In 1962, forty American college students gathered in Michigan to discuss some of the gravest problems facing the nation, and in this meeting Students for a Democratic Society was born. SDS confronted the nation’s presence abroad, especially in Vietnam, challenged racial discrimination at home and asked serious questions about the nation’s commitment to participatory democracy. Among its most significant contributions was leading the free-speech movement. Significantly, members of SDS and the “New Left” were raised in an era of relative affluence; having experienced neither depression nor war, they were in many ways liberated to focus on issues both on college campuses and in the larger society.