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A complex set of issues originating in the 1950s formed the background of the most extensive and influential decade of campus revolts in recent history. Cold War militarism, authoritarianism, and colonialism in East and West collided with democratic ideas well in advance of the democratizing potential of even the most open societies. At the same time, social and cultural trends that once concerned a tiny vanguard now became part of mass YOUTH CULTURE. Intellectual liberation was accompanied by sexual trends in conflict with the traditional structure of the family. The scene was set for an assault on conformism and intolerance in its many guises. The coming of age of the BABY BOOM GENERATION, and university institutions ill-accustomed to mass enrollment by students from a variety of social (and in the United States also ethnic) backgrounds provided the context. The momentum necessary for mass mobilization came from a continuous series of confrontations occasionally sparked by minor issues and culminating in the worldwide events of 1967 and 1968.
The United States

Even when universities were not the sites for actual rebellions in this period, they were the sites for organizing mass actions carried out elsewhere. In the United States, student radicalism first focused on the problem of nuclear disarmament; and the Student Peace Union, formed in 1959, staged a march on Washington in 1962. Meanwhile, students participated in the Greensboro sit-ins in February 1960, which helped bring racial segregation in the South to national attention. In the spring the same year, students at the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated against local hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, clarifying the divide between conventional politics and student politics. While the Kennedy administration attempted to tap some of the energy of student activism, in 1960 the more radical students formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) led,...