New Left

William L. O’Neil is a professor of history at Rutgers. The State University of New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including A Democracy at War: America’s Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960, and Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960’s. As a professor at the University of Wisconsin from 1966 to 1971 he had many contacts with New Leftists, had his classroom taken over by them on one occasion, was threatened by a graduate student during a faculty meeting, and witnessed a riot during which students and police exchanged tear gas canisters with each other. Most contacts, however, were far more civil, involving the exchange of ideas rather than chemical agents.

• Foreword VPreface IXChapter One: The Rise of SDS 1Birth of the New Left 3SDS Takes the Stage 7Chapter Two: SDS: Decline and Fall 28Chapter Three: Hippies and Yippies 45The Counterculture 45The Yippies 46HUAC and The Yippies 54The End of the Yippies 57Chapter Four: Fadeout 60Why the New Left Failed 66Chapter Five: The Academic Left 79Speech Codes 84Multiculturalism 89Affirmative Action 92Sexual Harassment 100Postmodernism 103Conclusion 106Bibliography Essay 11Index 117