From the beginning of the chapter:
In the early 1960s, most conservatives still saw the nation's universities and colleges as impregnable citadels of liberalism, but the walls, many believed had started to shake. The conservative media triumphantly reported that a new generation of students was rejecting liberal dogmas, and journals and newspapers outside the movement began to write about
an alleged "conservative revolt on campus". A growing interest in conservative spokesmen among American students did point in that direction. In 1962, the two most popular speakers at campuses across the country were Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr. (followed by Martin Luther King).
To some extent this alleged conservative revival on the American campus reflected a general trend of students becoming more politically active. University life generally provides excellent conditions for political mobilization. However, students of the 1950s had not exactly distinguished themselves as an active force in the political life of the nation. Many proressives of the generation that vacated the campuses in the 1930s would lament that the students of the "silent generation" largely considered higher education a four-year moratorium from the real world. As the 1960-election gave promise of a generational shift in the political leadership of the country, and an end to the stalemate of the Eisenhower-era, all this was about to change.
...