Grossman made a similar point. "Something like 65 percent of congressmen used to hold some local office," he said. By concentrating on such activities, he said, "you'll have an impact on the next generation of leaders."

Robert A. Riesman '40, who spoke about citizen lobbying, said student activists are much more effective today than they were in the 1930s.

Riesman, a member of AIPAC's executive committee, told a story about early pro-Jewish campus activism at Harvard.

After finding out about Kristallnacht--the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, in which members of the Nazi regime committed acts of violence against Jewish persons and property--Riesman said that he and other students petitioned Harvard to invite German Jewish students and professors to America. Harvard's dean responded reluctantly, saying he would "make haste slowly," Riesman said.

The speakers encouraged attendees to expand their activities further. Grossman said that student activists should think of themselves as leaders of their peers. "Students are not AIPAC's future but its present," he said.

Grossman said that some statistics show a decline in student political activism. "There's a lot of reason to be concerned about apathy," he said. "But you...are an eloquent refutation of those statistics."

Grossman's comments echoed those of Vice President Al Gore '69, who said at an AIPAC conference this May that "you [college students] are not the leaders of tomorrow, you are the leaders of today."