Student Movements

In this section, you will find highlights related to student movements from our collections.

The New Left Collection: The New Left Collection largely relates to radical movements for political and social change in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. It is the largest resource in the archives devoted to this turbulent period in American history. There is a special emphasis in the collection on protest movements that emerged on college campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are extensive materials relating to events at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. There is also considerable documentation of the organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), dating from its earliest years through the factional struggles that culminated in a split in SDS in 1969.

Echeverría Martínez (Rodolfo) collection:  Rodolfo Echeverría Martínez was a student activist in the late 1960's, and a member of the Executive Commission in the mid-1970's. Opposed to unification, he left the party in 1981. The material was assembled by Echeverria during and after his membership in the party, as well as from at least two other sources. various states.

Notgemeinschaft fur eine freie Universitat records: German organization to promote academic freedom at the Freie Universität Berlin.

French subject collection: Pamphlets, leaflets, clippings, serial issues, election campaign literature, and other printed matter relating to political, social and economic conditions in France, especially during the Fifth Republic; elections; socialist and communist movements; radicalism, especially student radicalism, during the events of 1968; freemasonry; and miscellaneous aspects of pre-twentieth-century French history.

Mexican Subject Collection: Reports, policy statements, resolutions, bulletins, speeches, agenda, election material, serial issues, pamphlets, and other printed matter, relating to political conditions in Mexico. The collection focuses primarily on communist, socialist and Trotskyist organizations in Mexico, and consists largely of issuances of these organizations (especially the Partido Comunista Mexicano, the Partido Mexicano de los Trabajadores, the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, and the Partido Socialista Unificado de México) and of trade unions (especially of university workers) from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Shawkat (Hamid) collection: Hamid Shawkat was born in Tehran, Iran in 1949. At the age of 20, Shawkat moved to the United States and became involved in the student activist movement, which was united in opposition to the Pahlavi monarchy and the actions of its secret police, the SAVAK. He returned to Iran in 1978, amidst the turbulence of the Iranian Revolution. Soon after his return, Shawkat helped create the National Democratic Front of Iran and worked as an editor for the group's central publication, Azadi. Since his time as a student activist, Shawkat has written heavily on the topic of Marxist theory and the rise and fall of the Iranian student movement, as embodied by the Confederation of Iranian Students, National Union.

Jones (Hardin Blair) papers: Hardin B. Jones was an American physiologist and assistant director of the Donner Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley from 1948 to 1975 include correspondence, writings, reports, memoranda, clippings, leaflets, and other printed matter, relating to student radicalism, primarily at the University of California at Berkeley.