When the old left was young

American college students during the Age of Roosevelt confronted two of the gravest crises in the twentieth century: the Great Depression and the growing international tensions that ultimately led to World War II. These crises generated more idealism than despair, politicizing undergraduates, who built the first mass student movement in American history. Led by leftists, this movement responded to the crisis in international relations by organizing national student strikes against war and fascism - which at their height in the mid-1930s mobilized almost half of the undergraduate population in the United States. While battling for peace in the international arena, the student movement responded to the Depression in America by waging a war on poverty. The movement championed a broader and more egalitarian vision of the welfare state than that of the New Dealers.^ Demanding "scholarships not battleships," Depression-era student activists pushed for federal educational funding and job programs for all needy young Americans. The student movement tested the limits of free speech on campus. Anti-radical college administrators sought to suppress the movement, provoking major battles over p