Former Berkeley free speech movement activists were compared with student government contemporaries and a cross section of the 1964-1965 student body along the dimensions of self-and ideal-selfconstructions, locus of control, political beliefs and behavior, occupational choice, and moral development.Though their personality and political activism profiles were not distinctive, former activists were more likely to endorse leftist convictions, to work in human service and creative occupations, to earn lower annual incomes, and to demonstrate principled moral reasoning than were the comparison groups. Though free speech movement activists appear to have made important life transitions 15 years following their arrests, they still remain a distinct social and political cohort.Few issues have so deeply divided public and professional opinion as student unrest. Debates of a decade ago that contested the psychopathology or psychological gif tedness of student activists have resurfaced in controversies about their wholesale co-optation or lasting commitment. The testing ground for such theoretical formulations would seem to be the adult psychosocial and political fates of former student activists. Yet, follow-up investigations are as rare as studies of the sources of student protest were abundant. We thus know more about who the student activists of the sixties were than about who they became, which has largely been the province of prediction and speculation.Writing in 1967, researchers Trent and Graise maintained that Berkeley student activists would not forget "what they were once so excited about on the steps of the Berkeley campus's Sproul Hall" (p. 50). They conjectured "that the qualities the activists brought to their meaningful dissent in college will be enduring, positive and influential, and that they will continue to initiate intellectual dissent and social awareness" (p. 50). Draper (1965),

Former Berkeley Free Speech Movement activists' sociopolitical status, self and ideal self constructions, perceptions of parents' child-rearing practices and moral reasoning were compared with an assessment made 11 years earlier following the Berkeley Sproul Hall sit-in. Activists were found to be less politically active, more tempered in their political radicalism, more pragmatic and personally reactive in their self and ideal self conceptualizations, more critical in their perceptions of parental relationships, and stable in their level of moral development. While activists appear to have made some important life transitions, an argument is made for their continued distinctiveness as a generational cohort both politically and psychosocially.

This study was conducted to determine certain ideological, personological, lifestyle, and familial correlates of activism persistence into middle adulthood. Almost 15 years following their arrest for participation in the Free Speech Movement, 30 former Berkeley activists responded to a political activity scale and measures selected to tap variables in each of the contextual domains. Although persisters did not differ from nonpersisters with respect to most lifestyle dimensions, they were distinguished by more radical beliefs, stronger repudiation of Protestant ethic values, and a stronger family legacy of social concern. The results provide more support for theories of activists' adult development based on notions of generational continuity, rather than generational rebellion.

Previous investigations performed during the age of student protest indicated a curvilinear relationship between moral development and political ideology and behavior, with both higher and lower levels of moral reasoning associated with leftist inclinations. The present research was conducted to determine if the linkage between moral reasoning level and political choice could be extended to former students negotiating their middle adulthood during a period of political quiescence. Consistent with the expectations of Haan, Smith, and Block (1968), results suggest a linear relationship between moral judgment and leftist politics, with premoral reasoners no longer overrepresented among either liberal or politically active individuals. Previous investigators' substantive and directional interpretations of the relationship between moral maturity and political preference are weighed against recent challenges to the purportedly primary, structural, and value-free basis of the Kohlberg (1969) model of moral development.