a re jec tion of tra di tional au thor ity and, in the late six ties, the build ing of in sti tu tions that em bod ied the val ues of the new so ci ety that many young peo ple were try ing to create. It was a mo ment of great prom ise as well as great con flict. While ad min is tra tors in Mad i son wor ried that “the trou bles” would never end, many left ist stu dents en vi sioned the com ing of an en tirely new so ci ety. “We im a gined our selves on the lip of changes in life and thought more sweep ing than any one had pro posed since the sur real ists argued that true com mu nism would abol ish the dis tinc tion between sleep ing and wak ing states,” writes Paul Buhle, a for mer Endings and Beginnings E 161 his tory grad u ate stu dent, of the heady feel ing of the late six ties. Young peoples’ hopes and dreams “were swept along in an in sur gent at mos phere so in tox i cat ing that we hardly under stood what had hap pened until the mood faded.” Re al ity would soon dawn in Mad i son and else where across the coun try as the New Left broke apart in the late six ties, but its in flu ence would ex tend well be yond the era’s end.1 E In the wake of the Dow dem on stra tion, stu dent ac ti vists and uni ver sity of fi cials con tin ued the fierce con test that had started at the draft sit-in and had reached a peak in Oc to ber 1967. In the months after Dow, the uni ver sity worked to fend off state legislators’ at tempts to force a harsh crack down on stu dent ac ti vists, but most stu dents were un im pressed by the university’s com mit ment to stu dent free doms. The Car di nal and the cam pus under ground news paper, Con nec tions, reg u larly at tacked the uni ver sity for its ac tions at Dow, and they fol lowed closely the legal wran gling that de vel oped in the confrontation’s after math, in clud ing the ex pul sion of three stu dents. Mean while, grow ing num bers of stu dents reg is tered their op po si tion to the war in the spring after Dow, while a so ci ol ogy class under the di rec tion of Harry Sharp, di rec tor of the Wis con sin...