Carl Davidson is a former student leader of the New Left of the 1960s, serving as a Vice President and National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society. From 1968 to 1976, he worked on the Guardian newsweekly as a writer and news editor. Born in 1943, he graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Penn State, and later taught and did graduate work at the University of Nebraska, between 1965 and 1966.