In Joan Andersson's formative years she was heavily influenced by an exemplary set of parents whose progressive child rearing practices helped her mature without the strictures or role limitations that affected most young women of her generation.  Her mother, a self taught Jewish intellectual, and her father, a leftist committed to civil rights struggles, raised her as a person with empathy for others and a internationalist world view.

A straight A student, Joan majored in psychology as an undergraduate at UCLA.  One of her first acts of civil disobedience was to walk out of her graduation ceremony to protest the Shah of Iran, who was delivering the commencement address.