The Student Right in the late 1960s

Unsung History

In the late 1960s, as college campuses became hotbeds of liberal protest, conservative college groups, like the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and College Republicans, backed by powerful conservative elders and their deep pockets, fought back, staging counter protests, publishing conservative newspapers, taking over student governments, and suing colleges to remain open.

Joining me in this episode to discuss the campus right in more detail is Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Row Your Boat,” by The Goldwaters, Sing Folk Songs to Make the Liberals Mad, 1964. The episode image is "Ban SDS sign,” Columbia University Student Strike, April 1968, Office of Public Affairs Protest & Activism Photograph Collection, Collection number: UA#109, University Archives, Columbia University, accessed October 9, 2023.

Additional Sources:

• “The Attack on Yale,” by McGeorge Bundy, The Atlantic, November 1951.
• “Debunking a Longstanding Myth About William F. Buckley,” by Matthew Dallek, POlitico, March 31, 2023.
• “About Us,” Young America’s Foundation.
• “Young Americans for Freedom,” Civil Rights Digital History Project, University of Georgia.
• "Young Americans for Freedom and the Anti-War Movement: Pro-War Encounters with the New Left at the Height of the Vietnam War," by Ethan Swift, Kaplan Senior Essay Prize for Use of Library Special Collections. 2019.
• “About Us,” Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
• “1968: Columbia in Crisis,” Columbia University Libraries.
• “How Columbia’s Student Uprising of 1968 Was Sparked by a Segregated Gym,” by Erin Blakemore, History.com, Originally published April 20, 2018, and updated July 7, 2020.
• “‘The Whole World Is Watching’: An Oral History of the 1968 Columbia Uprising,” by Clara Bingham, Vanity Fair, March 26, 2018.
• “The Right Uses College Campuses as Its Training Grounds,” by Scott W. Stern, Jacobin, August 2023.
• “Critical race theory is just the new buzzword in conservatives’ war on campuses,” by Lauren Lassabe, The Washington Post, July 7, 2021.

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