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By Donna Schaper with Rake Morgan and Frank Marafiote contributing. Edited by Frank Marafiote for the Internet.

(To read a PDF copy of the thesis, click here.)

With Hillary Clinton likely to pursue the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, questions about her intellectual and moral education abound. One of the major intellectual influences perhaps an emotional one was well was radical social philosopher and activist Saul Alinsky. As this story shows, Alinsky was both the ladder Hillary climbed to gain new perspectives on society specifically the poor and then, once there, a ladder she tossed aside when she no longer needed it.

Americans who graduated from high school in 1965 and college in 1969 were not just part of a population bubble the baby boomers but a cultural one as well. The children of the Sixties combined the typical young adult developmental cycle with a unique cycle in the life of this nation. They were not only trying to learn about dating, but also about foreign policy, ethics, and racism.

Hillary Clinton was quintessentially one of these people a Sixties person, although we would hardly have recognized her as such. That she didnt buy her wedding dress until the night before her wedding is not just a coincidence. It was also commonplace. Her generation was mixing private rites of passage with public ones, and it seemed right to do so. Hillary Clinton was a conformist to the extent that she mixed these personal and political levels early, at a time when most of the people did likewise.

As we search for social influences on the First Lady, we have to begin in this context, in the unique mix of the public and private that served as her environment as a young woman. She was as marked by her chronological age and the Age of Aquarius as most Sixties people were and she is probably where she is today because she was even more influenced by it than the rest of us.

It is no accident that she chose to write about Saul Alinsky for her senior thesis at Wellesley College . As a social activist, Alinsky was as much a part of the Sixties as was Kennedy and King. He was in the background creating the foreground of interpretation:

Power to the people is a phrase coined by him as much as by Stokeley Carmichael. Like the headband, Hillary abandoned much of what influenced her back then. But still this heavy identification with her age and THE age continued in bold form right after she completed her senior thesis.

That people stood to applaud Hillary Clintons commencement speech the first one given by a student at Wellesley is another mark of her generation that she wears in her psyche. It had to matter to her that the classes before 1960 remained in their seats, not quite sure of what had just happened. Classes before 1930 didnt even clap. From 60 on people were on their feet clapping.

This literal order of approval is important to our understanding of Hillary Clinton. And surely it is one of the reasons shes shifted from her Sixties image to a more up-to-date one. She learned early on that people interpret things by their age. No one needs the tag of the Sixties any more. Her repudiation of the tag is one of the reasons that Wellesley College , at her request, does not release her senior thesis to the public. She doesnt want to be identified with Alinsky or the Sixties any more than is absolutely necessary. Hillary is socially and personally based in the Sixties, not in its cultural but in its political dimension.

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senior thesis - Hillary Clinton Quarterly

Hillary Clinton is scheduled to give a major economic speech on Monday an attempt to articulate her position in relation to Main Street and Wall Street while also defining herself relative to her partys other declared presidential candidates.

As first lady, US Senator, and Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton had plenty of opportunities to observe if not work on economic policies and programs. As the 2016 presidential campaign unfolds, she has to keep in mind the popularity of positions articulated by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on the left and potential Republican opponents especially former Florida governor Jeb Bush on the right.

Many Democratic Party hands had a part in crafting Clintons speech, which is reported to focus on middle class incomes and wages.

To address income inequality, Clinton will call for raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy, boosting the power of unions, and reducing health-care costs, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shell also endorse corporate profit sharing, a college-affordability program, and a middle-class tax cut.

The speech is the product of scores of conversations with elite thinkers of the liberal policy establishment, such as former White House advisor Gene Sperling, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, liberal think tank president Neera Tanden, Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, and Jared Bernstein, former senior economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, The Hill newspaper reports.

Professor Blinder says Clinton has expressed interest in policies to curb excessive risk on Wall Street, such as a financial transactions tax on high-frequency trading, taxes on large Wall Street banks based on their risk profile, and eliminating the so-called carried interest loophole that allows managers of hedge funds and private equity firms to pay a lower tax rate than most individuals, according to the Associated Press.

"I'm pretty sure that as the details come out you and others will judge them to be more anti-Wall Street than pro-Wall Street," Blinder told the AP. "This is not going to look like an agenda that came out of a bunch of Wall Streeters."

In line with Clintons economic positions designed to appeal to working Americans, she just received a major labor union endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represents more than 1.6 million members nationwide, including K-through-12 teachers and school personnel, higher education faculty and staff, early childhood educators, and retirees.

"In vision, in experience and in leadership, Hillary Clinton is the champion working families need in the White House," AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement Saturday.

Conservatives and Republican presidential candidates are pushing back against Clintons economic positions as she develops and articulates them.

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Hillary Clinton to lay out plans for the economy. GOP says ...

During an event in Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addressed the church shooting in Charleston, S.C., and gun control. (United States Conference of Mayors)

In her standard stump speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton talks about fighting income inequality, celebrating court rulings on gay marriage and health care, and, since the Emanuel AME Church massacre, toughening the nations gun laws.

That last component marks an important evolution in presidential politics. For at least the past several decades, Democrats seeking national office have often been timid on the issue of guns for fear of alienating firearms owners. In 2008, after Barack Obama took heat for his gaffe about people who cling to guns or religion, he rarely mentioned guns again neither that year nor in his 2012 reelection campaign.

But in a sign that the political environment on guns has shifted in the wake of recent mass shootings and of Clintons determination to stake out liberal ground in her primary race against insurgent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Clinton is not only initiating a debate about gun control but also vowing to fight the National Rifle Association.

Im going to speak out against the uncontrollable use of guns in our country because I believe we can do better, Clinton said Tuesday in Iowa City.

A few days earlier, she said in Hanover, N.H.: We have to take on the gun lobby. ... This is a controversial issue. I am well aware of that. But I think it is the height of irresponsibility not to talk about it.

Clintons comments could stoke millions of politically active gun owners, and Wayne LaPierre, the NRAs executive vice president, argued that the move was fraught with peril for her.

Weve been down this road before with the Clintons, LaPierre said through a spokesman. She needs to read her husbands book.

In his memoir, My Life, former president Bill Clinton suggested that his vice president, Al Gore, lost the 2000 presidential election in part because of backlash in states such as Arkansas and Tennessee over the Clinton administrations 1995 ban on assault weapons, which has since expired. Many Democratic lawmakers also lost their elections after gun-control votes.

The Republican 2016 presidential candidates, in keeping with GOP orthodoxy, have spoken out loudly against gun control. Many gave speeches at the NRAs spring convention and tout their high ratings from the group.

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Hillary Clintons push on gun control marks a shift in ...

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pictured here on Tuesday, March 3, has become one of the most powerful people in Washington. Here's a look at her life and career through the years.

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Before she married Bill Clinton, she was Hillary Rodham. Here, Rodham talks about student protests in 1969, which she supported in her commencement speech at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

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Rodham, center, a lawyer for the Rodino Committee, and John Doar, left, chief counsel for the committee, bring impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in the Judiciary Committee hearing room at the U.S. Capitol in 1974.

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Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton helps first lady Rosalynn Carter on a campaign swing through Arkansas in June 1979. Also seen in the photo is Hillary Clinton, center background.

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Bill Clinton embraces his wife shortly after a stage light fell near her on January 26, 1992. They talk to Don Hewitt, producer of the CBS show "60 Minutes."

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Clinton: 'People should and do trust me' - CNNPolitics.com

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton listens to a reporter's question as she waits for her ice cream at Dairy Twirl, Friday, July 3, 2015, in Lebanon, New Hampshire. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) | ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- Hillary Clinton will soon start giving interviews to the national media, nearly three months into her presidential campaign and amid growing tensions with the press.

Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told Fox News on Sunday night that Clinton, the former secretary of state who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, will begin interviews in the coming week.

Word of a potential thaw in the strained relations between Clinton and the press came just a day after things seemed to reach a new low. On Saturday, journalists covering Clinton at a New Hampshire parade were corralled with rope. On Twitter, humiliating photos showed the campaigns strong-arm tactics with the media -- on Independence Day, no less.

There have been tensions for months between the campaign and reporters, who have leveled complaints about lack of access to Clinton on the trail. Last month, the campaign caused a minor uproar when it barred a designated pool reporter from an event in New Hampshire -- a move that the Clinton traveling press pool, which consists of reporters from 14 major news organizations, later called "unacceptable." The move was never fully explained.

There's also the long-running issue of Clinton rarely taking questions from the media since becoming a candidate, in stark contrast to the various Republican hopefuls and to her biggest challenger on the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt).

Clinton didn't give any interviews during her first two months as a candidate. In June, in the days after her first major rally, she spoke with local journalists in early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but she has yet to do a national media interview. Journalists and bookers for every major TV network will almost certainly be racing to secure the first national sit-down.

Clinton's strained relationship with the press this election cycle hasnt quite reached the toxic levels of the 2008 race, when not only were reporters given little access to the candidate, they also had to deal with campaign aides yelling at them.

No one expected Clinton, who is said to dislike the media, to become especially chummy with reporters this time around. But during the lead-up to her presidential announcement, insiders had suggested that the 2016 campaign would try to avoid the mistakes of the 2008 team in terms of handling the press.

In a Monday interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Palmieri said that press access cant get in the way of [Clinton] being able to campaign. She acknowledged that the campaign does "pay a price" with the media when it forgoes interviews or chooses to stage smaller events that offer less press access. But that strategy, she said, is "part of our calculus" to last as a campaign.

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Hillary Clinton To Finally Give National Media Interviews