The Civic Revolution on Campus: Student Activism and the Politics of Service Learning

 “The Civic Revolution” examines the relationship between student activism and the emergence of service learning in American higher education. I chronicle how students  interpreted postwar transformations in higher education through the expansion of international  exchange; how student activists in the civil rights movement and the Peace Corps redefined the  practice of education in the 1960s; and how “service learning” triumphed over other models of  civic engagement on college campuses in the 1970s and 1980s. Using a diverse array of sources  – including federal education reports, movement documentation, institutional records, and oral  histories – I analyze the debates between student activists, service learning educators, university  administrators, and federal policy makers concerning appropriate forms of citizenship within  American higher education.