SDS’s Imploded 50 Years Ago — A Triumph of Extremism: Our Political Parties Could Repeat This Experience

Fifty years ago, this June, the Students for a Democratic Society held its last united National Convention. It was torn apart by ideologically driven factions, each claiming to have the only correct approach for saving America. Ironically, SDS was initiated by the anti-authoritarian, but socialist oriented, League for Industrial Democracy. Al Haber, SDS’s first president, encouraged it to work with any group that was seeking social change.

It may be unpopular to say, but extremism from within SDS destroyed it, not the…