Olof Palme: “Moral Duty Is Discontent on a Large Scale”: Creation

Abstract

Late in September of 1951, Olof Palme, a young, recently degreed law student was traveling with his friend on a train to Stockholm. Having immersed himself in the student movement, Palme was secretary of the National Union of Swedish Students and especially active in the union’s committee on international affairs. He had made something of a name for himself by initiating a program that provided scholarships to Swedish universities for black South African students who had been denied financial aid in their own country. After graduation, he preferred to continue working for the union rather than practicing law and, in so doing, contributed occasional articles to the review Tiden (Times), in which he pointed to the necessity of “democratizing” higher education. The costs, he complained, were too high; and only the sons and daughters of the “traditional bourgeois” could take advantage of it.