For poor, young Jewish intellectuals in New York in the 1930s, City College was where the action was. In dingy, horseshoe-shaped alcoves lining the college lunchroom, the students spent hour after hour in ideological debate that was often more spirited and stimulating than the classroom lectures.

There were separate alcoves for Catholics, Zionists, and Orthodox Jews, but the pro-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist radicals made the most noise and commanded the most attention. The Stalinists in Alcove Two outnumbered the other factions and controlled the student newspaper, which defended the Moscow trials in editorials. They had close to fifty allies among City College's left-leaning faculty, and, Irving Howe remembered, one in their group, Julius Rosenberg, would later be executed along with his wife, Ethel, for conspiring to steal America's atomic secrets.

The group in Alcove One was a mixed bag. Although they were all pretty radical in their college days, many would later make their names as prominent neoconservatives. They were united in their opposition to the Soviet dictator and often sought to provoke his backers (who were not permitted to speak to them) in Alcove Two. On other political issues, however, they disagreed with one another as often as not. For example, while Howe and Irving Kristol backed the revolutionist Leon Trotsky, who broke away from Stalin and was later murdered in Mexico, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell were anti-Trotskyites.