The National Directors of Students for a Libertarian Society were Milton Mueller (1979–1981), Jeffrey Friedman (1981–1982), Kathleen Jacob Richman (1982), and Chris Gunderson (1982–83).
Others active in the organization were Williamson Evers, Chris Sciabarra, Mark Brady, Marc Joffe, Eric Garris, and David Beito, who were members of the national board, and Paul Jacob, a prominent draft registration resister, Tom G. Palmer, and Dave Nalle, the publications director and editor of Liberty magazine.
As part of this effort, it worked closely with scientist John Gofman, a veteran of the Manhattan Project and a key developer of an early process for separating plutonium from fission products, in a campaign to repeal such subsidies for nuclear power as the Price Anderson Act.
Beginning in 1982, the SLS began to fall apart as a national organization over disagreements between the Radical Caucus of Murray Rothbard, Williamson Evers and Justin Raimondo, and others associated with Ed Crane and the Cato Institute.
It had angered its benefactor with the publication of a monograph that glorified San Francisco's White Night riots, titled In Praise of Outlaws: Rebuilding Gay Liberation.