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One reason that students are getting more attention is that there are so many of them—and larger student bodies make larger demonstrations. Since the mid-1950s, university enrollments have doubled and more: from 380,000 to 880,000 in Latin America, from 739,000 to 1,700,000 in Western Europe, from 2,600,000 to 7,000,000 in the U.S. Among these, the vast majority are not militant and are often repelled by and sometimes moved to protest against the extravagances of the extremists. The majority are not apathetic but are more concerned with courses than causes. By the best estimate of educators at home and abroad, 1% to 2% of the students in a university are highly committed leaders and agitators tending to extremism. Beyond them, roughly 5% to 10% are activists who take part in demonstrations, though the number can go much higher when a sensitive issue is raised.
The Young Democrats claim some 100,000 members on U.S. campuses; the Young Republicans, 150,000. The conservative Young Americans for Freedom has 25,000; the radical leftist Students for a Democratic Society is much smaller—5,500 members—but more influential. What it lacks in size, the S.D.S. makes up in zeal and ability to play the press for headlines. Typically, the S.D.S. has only 60 active members among 4,700 students at Princeton, but it is the biggest partisan organization on campus, and one of its highly committed members was elected chairman of the undergraduate assembly last week. An underlying principle of S.D.S. activism is to make as much trouble as possible for the Establishment. Some of its members quite openly, if naively, espouse Marxism as their basic philosophy. Most activists seem to subscribe to the not unreasonable theory that in this era hardly anyone listens to a quiet man, so they make as much noise as possible.
There are many reasons—economic, social, educational—for the current activism of students. More than any prior generation, they are children of permissive parents, and the Spock marks are showing. Today's young are used to having their complaints acted on instantly. "They are the babies who were picked up," notes Harvard's David Riesman. They have less direction than previous generations, are challenged by their parents to think for themselves. For all the rather exaggerated talk of the generation gap, American student activists tend not so much to defy their parents as to emulate them. And their parents are inclined to approve of what they are doing.
The many studies of student activists show that the great majority of them come from families that are prosperous, politically active and liberal. Almost half of the protest-prone students are Jewish; few are Catholic. The most active students cluster in schools that have a tradition of dissent and a tolerance for it—universities such as California, Wisconsin, Columbia. Most of the activists are students of the arts and humanities; they are apt to be bright but dreamy, and not yet committed to careers. Few are in the professional schools—business, engineering or medicine. Since many universities no longer demand compulsory attendance at lectures, they have the time to ring doorbells for a candidate or march for civil rights. Some sympathetic professors spur the activists on, grant them long periods off, extend deadlines for tests and theses.