The influence of the "activist decade" (spanning the early 1960s through the early 1970s) on Briar Cliff College (Iowa), a small midwestern liberal arts college affiliated with the Catholic Church, is discussed. Forces such as racism, the Vietnam War, and student unrest elicited concern and activism at Briar Cliff College, although there were never the intensely expressed mass protests that occurred at many larger universities. The "liberal idealism" of the era was influential despite parochial and conservative traditions at the college. Factors that generated liberal sentiments among students and faculty at Briar Cliff included the national news depiction of ghetto violence and campus unrest, resistance to the draft, music of the time, and a primarily young faculty at the college in the 1970s. Idealism of the new young faculty was further influenced by the college's Franciscan heritage that emphasized values such as concern for the whole person. Examples of limited forms of political protest at the college and community are cited, along with other ways that students expressed their values and concerns. More recently there has been a focus on "academic activism," which includes the development of a peace curriculum. (SW)