Abstract

The Nonstudent Left

At the height of the Berkeley, California, insurrection press reports were loaded with mentions of outsiders, non-students and professional troublemakers. Terms like "Cal's shadow college" and "Berkeley's hidden community" became part of the journalistic lexicon. These people, it was said, were whipping the campus into frenzy, goading the students to revolt, harassing the administration, and all the while working for their own fiendish ends. You could almost see them loping along the midnight streets with bags of seditious leaflets, strike orders, red banners of protest and cablegrams from Moscow, Russia, Peking, China or Havana, Cuba. As in Mississippi and South Vietnam, outside agitators were said to be stirring up the locals, who wanted only to be left alone.