During the late 1960s and early 1970s a number of national organizations were formed to mobilize and coordinate mass actions in protest against U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam; the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, sometimes known as Student Mobe or SMC, was one of these. Although originally formed only with the immediate goal of marshalling campus opposition for the spring 1967 offensive, SMC grew to become one of the largest, longest-lived, and in some ways the most successful of the peace organizations. This success in mustering support for various mass actions arose from the committee's strict avoidance of civil disobedience and adherence to the policy of non-exclusion. The second principle, by which SMS welcomed all activists opposed to the war regardless of ideology or political philosophy, meant that it was able to avoid much of the internal factionalism which destroyed the other national anti-war coalitions.
Although leadership in the planning and staging of numerous mass actions was its primary purpose, the SMC also strongly supported the rights of anti-war soldiers and high school students, and it introduced the concept of the “anti-war university” to draw attention to the degree to which major universities were supporting the war through their research activities.
A history of the Student Mobilization Committee is contained in Fred Halstead's Out Now: A Participant's Account of the American Movement Against the Vietnam War (1978). Although somewhat biased, Halstead's account details SMC's relationship with other national mobilizations and with the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance, for which it has been alleged the SMC was a front.
