DAMODARAM SANJIVAYYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

VISAKHAPATNAM, A.P., INDIA

PROJECT TITLE

STUDENTS MOVEMENT IN POLITICS

SUBJECT

POLITICAL SCIENCE

NAME OF THE FACULTY

MRS. NIRMALA DEVI

Name of the Candidate

Roll No.
Semester

Shaik Javvad Ur Rahaman

Roll No: - 2017083
1st Semester

1|Page
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT………………………………………………3
2. ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………...4
3. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………….8
4. ORIGIN OF STUDENT MOVEMENT………………………………..8
5. STUDENTS AND POLITICS…………………………………………..9
6. STUDENT MOVEMENT OF THE 1960s IN POLITICS…..……….10
7. ROOT OF THE PROTEST MOVEMENT…………………………...11
8. THE CHANGING ROLE OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT………..11
9. THE IMPORTANCE OF AMERICA’S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP..11
10. WOMENS MOVEMENT………………………………………………17
11. GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT………………………………………….18
12. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………….21
13. BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………….22

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
2|Page
I want to express my special thanks to my MRS. NIRMALA DEVI,who gave me this
golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the topic ‘Students Movement in
Politics’, which also helped me in doing a lot of research and I came to know about a lot of
things.

Secondly, I also thank DSNLU for providing me with all the necessary materials required for
the completion of the project.

Shaik Javvad Ur Rahaman

1st Semester

Regd. No.-2017083

ABSTRACT

3|Page
Subject: Political Science.

Project Topic: Students Movement in Politics.

Students are the backbone for any revolution in this democratic nation. Right from the
recent Telangana Movement to the way back Andhra separatist movement in late 1950’s , no
movement without their participation would have failed miserably. Great national leaders
like P.V. Narasimha Rao, Narendra Modi evolved from the student movements. Leadership
qualities that are developed in the student stage would influence one’s life greatly. It not only
turns them to great leaders, but also as a better human being.

As every coin has two sides, there’ would be a negative aspect to almost everything in
this world. There’d be pros’ and cons’ to everything. And student movement is no exception
to that. The student participation in Telangana movement resulted in huge loss to their
studies and career. Many students have lost their lives in the fight with the armed personnel.
The condition of students in the Kashmir Valleywas so pathetic. Fight between the armed
personnel and terrorists is giving almost no access to their education. And there’s absolutely
no scope for girl children to go to school.

Finally, an average student was the ultimate scapegoat in the game played by the politicians
and rulers.

In my study on “Student in Politics”, I’d like to discuss the student’ usage in politics and
movements and wanted to discuss the issue extensively.

There has been a recent spurt in incidences of violence, strikes, protest movements in
our educational institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University, Film and Television Institute
Of India, Hyderabad University etc. albeit for different reasons. Regardless of how genuine
or not-so-genuine their reasons are, the situation raises some very important questions. Do we
need politics in our institutions? If it is allowed, how much politicisation is desirable, for a
line has to be drawn somewhere? And more importantly, what kind of politics do we want?

The apathetic response, the action or inaction by those in charge, to such protests raises even
more serious questions. Do our institutions of higher learning enjoy the requisite autonomy,

4|Page
so that they reflect the democratic ideals that our nation espouses? What factors affect this
autonomy? How can we guarantee this cherished autonomy of our institutions given the
realities of their administration? And why do only a handful of our institutions enjoy a
monopoly of producing political leaders? These questions are not only important for
universities but for the entire society.

To understand the need for politics in our institutions, the realities of society we live
in need to be understood. Politics today, whether desirable or not, has become totalitarian in
nature all around the world, varying only in terms of degree. It has become so pervasive that
there exists no social institution that is not affected by politics or is devoid of internal politics.

Our economic development – industries, corporates, social welfare schemes, health,

education, infrastructure development is all guided by political policies and practices.
Political patronage determines the benefits the people of a particular religious community
enjoy. Politics controls the creativity of our singers, filmmakers and actors and what they can
or cannot say. It even impacts, or often controls, our personal lives – the number of children
we can have (in China for example), the food that we can eat, the dress we can wear etc.

If politics is so deeply entrenched in our system, how can universities be an exception.

If the goal of a university is not myopically defined to train students only in a particular
subject, but is to prepare students for unforeseen and unimagined things that life has to offer,
then politics is very important, as a part and parcel of college activities, for the overall
development of an individual’s personality and character. It must be remembered that
character building is the first step to nation building.

Also, politics is needed in institutions not only because it is present everywhere but to
produce better leaders instead of having leaders foisted upon us because of their
money/muscle power, or by virtue of their lineage. Since college politics has direct links with
national and state level politics, it becomes a good launching pad for new faces that otherwise
would not have had a chance to enter the political arena. Therefore, student politics
institutionalises the merit-based search for future leaders.

It is disheartening to note that premier institutions of our country like the Indian
Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, National Institutes Of Technology
or St. Stephen’s College (Delhi) do not allow student politics because of which some of the
best of minds in India do not get to enter the political arena, excepting a few who make it

5|Page
against all odds. Juxtapose this reality with the ways in which politics is described – like
politics being the playground of criminals, the domain of the uneducated, uncouth etc. – and
the need to allow politics in our educational institutions would seem even more pressing.
Ironically, non-political peers of successful politicians, or other people in public life, take
pride and sometimes even credit for their success stories.

Those who argue against the politicisation of institutions give innumerable examples
of entire academic sessions going to waste. Even students willing to attend classes are bound
by peer pressure to take part in protests, strikes etc. they assert. They condemn political
violence entering the ‘temples’ of modern India. The answer to all these lies not in
disallowing any form of politics in campuses but changing the kind of politics we practice.

Political theorists argue that democratic politics is not only about the ritual of
elections, political canvassing etc. but refers to the dialectical environment of debate,
discussion, dialogue and dissent in a peaceful setting. The intention is not to bulldoze
opposing ideas but recognising the right of others to have differing thoughts or
ideologies than yours. The same should be the case for politics in the universities. Currently,
only a politics of disruption and destruction is practiced both in the national parliament and in
college campuses. This adversely affects the legislative process and academics respectively.

The need of the hour is that the leaders of tomorrow must rise to the occasion and
devise new and innovative ways of dissenting and protesting through their writings, movies,
plays, songs, using the power of social media and the internet without disrupting the
academic discipline of the institution. Also, they must not deprive others of their right to
study in a peaceful environment.

To bring about this holistic change in the nature of politics in our institutions, the
most important thing is to guarantee the complete autonomy of these institutions. This
includes management, appointment (of professors, staff, Heads of Departments, Vice-
Chancellors etc.), financial autonomy, student selection procedure, course, curriculum and
syllabus selection. The need of the hour is to democratise our educational institutions.

We have too many people crying foul over appointments of V-Cs, heads of

departments or institutes due to the political leanings of the person concerned. It is required
that the appointment process be made more transparent and should involve all stakeholders,
even the student community and civil society. With regard to financial autonomy, it is very

6|Page
difficult to make any educational institution self-sustaining. In the current ‘socialistic’ set up,
the government subsidises the education of students. What can be done is that the
government should hand over the money to these institutions to spend it as they deem fit
based on their requirement. It’s better to do away with the straitjacket approach being
followed now. In the current system, money is given under heads of infrastructure
development, hiring or salaries staff, electricity, water supply etc. The money gets spent on
unrequired white-washes rather than on laboratory facilities or on research funding for
students!

One other model that can be tried in the long run is an open market education system
based for education as a market commodity offered at market prices for education seekers. It
might seem that the cost of education would rise significantly, but in the long run, as more
and more profit-seeking private institutions enter this sector and compete, the costs of
education would decrease and the quality would spiral upwards.

The recent outcry against police action in universities and application of stringent laws is
necessary, but it isn’t the only issue we need to be focussing on. There is another, related but
more pressing issue at hand. According to Louis Althusser, a state exercises hegemony over
its subjects through the repressive state apparatus (police) and ideological state apparatus
(like school, family, colleges). The misuse of police and the law is evident and is there for all
to see. But what we have to be wary of and concerned about are attempts at rewriting and
reinterpretation of history based not on facts but on a particular ideology, and the narrow
redefinition of ‘Indianans’ to fulfil political interests and agendas. The police is akin to a
hammer in the hand of a blacksmith. It can only do so much damage without completely
breaking the iron plate being worked upon. But the re-written textbooks are like the fire that
the blacksmith uses making us completely pliable like a hot iron plate in hands of the ruling
dispensation to mould and shape us as they wish. Currently, we see both the hammer and fire
being used simultaneously by master craftsmen.

7|Page
Introduction:-

Student activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social

change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student
groups have influenced greater political events.

Modern student activist movements vary widely in subject, size, and success, with all kinds
of students in all kinds of educational settings participating, including public and private
school students; elementary, middle, senior, undergraduate, and graduate students; and all
races, socio-economic backgrounds, and political perspectives. Some student protests focus
on the internal affairs of a specific institution; others focus on broader issues such as a war
or dictatorship. Likewise, some student protests focus on an institution's impact on the world,
such as a disinvestment campaign, while others may focus on a regional or national policy's
impact on the institution, such as a campaign against government education policy. Although
student activism is commonly associated with left-wing politics, right-wing student
movements are not uncommon; for example, large student movements fought on both sides
of the apartheid struggle in South Africa.

Student activism at the university level is nearly as old as the university itself. Students in

Paris and Bologna staged collective actions as early as the 13th century, chiefly over town
and gown issues. Student protests over broader political issues also have a long pedigree.
In Joseon Dynasty Korea, 150 Sungkyunkwan students staged an unprecedented
remonstration against the king in 1519 over the Kimyo purge.

Origin of student movement:-

The beginning of the student movement, which arose during the 1960s, can be traced back to
the post-Second World War era of the 1950s. The older generation, those who survived the
depression and war years, viewed the 1950s as a period of security. It was a time of peace and
relative prosperity for the nation.

Yet, the youth culture of the period viewed the era in vastly different terms. Many believed
that the 1950s represented a period of complacency, stagnation and authoritarianism. The
younger generation was largely dismayed with the notion that little was being done by
authorities to prevent future wars from taking place1. They rebelled against the notion of
conspicuous consumption, which is spending in order to show off one's wealth. Additionally,
1
http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-student-movement-of-the-1960s.html

8|Page
the plight of African Americans was seen as an incredible social injustice that was being
ignored by their elders2.

It is important for you to remember that the catalyst for the rise of the student movement is
attributed to the desire to end the conformist culture of the 1950s, and to liberate African
Americans from the social inequality and persecution that they faced. The ideas of the
younger generation of the 1950s were translated into action during the 1960s3.

Students and politics

The life of a student is the life of devotion to his studies and preparation for facing all the
problems that await him in his future life. We expect the students to be confined within the
four walls of their educational institutions and don't like that they should participate in
politics. For politics according to most of the conservative thinkers, lies beyond the territorial
jurisdiction of their alma mater.

It has been pointed out above that the life of the student is not of exclusive devotion to his
studies but also of preparation for facing and taking the problems of life to come. In
considering the life of the student, therefore, we lay emphasis on the first aspect, totally
ignoring the second. As theoretical teaching cannot lead us anywhere without practical
knowledge, so also no, preparation for future life on the pan, of the student can be possible
unless he is aware of the kinds of problems and their nature that await him in his future life.
The conception of confining the student within the four walls of his educational institution is
wrong and that he should be allowed to come out to the open, if not frequently, at least now
and then. Any attempt to counter this will be not only self-contradictory, but also disastrously
harmful for the full growth of the students4.

The association of the students in political affairs cannot be overruled. They are intelligent;
they are selfless by nature; they love the right and hate the wrong; they are full blooded
young men and so they are always ready to lay down their lives for the sake of their ideal,
whether it is patriotism or something as noble as that. That is why the students all over the
world are now found taking part in all sorts of beneficial movements.

2
https://www.dawn.com/news/881731

3
https://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/students.htm

4
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/student-politics-participation-students-muhammad-ishaq

9|Page
Politics is nourished and nurtured in educational institutions. The students are the cradles of
modern political thought. Till yesterday our leaders were active participants in the student
politics. How can they oppose the principles which they uphold in their academic career. On
the one hand we say that students are the leaders of the future, and they should uphold the
confidence reposed in them by the elder generation. But on the other hand, we teach them to
desist from active politics. I hardy find any consonance in the two propositions.

The history of Pakistan will show that out students by nature are political minded; they rise, if
need be only for noble causes. The misfortune is this that they are taught politics and called
out of their classes by interested people. But when safe or satisfied, these very people deliver
sermons, on them that they should be exclusively attentive to their studies. As a student is a
learner, his first and foremost duty is to read and know. But this does not mean that he should
be unconnected with and indifferent to the current affairs of the world and especially of his
own country. It should not be suggested that the students should be completely away from
politics. The only advice that should be given to them is that for all noble causes they should
go forward, for they only, as the selfless section of our people, have the heart and ability to
do so5.

Student movement of the 1960s in politics

These movements include the civil rights movement, the student movement, the anti-Vietnam
War movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental
movement. Each, to varying degrees, changed government policy and, perhaps more
importantly, changed how almost every American lives today. Supporters of these
movements questioned traditional practices about how people were treated. Why did black
and white children attend separate schools? Why were women prevented from holding certain
jobs? Why could a person be drafted at 18 but not able to vote until 21? This questioning
inspired people to begin organizing movements to fight against injustice and for equal rights
for all people. In addition, they did not use traditional methods of political activity. Instead of
voting for a political candidate and then hoping that the elected official would make good
policies, these protesters believed in a more direct democracy. They took direct actionpublic
marches, picketing, sit-ins, rallies, petition drives, and teach-ins to win converts to their

5
http://4essay.blogspot.in/2012/08/students-and-politics.html

10 | P a g e
causes and change public policies at the local, state, and federal levels. They contributed their
time, energy, and passion with the hope of making a better, more just society for all6.

Root of the protest movement

Social change movements erupted in the 1960s for several interrelated reasons. First, since
the 1930s the role of the federal government had become increasingly important in
Americans’ everyday lives, and people began to look to the federal government to resolve
problems. Second, after World War II (1939-1945), the United States emerged as a global
power that competed with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); this competition
was both a political and moral crusade to convince people around the world that Western
democracy was superior to the Communist system adopted by the USSR. Third, the 1950s
and 1960s were periods of relative economic prosperity for most of the country, making
economic disparity in the United States more obvious. Fourth, a national culture was
emerging that linked all Americans more closely than ever before; television became
common and allowed people to witness events taking place in other parts of the country and
the world. Fifth, more students were going to college than before World War II, creating a
concentration of concerned and educated activists on the grounds of universities and colleges.

The changing role of federal government

During the 1930s, Americans suffered through the Great Depression, the worst economic
downturn in U.S. history. To fight widespread unemployment and poverty, President Franklin
Roosevelt created the New Deal programs. For the first time, the federal government
assumed a major role in ensuring the welfare of its citizens. Americans began to look to their
federal government to provide benefits for the needy and legal protection for the powerless.
By the 1960s, many Americans had come to believe that the federal government had the
power and responsibility to protect them from unfair and unjust social forces. People began to
pressure all branches of the federal government—the courts, Congress, and the president—to
provide remedies to the injustices that plagued the nation7.

The importance of America’s global leadership:

6
https://www.google.co.in/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjF8uz2y-
vWAhUMqo8KHV6ADZ0QFghsMA0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstudy.com%2Facademy%2Flesson%2Fthe-
student-movement-of-the-1960s.html&usg=AOvVaw0P6_CHygm0Su4faaPU69SN

7
http://www.lessonsite.com/archivepages/historyoftheworld/lesson31/protests60s.htm

11 | P a g e
After World War II, America became a global power. This new role, most Americans
believed, was necessitated by the absence of any other powerful democratic, capitalist nation
and the increasing dominance of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR). The
United States and the USSR became competitive rivals for world leadership. The two
countries differed in many ways. The U.S. economy relied mainly on capitalism, where the
resources are owned by the individual, whereas the Soviet system relied on communism,
where the resources are owned by the state. Their political philosophies also differed: The
United States believed in individual freedom, whereas the USSR believed in collective
action. The United States became dedicated to fighting the spread of Soviet Communism, and
for the first time agreed to protect its allies against foreign attack. It backed up its
commitments by creating an awesome military capacity. The conflict between the United
States and the Soviet Union was known as the Cold War. America’s role as a global power
provided people who were advocating social change with a powerful argument. Activists
asked this: How can the United States tell African or Asian countries to reject Soviet-style
Communism and emulate the American way of life, when racism and inequality are so
obviously a part of that way of life? Americans, they said, need to work toward democracy
and equality for all citizens if they want to win the Cold War. They argued that America’s
global leadership made American social problems not simply domestic problems but
international ones as well8.

The impact of widespread economy prosperity:

Another factor contributing to the growth of social activism in the 1960s was increased
affluence. Incomes increased in the United States after World War II, allowing more
Americans to enter the middle class. Similarly, between 1945 and 1960 the gross national
product of the United States had increased almost 250 percent. As a result, many Americans
were better off financially than they had ever been. Economic security also allowed
Americans to question why some groups remained mired in poverty and to focus more
attention—and spend more money—on remedying injustices and social problems. Not
everyone shared in the new national prosperity, and those who did not began to look for the
reasons why. Discrimination often played a major role in their impoverishment. With
inequality so clearly a part of American society, they began to organize and win national
attention9.

8
https://rccs.revues.org/646

12 | P a g e
Youth culture:-

Young people played an important role in the movements for social change during the 1960s.
Numbers alone made them important; more than 76 million babies were born during the post-
World War II "baby boom." In addition, these young people spent more years in school and
were more affluent than previous generations. In the early 20th century, most young
Americans had moved quickly from childhood to adulthood. In the 1920s only 1 in 5
Americans graduated from high school, and almost all older teenagers were full-time
workers. By the mid-1960s, however, nearly 3 out of 4 students finished high school, and
about half of those students went on to college. As a result, by the 1960s, young people
stayed with their peers for at least 12 years. College campuses in particular teemed with
young people who had the freedom to question the moral and spiritual health of the nation.
These young men and women would become a vital component of the social change
movements of the 1960s era10.

Major protest movement:-

The major protest movements began with the civil rights movement during the 1950s and
early 1960s. The civil rights movement fought to end long-standing political, social,
economic, and legal practices that discriminated against black Americans. It influenced later
movements for social change, both by inspiring Americans to fight for change and by using
methods of direct action, such as protest marches, rallies, and nonviolent civil disobedience
tactics like sit-ins. These later movements included a student movement dedicated to greater
student power; a movement to protest American involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-
1975); the women’s movement, which fought to bring full equality to American women; the
gay rights movement, which tried to end traditional biases and laws against homosexuals; and
the environmental movement, which fought to change the conditions of man-made pollution,
unchecked population growth, and the exploitation of natural resources. In the 1960s, many
Americans participated in more than one protest movement. Although their specific goals
differed, all of the movements were built on the ideal of citizen-activism and a belief that
social justice could be won through political change.

9
https://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/students.htm

10
http://www.info.com/politics%20of%20the%201960s?
cb=37&cmp=3748&q_z&q_zhr&qg&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwtH09svr1gIVTpVoCh1ZkgV3EAMYAiAAEgIZ
vfD_BwE

13 | P a g e
The civil rights movement:-

The civil rights movement was the first of the 1960s-era social movements. This movement
produced one of the most important American social activists of the 20th century, Martin
Luther King, Jr. The civil rights movement, as a national force, took root in the 1950s but
greatly expanded in power in the 1960s. It originated among black Americans in the South
who faced racial discrimination and segregation, or the separation of whites and blacks, in
almost every aspect of their lives. In 1960 black Southerners often had to sit in the back of
public buses, were refused service in most restaurants and hotels, and still went to racially
segregated schools, despite the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education,
which outlawed racially segregated education. Employment ads were separated into "Negro"
and "white" categories, and black Southerners were openly restricted to the lowest paying and
lowest status occupations. In addition, most black Southerners were effectively denied the
right to vote. Conditions in the North were somewhat better, but segregated housing and
schools, as well as job discrimination, were commonplace. Blacks fought in the courts,
lobbied elected officials, and began a sustained campaign of nonviolent direct action. Many
blacks participated in major demonstrations, often led by King, in Albany, Georgia, in 1962;
Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963; Washington, D.C., in 1963; and Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
Young black activists also played a key role in the civil rights movement. In 1960 some of
these students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which
fought for the right to vote and for an end to discriminatory laws and practices. The civil
rights protesters focused the nation’s attention on blacks’ second-class citizenship. Most
white Americans, including many white Southerners, were shocked by the brutality that
protesters endured in the Deep South. In 1963 horrified Americans watched on their
television screens as Bull Connor, the police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama,
ordered dogs to attack peacefully marching black men, women, and children. The outrage of
the nation and the determination of the activists led to the passage of civil rights legislation.
In 1964, pressured by the civil rights movement and under the leadership of President
Lyndon Johnson, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation
in public accommodations and made discrimination in education and employment illegal. In
1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which suspended the use of any voter
qualification devices that prevented blacks from voting. While many battles still lay ahead,
the civil rights movement had used a campaign of nonviolent direct action to end centuries of
open, legal racism in the United States. The movement showed activists in other areas that

14 | P a g e
they could work for change outside of the traditional political framework. They could use sit-
ins, boycotts, marches, and rallies to focus attention on their cause and help initiate change in
legislation and in society11.

The student movement:-

The student movement was the next major social change movement to develop in the 1960s.
Many of its early organizers had first become politically active in the early 1960s working
alongside blacks in civil rights protests. Composed mainly of white college students, the
student movement worked primarily to fight racism and poverty, increase student rights, and
to end the Vietnam War. At the core of the student movement was a belief in participatory
democracy, or the idea that all Americans, not just a small elite, should decide the major
economic, political, and social questions that shaped the nation. In a participatory democracy,
citizens would join together and work directly to achieve change at the local level. The
students hoped to give power to the people so that they could fight for their own rights and
for political and economic changes. This democratic, activist faith led many student activists
to reject government and school administration policies. Students sat-in to protest restrictions
on students’ rights to free speech and held rallies against the in loco parentis rules that
allowed school officials to act like parents in setting curfews and dorm rules. They demanded
that faculty and administrators stop all research and activities that contributed to the Vietnam
War. In 1960 a small group of young people formed Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS). By 1968 some 100,000 young people around the nation had joined this organization.
The SDS gained strength from the Free Speech Movement that occurred at the University of
California, Berkeley, in 1964. Berkeley students protested after university officials banned
political leafleting on campus. They complained that they were treated like numbers, not
people, at the overcrowded Berkeley campus. Other students around the country formed
similar protest organizations, demanding an end to restrictive campus rules that failed to treat
them like responsible individuals. Many other student activists in the 1960s fought for social
change by working for political candidates and by forming local reform organizations. For
example, during the presidential primaries of 1968, thousands of student volunteers worked
for Eugene McCarthy, who ran for the Democratic Party nomination on the issue of ending
the war in Vietnam. By the early 1970s, student activists helped organize the environmental
movement and the women’s movement. However, some student activists were frustrated by
the escalating Vietnam War, widespread poverty amidst great wealth, and by continuing
11
https://www.laprogressive.com/sixties-student-movement/

15 | P a g e
racial inequality; they became more extreme. They rejected the traditional American belief in
private enterprise and argued that the economy should be organized by the government to
guarantee every American a decent standard of living. Angered by most Americans’
resistance to ending the Vietnam War and to the relatively slow pace of social change, some
even lost their faith in democracy. The most radical students believed that Communist
leaders, such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and China’s Mao Zedong, offered better visions for
bringing justice and equality to people. Some of the most extreme activists argued that only
violent protests would lead to real social change. The Weathermen, a revolutionary group
formed in 1969, advocated an armed struggle to overthrow the U.S. government. They were
responsible for a number of bombings during the late 1960s and 1970s12.

Anti- Vietnam war:-

By 1965 a variety of people in the United States had become active in a vocal movement to
end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government had become involved in the
war because it did not want South Vietnam to be defeated by Communist North Vietnam. The
United States government feared that if South Vietnam were defeated, Communism would
spread throughout Southeast Asia. Those who protested the war argued that it was not, as
government leaders argued, a vital struggle against world Communism. Many protesters
believed that the Vietnam War was the last stage of a long struggle by the Vietnamese for
independence. They pointed out that the Vietnamese had already, in 1954, defeated France,
which had controlled Vietnam as a colony. Following their defeat of France, the Vietnamese
had become engaged in a civil war in which, protesters insisted, the United States had no
right to interfere. The antiwar movement became a mass crusade in which millions of
Americans participated. It involved people of all ages, organized in hundreds of diverse local
and national groups, including the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, Clergy
and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, Women Strike for Peace, Resistance, American
Friends Service Committee, and Business Executives Move for a Vietnam Peace. Among
student groups, the SDS played a vital role. While antiwar activists came from all elements of
American society, most were white, middle class, and well educated. Colleges and
universities were among the most important sites of antiwar activism. Protests against the war
took many forms—marches, boycotts, rallies, and demonstrations. A key event took place at
the University of Michigan in March 1965. Students and professors held a teach-in on
Vietnam, where people gathered to examine America’s Vietnam policy and discuss what they
12
http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48532

16 | P a g e
might do to change that policy. Within months, more than 120 schools held similar events.
This spirit of questioning authority and determining how common citizens could affect
policy-makers was at the core of the antiwar movement. Between 1965 and 1971, many
protests against the war took place. In April 1967 simultaneous marches in San Francisco,
California, and New York involved some 250,000 antiwar activists. In October 1967 about
50,000 more militant protesters marched on the Pentagon. As the war continued, more and
more people began to question U.S. involvement. For example, in 1967 Martin Luther King,
Jr., spoke out against U.S. government policy in Vietnam. Previously, civil rights leaders had
been cautious about criticizing the war for fear of losing President Johnson’s support of the
civil rights movement13.

However, as the war continued, more and more spoke out against it. In August 1968 around
15,000 Americans held demonstrations in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic Party’s
national convention, resulting in a violent confrontation between police and protesters (see
Chicago Convention of 1968). On October 15, 1969, a national teach-in on Vietnam involved
millions of Americans. In April 1970 President Richard Nixon, who had been elected in
1968, expanded the Vietnam War into neighboring Cambodia. Millions of Americans staged
protests against this widening of the war. In Ohio, the governor called out National Guard
troops in response to a large student protest at Kent State University. Panicky National
Guardsmen fired into a crowd of students, killing four and heightening tensions at campuses
throughout the country. Between 1968 and 1971, militant campus-based protests against the
war were common. Students burnt their draft cards, picketed Reserve Officers Training Corps
(ROTC) buildings, petitioned against faculty research funded by the Pentagon and the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), and attempted to close down local draft boards. For many sixties-
era students approximately three-quarters of a million—protesting against the Vietnam War
became a major part of their everyday lives. There is debate about the extent to which the
antiwar movement influenced the Vietnam policies of the Johnson and Nixon
administrations. Most scholars believe that the movement had little effect on presidential
policies, but many other Americans believe that U.S. policy was influenced by the protest
movement. Within the country, a large number of Americans felt that public protest against
the war, while American soldiers were fighting it, was unpatriotic. Nonetheless, the
movement did greatly increase scepticism about the morality of American foreign policy and
the purpose of sending American troops into combat. It also taught millions of Americans to

13
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/antiwar.html

17 | P a g e
exercise greater oversight of their nation’s foreign policy. At the height of the Cold War,
from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Americans accepted their presidents’ foreign policy
leadership almost unquestioningly. After Vietnam, a far more sceptical citizenry expected
even demanded that Congress, the mass media, and citizen groups openly debate every
important foreign policy decision14.

Women’s movement:

The contemporary women’s movement began in the late 1960s. Many women who
participated in the movement had also worked in earlier movements, where they had often
been relegated to menial tasks, such as photocopying and answering phones. Some began to
protest these roles and to question the traditional roles for women in U.S. society. During the
1950s and early 1960s, society pressured women to marry, have children, and then remain at
home to raise those children. The prevailing view was that women’s abilities in the
workplace and in public life were limited by their physical fragility and by their roles as
mothers. Women were expected to stay at home and to depend on men to provide their
financial support. As a result, women were routinely excluded from high status or well-
paying jobs. They had only gained the vote in 1920 and had little voice in the nation’s
political and economic life. In 1963 The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, was published
and became a best-seller. This book spoke to many women’s dissatisfactions with the role
that society expected of them. The book encouraged women to work for change. One of the
movement’s first successes was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, among other things,
outlawed discrimination based on gender. However, government officials rarely enforced the
antigender discrimination provision. As a result of this official indifference, in 1966 a small
group of women led by Friedan formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) to
demand that the government prosecute cases of job discrimination against women15.

The women’s movement was not a unified force with a single ideology or goal. Some
activists fought for equal job opportunities; others focused on changing relations between
men and women. They questioned traditional gender roles and tried to change society’s view
that a woman’s worth was based on her physical attractiveness. An important issue for many
women was control over their bodies. Abortion was illegal in almost all states, rapes were
rarely prosecuted, and domestic violence was widely accepted as a private matter. Some
14
http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-protests

15
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/student-movements-1960s

18 | P a g e
radical activists believed that American society would have to be entirely remade. They
rejected what they called patriarchal values, or men’s values, such as competition,
aggressiveness, and selfishness. They believed that women were naturally more nurturing and
compassionate and advocated a society based on women’s values. By the mid-1970s,
feminists had achieved some change. In 1971 Congress banned discrimination against girls
and women in schools. In 1973 feminist lawyers won a Supreme Court decision, Roe v.
Wade, in which the justices ruled that women had the constitutional right to choose to have
an abortion. Millions of women who never attended a public demonstration used feminist
rhetoric and legal victories won by women activists to create greater equality in their
marriages and personal lives and to expand their economic and political opportunities16.

Gay rights movements:-

In the 1960s laws in most states prohibited homosexual acts. State and federal laws often
made it illegal for gay men and lesbians to work for the government, and private employers
routinely discriminated against them. The armed forces did not allow gay men or lesbians to
serve. And most Americans felt it was acceptable to scorn, ridicule, and even physically
harass homosexuals. As a result, gay Americans usually hid their sexual preference. Small,
semisecret gay rights organizations had begun to form in the post-World War II years. But a
large gay rights movement began only in the late 1960s, when citizen activism had become
more common due to the civil rights movement and other social change movements. The first
major gay protest took place in 1969. At a New York City gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, gay
men spontaneously protested when police attempted to arrest them and close down the bar.
Encouraged by this impromptu resistance, other gay men and lesbians, many of whom were
active in other sixties-era protest movements, intensified their efforts to organize a gay
liberation movement. The gay rights movement had a dual agenda: to gain acceptance of
homosexuality and to end discrimination against homosexuals17.

Activists sought to make homosexuality acceptable to the larger society and thus encourage
gay men and lesbians to reveal their homosexuality. Once homosexuals were open about their
sexual identity, then gay activists believed that they could work to end legal and social

16
https://www.google.co.in/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwii0MPuzevWAhXJNI8KHXU
8DxoQFghrMA0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fislandeducators.weebly.com%2Fprotest-movement-students-women--
anti-vietnam.html&usg=AOvVaw177BUEhX47huu1Cb6QhRgL

17
http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48532

19 | P a g e
discrimination against homosexuals in American society through protests and lobbying. By
1973 some 800 gay organizations existed; most were based in big cities and on university
campuses. Many simply existed as safe and supportive environments for gay men and
lesbians. But gay rights groups also lobbied local and state officials to pass non-
discrimination statutes similar to those that protected women, blacks, and other minority
groups. However, most Americans in the 1970s and in later decades did not believe that
homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle, often because of religious beliefs. As a result, gay
activists’ successes in winning special legal protection similar to that won by blacks and
women have been limited. Still, the gay movement did succeed in its first goal: Millions of
Americans now live openly as homosexuals. Their visibility in the workplace and in
communities around the United States has decreased discriminatory practices18.

Environmental movement:-

Americans’ concern about the natural environment has a long history, but only in the late
1960s when so many Americans had become politically active did a mass movement emerge
that focused on protecting the environment. Biologist Rachel Carson contributed to this
awakening with her best-selling book, Silent Spring (1962). She detailed the use of chemical
insecticides that killed birds, fish, and animals and endangered the human species. Dozens of
other books followed Carson’s, warning of impending ecological disasters. Televised
coverage of environmental disasters, like the 1969 oil spill off the coast of southern
California, further spread the alarm. In the late 1960s, environmental activists used this
information to enlist an already politicized citizenry in a new mass movement19.

In 1970 some 20 million Americans gathered for what organizers called Earth Day to protest
abuse of the environment. Borrowing a tactic from the anti-Vietnam War movement, students
and teachers at over 1500 colleges and universities and at over 10,000 schools held teach-ins
on the environment. Hundreds of thousands of other Americans staged protests and rallies
around the nation. In another clear sign of a new environmental consciousness, millions of
citizens joined environmental groups like the Audubon Society, whose membership grew
from 41,000 in 1962 to 400,000 in 1980. In response to growing citizen protests, Congress
passed the National Environmental Act in 1970. The act created the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate environmental health hazards and the use of natural
18
http://www.uky.edu/~lbarr2/gws250spring11_files/Page1186.htm

19
http://ssc.sustainability.illinois.edu/?p=2028

20 | P a g e
resources. All told, in the 1970s Congress passed 18 new laws to protect the natural
environment, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which established
national air- and water-quality standards. At both a local and a national level, citizens joined
forces to conserve natural resources, use and develop alternative, cleaner forms of energy,
demand strict regulation of toxins, and promote a general awareness of the
interconnectedness and interdependency of all life. By the late 1970s, much of the
environmental movement’s agenda had entered mainstream politics20.

Conclusion:-

A majority of Americans disapproved of each of these social change movements when they
emerged. The activists’ reliance on protest tactics that disrupted business as usual angered
many, as did their demands that Americans change their long-standing beliefs and practices.
In the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the student movement, and the antiwar movement
faced serious harassment and even persecution by local police forces, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), and other government agencies. The student movement, the anti-Vietnam
War movement, and the gay rights movement never succeeded in winning the approval of a
majority of Americans, at least as measured by public opinion polls and surveys. Over time,
however, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and, more controversially,
the women’s movement, did convert a majority of Americans to many of their views. All of
the protest movements of the 1960s captured public attention and raised questions that were
important to the nation. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the gay
rights movement demanded that Americans consider equality for all citizens in the United
States. The student movement probed the meaning of freedom in the United States. The anti-
Vietnam War movement asked Americans to consider the use of national power and the
appropriateness of their government’s foreign policy. Environmentalists asked what good
America’s economic growth was if it resulted in the destruction of the planet. In an often
confrontational manner, movement activists asked difficult questions that many Americans
would rather have ignored. In answering these questions, Americans changed dramatically.
Equal opportunity and equal rights became the law of the land for American citizens
regardless of their race, ethnicity, or gender. The veil of secrecy that surrounded much of
American foreign policy was, at least partially, removed. The health of the nation’s
environment became a national priority. Democratic activism at the local and national levels
and citizen oversight of government officials became accepted activities.
20
https://orgsync.com/35376/chapter

21 | P a g e
Bibliography:

 “Students and Politics in a comparative perspective” Seymour Martin Lipset

Daedalus Vol. 97, No. 1, Students and Politics (Winter, 1968), pp. 1-20.
 “High reliability organisations and Liability Students – The Politics of recognition”
Roger Slee.
 College Students and Politics: A Literature Review. CIRCLE Working Paper 46
Longo, Nicholas V.; Meyer, Ross P. Centre for Information and Research on Civic
Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), University of Maryland.
 http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/college-and-university/should-politics-
be-allowed/article7668473.ece
 http://theviewspaper.net/students-and-politics/
 https://www.theguardian.com/education/studentpolitics

22 | P a g e