Alan Haber

Who is Alan Haber?

Robert Alan Haber, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was the first president of Students for a Democratic Society, a U.S. radical student activist organization. Haber was elected at the first meeting of SDS in 1960. FBI files at the time indicated his official title as Field Secretary.

Described variously at the time as "Ann Arbor's resident radical" and "reticent visionary", Haber organized a human rights conference in April of that year which "marked the debut of SDS" and invited four organizers of the 1960 NAACP sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Haber "came from a leftist background"; his father was an "energetic" supporter of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal with socialist-progressive sympathies.

Haber's parents named him after former Wisconsin governor, congressman and senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., advocate of the Wisconsin Idea political reforms in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

He also helped to found the Berkeley, CA Long Haul Infoshop

Currently, he is working on the Megiddo Peace Project, and makes a living as a cabinetmaker. He is also involved with the revival of Students for a Democratic Society.