What baffled and still baffles scholars is that, under the cover of a great similarity in behaviour, style, fashion and action, the trend displayed a complex array of contradictory values. Hard-core young Stalinists or Trotskyists went around with long hair and in tight jeans. Maoists enjoyed listening to the Rolling Stones’ ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’. Defence of individualism and distaste for bureaucracy went hand in hand with staunch advocacy of state or collective action against racism and poverty. Avowed libertarians urged withdrawing free speech from supporters of far-right groups. In the name of liberalism, student radicals defended the autonomy of the universities against the encroachment of capitalism, and condemned any funding from private enterprise or government departments connected to the police and the armed forces. At the same time, they criticised the liberal, elitist and allegedly ‘irrelevant’ nature of much academic research, demanded that the universities should no longer be ivory towers and a preserve for the few, and should instead serve society and the people.

It is in the interplay of this twin-faceted phenomenon - an anti-establishment culture with an elitist and avant-garde profile, resting on popular foundations - that the student movement developed. It should not be thought, however, that student activism ever ‘dominated’ the universities, or that student activists were ever in the majority, or that Marxism become the uncontested ideology of the student movement. The single most important strand of the activists’ ideology was a strong anti-authoritarianism. This was accompanied by a dislike of rules and bureaucracy, a suspicion of representative and delegated authority, and a strong sympathy for the oppressed, especially those oppressed by racial discrimination. Apart from such description enunciations, it is difficult to provide an adequate analysis of the phenomenon of student and youth protest.

Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren’t left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical—because they weren’t musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they’d done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn’t know what to major in majored in.