The United States National Student Association

509 Pages·2009·3 MB·English

by  Angus Johnston

The United States National Student Association:
Democracy, Activism, and the Idea of the Student, 1947-1978

by

J. ANGUS JOHNSTON

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York

2009
© 2009

J. ANGUS JOHNSTON

All Rights Reserved

ii
This manuscript has been read and accepted for the
Graduate Faculty in History in satisfaction of the
Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Gerald Markowitz

Date
Chair of Examining Committee

Joshua Freeman

Date
Executive Officer

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Michael Foley

Richard Gid Powers
Supervisory Committee
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Abstract

The United States National Student Association:
Democracy, Activism, and the Idea of the Student, 1947-1978

by

J. ANGUS JOHNSTON

Adviser: Professor Gerald Markowitz

The United States National Student Association (USNSA, or simply NSA),
America’s dominant national union of students from 1947 to 1978, was the locus of an
extraordinary variety of student organizing over the course of its 31-year history. A
confederation of student governments, NSA claimed an active membership of hundreds
of colleges and universities, trained and informed tens of thousands of student leaders,
and served as both a resource and a foil to the other student organizations of its era.
NSA’s annual meeting, the National Student Congress, drew participation from a
broad cross-section of American campuses. It was an incubator of theories and strategies
of student empowerment that shaped the university, and a site of debate, consciousness-
raising, information exchange, and organizing work.
NSA maintained significant relationships with a wide variety of other student
activist groups, including Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, Young Americans for Freedom, and the National Student
Lobby, the last of which it merged with in 1978 to create the United States Student
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Association. From the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, its top leadership was also engaged
in a clandestine relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Through more than three decades NSA provided one of the few sources of long-
term continuity in American student activism, and its persistent emphasis on the
student’s role in the university and the larger society enabled it to retain its campus
focus, and its student base, as other student organizations drifted, often to their
detriment. NSA grew from the premise that a student organization could be both activist
and representative of the nation’s students. This premise was the source of much of its
strength. It was also, however, a source of great internal strain, and a drag on some of
the Association’s grander ambitions. While NSA’s grounding in student government lent
it a stability, longevity, and ideological diversity that is unparalleled among American
student organizations, it also often fostered a timidity and a bureaucratic mindset that
often constrained it from taking bold action at moments of upheaval and opportunity.

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation is the first attempt ever to chronicle the history of the National
Student Association from its founding meetings in the aftermath of the Second World
War to its transformation into the United States Student Association three decades later.
My research, conducted in the two hundred boxes of material at the Wisconsin Historical
Society and in nearly a dozen other archives, has often taken me into unfamiliar
territory, and the sheer scope of NSA’s story has made the project all the more
challenging.
That project is by no means completed. My work on the history of NSA is
ongoing. But it would not have progressed to the point it has without the assistance and
support of an incredible group of people.
Jerry Markowitz, my advisor, encouraged me to conceptualize the dissertation
ambitiously, and helped me immeasurably in managing the consequences of that
decision. His insights and suggestions on matters large and small have been invaluable.
Josh Freeman read the entire manuscript twice, offering thoughtful and challenging
input each time. His responses continue to shape my thinking on this subject, and I look
forward to incorporating his suggestions more fully as I move forward.
As both a gifted historian of this period and an NSA alumna, Blanche Cook has
from the start of my work offered unparalleled insights into the Association and its
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milieu. Michael Foley and Richard Gid Powers have provided astute commentary from
their own distinct perspectives.
Professors Philip Cannistraro, Michael Wreszin, and Judith Stein each offered
useful advice on early drafts of material presented here in seminars at the CUNY
Graduate Center, and Stein, Barbara Welter, Carol Berkin, and James Oakes all served as
mentors early in my graduate career. I am indebted to each of them.
My writings on American student history have appeared in the anthologies
Student Protest: The Sixties and After and American Students Organize: Founding the
National Student Association After World War II, and in the journal Peace and Change,
and I thank the editors of each for working with me so thoughtfully. I have also benefited
from suggestions and questions posed at a long list of scholarly conferences, and from
the assistance of librarians and archivists across the country, most notably at the
Wisconsin Historical Society.
I chose not to conduct oral history interviewing among NSA alumni for this
dissertation, but I have talked informally about the Association with a number of alumni
over the years. Connie Curry and Eugene Schwartz have been particularly generous with
their time, and Curry and Donald Hoffman have shared archival materials from their
personal collections.
Several NSA alumni have read some or all of this manuscript. I am grateful to
William Dentzer, Francis Fisher, Don Hoffman, Gene Schwartz, and Clifton Wharton for
their perceptive suggestions. Others who have read and commented on this work at
various stages of its development include Adina Back, Jonathan Cohen, Margaret Duffin,
Phil Edwards, Megan Elias, Christine Fecko, Joan Johnston, Steve Johnston, Ilona
Nabutovskaya, Becky Rosenfeld, Kim Scheinberg, and Terri Senft, and I thank them all
for their insights and encouragement.
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My understanding of NSA history has been shaped by my own experiences as a
student activist at the State University of New York at Binghamton, in the Student
Association of the State University of New York, and in the United States Student
Association. I am indebted to the students I worked with in those venues, and to the
students I have worked with since, for the ways in which they have influenced my
understanding of the university and of movements for social change.
I hesitate to even begin to list the friends and colleagues who have shaped my
thoughts on this subject over the years, since any such list will necessarily be incomplete.
But in addition to all those mentioned above, I do want to mention Abby Cohen,
Tchiyuka Cornelius, Este Griffith, Kevin Keith, Kerry Ann King, Larry Leveen, Maggie
Newman, Madeleine Page, and Lee Rutledge. I am also tremendously grateful for the
support I have received from my parents, Joan and Steve, and the friendship of my
sisters, Tyra and Lindsay.

Finally, this manuscript is for Casey and Elvis, without whom it would have been
completed more quickly, and for Christine, without whom it wouldn’t have happened at
all. I love you guys.
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Author’s Note

This dissertation is part of an ongoing scholarly project. I am eager to hear from
scholars, NSA, NSL, and USSA alumni, contemporary student activists, and others who
may have questions, comments, or suggestions. I can be reached by email at
[email protected], and if you’re interested in keeping tabs on my work going forward,
you can find out more at www.angusjohnston.com.
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“Student government is a broken reed. If actual, it is capricious, impulsive, and
unreliable; if not, it is a subterfuge and pretense.”

— Andrew S. Draper, President of the University of Illinois, 1904.

“This article is being written with the belief that our experiences can be absorbed and
used, and, what is most important, the Movement can go on to higher levels, evading old
mistakes in order to commit the mistakes of the future.”

— Mark Rudd, President of Columbia University Students for a
Democratic Society, 1969.
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