Into New Territory: American Historians and the Concept of US Imperialism

6. The Student Radicals

153 6 The Student Radicals Stopping Dow will not end corporate imperialism. It is merely a first step in that direction. Like those fighting tyranny through­ out the world, we must build as we resist. Evan Stark, leader of the student protests at the University of Wisconsin, 1967 Imperialism in Its Simplest Form In his essay “How New Was the New Left?,” Andrew Hunt reiterated the prob­ lem that has faced all historians studying the American left during the Vietnam War: “The task of developing a deeper understanding of the New Left and its place in American cultural history has been impeded by the lack of consensus on exactly how to define the New Left.”1 This uncertainty about who and what the New Left actually was has led to several different theories concerning the rise and fall of the movement. David Caute identified three “phases” in its history.2 Staughton Lynd, who was one of the period’s most prominent radical historians, claimed that the New Left originated from a group of leftists who eschewed orthodox Marxist­Leninist dogma in the decade preceding World War II.3 Meanwhile, several intellectuals, including James Miller and Todd Gitlin, have defined the New Left more narrowly as “a small clique” associated with Students for a Democratic Society.4 Arguably the best definition, however, was the one provided by John McMillian in his introduction to The New Left Revisited (2003), which described the New Left as “a loosely organized, mostly white student movement that promoted participatory democracy, crusaded for Civil Rights and various types of university reforms, and protested against the Vietnam War.” He argued that the movement began to “crystallize in the early 1960s and then “picked up 154 E The Student Radicals steam towards the middle of the decade” following the escalation of Vietnam.5 Whereas some definitions have traced the origins of the movement to the first half of the twentieth century, and attempted to draw complex parallels with the Old Left, these accounts have split scholarly opinion: leftist radicalism had its roots in the 1930s, but the parallels were not exact (for example, the New Left emerged during a period of relative prosperity and its members considered themselves to be unique). Consequently, McMillian’s articulation is the least contentious. Although it could have emphasized student radicals’ penchant for direct action a little more, it at least avoided the pitfalls that have befallen other definitions. For example, some accounts have ascribed the origins of the New Left to Madison, which Hunt described as “a cauldron of progressive thought and experimenta­ tion for decades before the 1960s.”6 Of course, Hunt was correct to describe the University of Wisconsin as a sanctuary of progressivism for many years, but the suggestion that the New Left originated in Madison because of, or partly because, UW had a progressive heritage is hard to substantiate. The fact that radical thought was tolerated at UW more than other American universities certainly attracted inquiring minds to Madison (and therefore led to a higher proportion of dissidents on campus), but the New Left at UW during the Vietnam War ultimately came to shun progressive thought. The decision by UW student radicals to reject the progressive conception of US foreign relations and embrace Marxism (and a Leninist approach to instigating social reform) differentiated them from UW historians like Williams, McCormick, and LaFeber (who adopted a Beardian approach to studying American imperialism). Despite the university’s progressive heritage, and the presence of Williams on campus until 1968, UW students ultimately rejected the best traditions of the UW history department and instead emulated their New Left contemporaries across the United States who, according to Barbara Ehrenreich, considered themselves to be “a radical break from the socialist and communist traditions that for so long defined leftism.”7 Although the New Left ultimately failed to live up to this tag—their intellectual approach and their critiques of US imperialism betrayed traditional Marxist­Leninist leanings— they at least succeeded in separating themselves from leftists with more conserva­ tive social values. This is because they concluded that US expansion could only be stopped by destroying both American capitalism and the nation’s political institutions. They attempted to do this by inciting revolution on the streets; this set them on a collision course with the police, the government, and eventually the university as well. It is one of the period’s ironies that the New Left at UW revered Williams but ultimately turned their backs on...