Gregg Michel

Gregg L. Michel (Grad ’89, ’99 CM) has published Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s South. Published by LSU Press, Spying on Students focuses on the law enforcement campaign against New Left and progressive student activists in the South, particularly white student activists who have often been overlooked in the scholarship of the era. Drawing on formerly secret FBI files and records of other investigative agencies, Spying on Students provides fresh insights on the destructive, broad-based, weaponized surveillance tactics deployed by state actors in their drive to suffocate dissent in the region.

“An important and timely study of the surveillance of white activists in the American South. Using a wealth of new files and sources, Michel deepens our understanding of the intertwined histories of the New Left and law enforcement in the 1960s and 70s. The result is a fascinating read as well as a cautionary tale.” – Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.

“Spying on Students draws together an impressive amount of original research to offer a perceptive and insightful picture of the ubiquity of southern law enforcement surveillance of liberal activists during the 1960s. Michel’s extremely well-written study features an especially valuable portrait of such practices in Memphis, Tennessee.” — David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“This well-crafted, engrossing account of government efforts to silence southern activists should warn us of the fragility of democracy, in history and to the present day.” – Michael Honey, author of To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice.