Curated FSM Press Bibliography
Fight Truth Decay
4,068 items
This bibliography covers printed journalism
related to the FSM from 1964 on, with many illustrative quotations, and such links to the
actual texts as we can provide. Its compilation is discussed in the introduction.
This list is far from exhaustive, esp. for 1964-1965. The reader is referred to Google News Archives.
Items in this bibliography begin in 1964,
the oldest at the bottom of this page
10/7/2024, Revolution.com, 60th Anniversary of The Free Speech Movement, Editor,
"A further irony is that Bob Avakian, one of the students brought forward through participating in that historic movement, became the foremost revolutionary communist in the world today, developing a new communism.”
10/6/2024, Berkeley Daily Planet, Smithereens, Gar Smith,
"With many university administrations planning to roll out new restrictions on speech and protest gatherings on the country's campuses, today's generation of Berkeley students will soon have a unique opportunity to revisit the history of the Free Speech Movement and the galvanizing mass-arrests following the nonviolent Sproul Hall sit-in of 1964—with exhibits, receptions, and a late-afternoon panel discussion with FSM vets and historian Robert Cohen.”
10/1/2024, The New Hampshire Gazette, Tues, Oct 1, Editor,
"1964—Campus cops at U.C. Berkeley arrest Jack Weinberg; big mistake. The Free Speech Movement ensues.”
10/1/2024, The Lima News, Today in History, Associated Press,
"In 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley, as students surrounded a police car containing an arrested campus activist for more than 30 hours.”
9/26/2024, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 60 years after the day college students won free speech, their rights are vanishing, Will Bunch,
"But will today’s youth generation—coming of age in a more repressive time, saddled with problems like debt and rampant careerism not faced by their predecessors — be able to accept that torch? Huge issues, including the constitutional right of dissent and the future of colleges as bastions of open discourse and critical thought, hang in the balance. Sixty years later, America is desperately waiting for a second Free Speech Movement.”
9/18/2024, Legacy.com, Obit, Ursula Ellen Kennedy,
"While working for the Chancellor, she interacted with many notable figures of the day, including leaders of the Free Speech movement.”
9/11/2024, New Ideal, Gregory Salmieri, Free Speech as a Right and a Way of Life,
"Perhaps the most eloquent illustration of the perverse view that free speech amounts to a license to force oneself on others is the Berkeley ‘Free Speech Movement’ of 1964, which consisted of months of civil unrest perpetuated by thousands of University of California students, who objected to a university policy restricting certain political activities on campus. Even granting that such a policy on the part of a public university constitutes a violation of free speech, the aggrieved students had no right to make this point by forcibly disrupting the campus, thereby denying other students the education they had contracted for.” [Ed note: the FSM strike drew a quite permeable picket line, which students and workers could choose whether to cross.]
9/4/2024, The Gazette-Virginian, Mike Doan, MIKE’S MIC: Avoiding the dreaded B-word,
"This was all before the famous Free Speech Movement, which took place the year after I graduated in 1963. But there were precursors of student radicalism when I was there. There were demonstrations of some kind all the time. Even at our Daily Californian student newspaper, we sang revolutionary songs at our parties.”
8/30/2024, The Jewish News of Northern California, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Rabbi Michael Lerner, religious and political visionary, dies at 81,
"Lerner graduated from Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from UC Berkeley. Like others at Cal, Lerner was radicalized by the Free Speech movement and became a leader of Students for Democratic Socialism. (At Cal, he roomed with anti-war activist Jerry Rubin.)”
8/28/2024, The Miami Student, Harry Hittle, The relationship between protests and American universities
"’I think it’s interesting to compare the current campus protests to the Free Speech Movement at [The University of California] Berkeley, which took place from 1964 to 1965,’ history professor Brian Danoff wrote in an email to The Miami Student. ‘The Free Speech Movement started when the university tried to ban students from engaging in political advocacy on campus.’
¶
The implementation of the restrictive policies escalated student protests at Berkeley, which eventually retracted its policies, Danoff said. The movement is widely seen as one of the first instances of mass civil disobedience on a college campus, precluding what is now a strong history of student activism on American campuses.
¶
While this spring’s protests polarized some campuses, like UCLA and The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), the Free Speech Movement had a unifying effect among students.
¶
‘The Free Speech Movement was led by left-wing students, but a strikingly broad coalition of student groups at times got involved and worked together,’ Danoff said. He added that both the College Republicans group and socialist student groups took part.
¶
‘Whenever protests break out on campuses, the reflex is to compare them to the mythic 1960s,’ history professor Steven Conn said. ‘But the better analogy to what happened this spring is the divestment movement of the mid-1980s.’”
8/18/2024, 48 Hills, Caitlin Donohue, 2024 DNC protests may have little in common with 1968—let’s hope,
"Even seasoned protestors like Jack Weinberg, a leader of the UC Berkeley free speech movement who coined the infamous ‘don’t trust anybody over 30’ motto, declined to attend the 1968 DNC protests. That was partly out of his concern over their organizers’ tactics.
¶
‘My experience came out of the civil rights movement, and I always had the view that when you’re mobilizing people, it’s your obligation to let them know what they’re getting into,’ Weinberg, a labor and environmental activist who now lives in Chicago’s Loop neighborhood, where many of the DNC protests will take place, told 48hills over the phone. ‘[Yippie leader] Jerry Rubin’s view was you create a situation that you know was going to get out of hand, then you sit back and let it unfold.’
¶
‘I knew the protests in Chicago were going to end up with a lot of angry people and irrational police. It wasn’t the kind of organizing style I was accustomed to,’ Weinberg said.”
8/15/2024, The Chicago Blog, Ellen Schrecker, The University Betrayed: The Lost Promise of the 1960s,
"That promise disappeared—a victim of the backlash against the student movement and the concomitant neoliberal restructuring of the academy that began in the 1970s. College and university presidents proved unwilling to defend their own students and faculty members, and much of the American public was as unprepared for, and antagonistic to, the student protests as those administrators. Encouraged by Ronald Reagan’s successful gubernatorial campaign against the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1966, politicians rushed to enact punitive measures against student activists. While most bills failed to pass or proved unenforceable, the concomitant financial sanctions imposed on public higher education were devastating. State legislators cut back on their academic institutions’ operating budgets, even as enrollments continued to grow. The free, or virtually free, access to a rapidly expanding system of public higher education, as well as affordable tuition at many private institutions, gradually disappeared.”
8/12/2024 circa, QS Insights Magazine, Nicole Chang, When students speak up
"‘There shouldn't need to be encampments to begin with, they should allow students to have input into divestment and divestment policies,’ he [Professor Robert Cohen] says. ‘I don't even agree with a lot of the demands of the protesters,’ he adds. ‘But to me that's not even the point. The point is, what kind of governance do you have when students feel like they have to sleep outside to try to get some input into the universities' investment policies?’”
8/9/2024, Waging Nonviolence, Mark Engler and Paul Engler, How to make sure your disruptive protest helps your cause
"In one of the most famous protest speeches of the 20th century, Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio stood before a crowd of several thousand on Dec. 2, 1964, and delivered an impassioned defense of disobedience: ‘There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,’ Savio insisted. ‘You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop.’”
7/19/2024, The News Journal, obituary, Mary Erla Wolters, 1940-2024
”Mary then attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied mathematics and physics, marched in the free speech movement, and met her future husband Raymond at a Students for Kennedy party.”
7/12/2024, Oregon Artswatch, Bob Hicks, ‘Fists & Flowers’: The tumultuous 1960s
”And much of his account of the decade comes from the free-speech cauldron of the University of California, Berkeley, where [Richard] Hertzberg was a student from 1963 to 1968. He continued to live in Berkeley until 1971. The radicalization of Berkeley students and the growth of the free speech movement came in spite of (and perhaps prodded by) opposition from the university administration and even California Gov. Pat Brown, who ordered student occupiers arrested and hauled away.
¶
Yet the movement took root, and spread rapidly. And as Hertzberg points out, it didn’t spring only from the left. The 18 groups that joined the United Front to oppose the university’s suppression tactics ‘encompassed a wide spectrum of viewpoints, from Students for a Democratic Society and the Young Socialist Alliance to California Students for Goldwater and University Young Republicans.’
¶
They demanded, in brief, the full rights of U.S. citizens. Members of Berkeley’s United Front, Hertzberg writes, ‘asserted that the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly, along with the due-process and equal-protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, should be applicable on university property and for students on campus.’”
7/4/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Sam Whiting, Conn ‘Ringo’ Hallinan, beloved writing instructor and journalism adviser at UC Santa Cruz, dies at 81
”And he was Ringo when he was arrested during the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, the year the other Ringo arrived with the Beatles.”
7/4/2024, National Geographic, Richard Franks, Berkeley was the birthplace of Californian punk. Today, the music plays on
”Punk is, at its core, anti-establishment, and its influence first grew in reaction to sociopolitical issues such as racism, segregation and gender identity. In 1964, UC Berkeley students were at the forefront of the radical free-speech movement, protesting in response to university administrators banning on-campus political activity. It remains one of the biggest anti-establishment protests in history, putting the city at the heart of the punk revolution.”
7/1/2024, Monthly Review, The Editors, Notes From The Editors
”On December 2–3, 1964, eight hundred Berkeley students occupied the central administration building until arrested by police. According to a journalist who covered the movement, ‘It wasn’t exactly that Berkeley was the first place where this mechanism kicked in [political protest] but it was the place where it went critical’ (‘Free Speech Movement,’ Bancroft Library Oral History Center, University of California, Berkeley, berkeley.edu; Hans Koning, Nineteen-Sixty Eight: A Personal Report [New York: Norton, 1987], 20; John Bellamy Foster, ‘The Spirit of ’68,’ Monthly Review 41, no. 7 [December 1989]: 47–54—much of the text in the following paragraphs draws on Foster’s article).”
6/27/2024, Portside, Charles Idelson, The Life and Times of Conn Hallinan, 1942–2024
”The involvement of Berkeley students produced a backlash by the administration, banning student tables and other political activism. It led directly to the eruption of Berkeley’s historic Free Speech Movement in the fall of 1964, also inspired by the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 where several Berkeley students who led the Free Speech Movement had just returned. As the battle raged in late November, Ringo, who had transferred to Berkeley that fall, was among 800 fellow arrestees at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall in December 1964, along with brothers, Matthew Patrick, and prominent free speech leaders Mario Savio, Bettina Aptheker, Jackie Goldberg, and Jack Weinberg.”
6/26/2024, People's World, Jenny Farrell, The invisible front: An American woman’s memoir of spying for East Germany
”Beatrice’s newly published autobiography tells the extraordinary life story of these two left-wing Americans. Jeffrey [Schevitz], a graduate of the elite Princeton University, ‘had studied in Berkeley, California, between 1962 and 1969. He was an activist in the free speech movement and very active in the anti-Vietnam War movement in Berkeley and later at Washington University in St. Louis.’”
6/24/2024, Alta Journal, What Lies Beneath, Bethany Kaylor
”After studying chemistry for two years, [Deward] Hastings dropped out of Berkeley, moving to a house in the hills above campus. Although he was no longer a student, he joined the Free Speech Movement, which kicked off in 1964.
¶
Barbara Garson, a Free Speech Movement activist and playwright, met Hastings, whom she describes as “a nervous, thin person,” when he fixed an old Multilith printer for one of the student groups. Garson recalls him working day and night, rarely sleeping, as he refurbished the refrigerator-size machine.
¶
While Hastings’s technical contribution was minor compared with the actions of Free Speech Movement heroes like Mario Savio and Bettina Aptheker, it was precisely the sort of behind-the-scenes work that might have appealed to the young man who would eventually become the mysterious steward of the semi-legendary Essex Hot Tub.”
6/23/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Obit, Howard P. Abelson
”After graduating from Fairfax High School, he attended Los Angeles State College and then transferred to UC Berkeley, where he was involved in student political groups and the early days of the Free Speech Movement.”
6/6/2024, The New York Times, Kurt Streeter, U.C. Berkeley’s Leader, a Free Speech Champion, Has Advice for Today’s Students: Tone It Down
”Berkeley, she said, must aspire to teach students how to have civil dialogue and debate. Without that ability, she said, ‘we are lost.’
¶
Dr. Christ recalled Mario Savio, known for leading Berkeley’s free speech movement in the mid-1960s.
¶
During one student rally, a police car was surrounded by student activists near Sather Gate. Savio, the chancellor noted, climbed onto the car to give a speech but first took off his shoes to avoid damaging its roof.
¶
Dr. Christ wondered aloud whether a present-day activist would do the same before climbing atop a police car. Probably not.
¶
In fact, she said wryly, they just ‘might kick in the windows.’
”
6/6/2024, Times Colonist, Calvin Sandborn, Free speech is indispensable to social justice and democracy
”Recall the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. In 1964 the University of California barred campus political advocacy.
¶
When a civil rights activist urged students to support Southern Black voter registration, authorities arrested him. Students responded with a ‘free speech’ sit-in where 800 were arrested.
¶
The Free Speech Movement became a major incubator of student radicalism — and profoundly advanced anti-racism, feminist, peace and environmental movements.”
6/4/2024, Time, Eddie R. Cole, Instead of Calling in Law Enforcement to Deal With Protesters, College Presidents Could Have Followed This Example
”Two months later, in May 1960, California students captured the nation’s attention for disrupting a U.S. House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee meeting in downtown San Francisco.
¶
At the state level, those activities motivated the California State Senate Un-American Activities Subcommittee to investigate student activity on the state’s college campuses. They were also responding to a shift in University of California policy. Whereas the university had previously denied recognition to student groups dedicated to specific causes, in fall 1960, UCLA’s new chancellor Franklin D. Murphy granted the campus NAACP chapter recognition as an official student group.
¶
The subcommittee released a report regarding ‘radical student groups’ in June 1961. It concluded that communist behavior would ‘plague California campuses in the near future.’ Politicians often conflated students’ civil rights activism and other activities with communism, which they treated as threatening to the United States.
¶
UC President Clark Kerr prepared a reply shortly afterward. Kerr noted that the subcommittee report ‘found no specific evidence of successful infiltration by subversive groups of our faculties or of our representative student organizations.’
¶
But he did not just defend the students from that charge. He framed his reply in terms of the principles that guided university leadership, including that: ‘Freedom to speak and to hear is maintained for students and faculty members.’”
6/3/2024, Red Flag, Amaya Castro Williams, Five student movements to remember
”The Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964 helped kick off a wave of student activism that would last well into the 1970s. The University of California Berkeley administration banned any activities related to 'off-campus political and social action', meaning that student activists were not allowed to organise information stalls, hold meetings or raise any funds.
¶
The attack was particularly aimed at Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) activists, who, inspired by Black civil rights student activists in the South, had been organising in San Francisco’s Bay Area against the racist hiring practices of local businesses.”
5/31/2024, The New York Times, Emily Bazelon and Charles Homans, The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments
”Debates over free speech on college campuses have invariably been debates about power. This became clear in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeley, handed out leaflets organizing demonstrations against the Republican National Convention, held in San Francisco that year. The dean of students barred them from using a campus-owned plaza. Months of protests and hundreds of arrests followed, until the university finally capitulated.”
5/25/2024, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Annabelle Quince, The student protests on US campuses—repeat of the 1960’s or something completely different?
”Robert Cohen, Professor of History and Social Studies at New York University, and author of Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s and The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s.”
5/22/2024, The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi, Why is New York University making protesters watch The Simpsons as punishment?
"In an email to faculty, Robert Cohen, a professor of history and social studies and an expert in student protests, said that he couldn’t think of another example of a university administration forcing students to write that their protests were wrong. The closest thing he could come up with was the action of the judge in the mass trial of the hundreds of students arrested during the occupation of the University of California, Berkeley’s Administration Hall in 1964 during the free speech movement. The superior court judge Rupert J Crittenden asked students to write letters explaining their decision to break the law, hoping that they would explain why their decision had been wrong. Instead they explained why the sit-in was justified. Their letters angered the judge but are now being held up as valuable historical sources for student perspectives on the Berkeley free speech crisis."
5/20/2024, The Jewish News of Northern California, Maya Mirsky, Tent protests barely register, compared with ’60s and ’70s, says scholar
"Robert Cohen, one of the foremost scholars of U.S. protest movements, suggests this spring’s pro-Palestinian tent encampment protests haven’t been as influential as one might think, with a tiny fraction of American college campuses taking part.
¶
‘I don’t think we should exaggerate how widespread it is,’ said Cohen, a professor of history and social studies at NYU and an author of books about the Civil Rights Movement and the Free Speech Movement, which began at UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s.
¶
Cohen has been a go-to expert for the media, from USA Today to the Associated Press, since tent encampments sprang up in mid-April at Columbia University and quickly spread across the country. Cohen spoke with J. about the current wave of protests within the context of U.S. history and what he predicts will happen next. The interview has been lightly edited.”
5/20/2024, Salon, Tatyana Tandanpolie, The Gaza encampments and history: Is this the "right" kind of protest?
"One of the first incidents of the 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, for instance, saw thousands of students swarm a police car after a former student was arrested for passing out flyers without permission. Students surrounded the car for 32 hours, demanding that the young man be freed and delivering speeches from the car's hood, [historian Angus] Johnston explained. By the end of the decade, student protests had escalated to full-scale campus rebellions, violent exchanges with police and, in the most extreme cases, firebombing and burning down campus buildings.
¶
‘The student movement of the '60s was really, by the end of the decade, on many campuses a pretty violent revolt,’ Johnston said. “There's nothing even vaguely similar to that happening now.”
¶
Most Americans didn't much care for the peaceful demonstrations of the 1960s either, as Gallup polls from those moments show. Respondents to one 1963 survey said that mass demonstrations were more likely to hurt than help the chances of Black Americans obtaining racial equality.”
5/17/2024, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Editors, What Every Student Needs to Read Now
"Nicholas Dirks: ¶
Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s, by Robert Cohen. ¶
This authoritative biography of Mario Savio shows the deep links between the civil-rights movement and the struggle for free speech and academic freedom at Berkeley in 1964. Savio was relentless in his advocacy for political rights but also clear that with freedom came responsibility, both for democracy and for the institutional life of the university. ¶
Nicholas Dirks is president of the New York Academy of Sciences and a former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.”
5/15/2024, Moment Magazine, Noach Phillips, Letter from Berkeley | What Do Campus Encampment Protesters Really Want?
"Of course, this is not Sproul Plaza’s first student protest—in 1964, graduate student Mario Savio and others demonstrated here against UC Berkeley’s ban against on-campus political organizing, which catalyzed a mass wave of campus civil disobedience known as the ‘Free Speech Movement.’ The Free Speech movement, in turn, kicked off student protests as we know them today. Sproul Plaza was an active site of protest during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, the divestment campaigns against apartheid South Africa, and many other historical moments.”
5/14/2024, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Gar Smith, SMITHERSCRAPS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces: Moms,Memes&Memos
"The Free Speech Movement Revisited: KPFA Interview ¶
NYU Professor of History and Social Studies Robert Cohen (author of ‘Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s’) was recently interviewed on KPFA during a week filled with media requests from the US and abroad. Cohen's take on the experience: ‘The past week was really a reminder that much of the nation, and especially most campus administrators and politicians, know little about student activism other than the fact that they do not like it.’”
5/11/2024, Breaking Latest News, unsigned, Fear a scenario à la Reagan and Nixon: why Gaza protests could be a big problem for Joe Biden
"Ronald Reagan is generally seen as the Republican president who caused his party to move significantly to the right. He took his first step to the White House in 1966 by winning the gubernatorial elections in California. His main campaign point was to ‘clean up the mess at the University of Berkeley,’ California. The ‘left’ Free Speech Movement (FSM) had occupied it to demand the right to free political expression at the university. Reagan accused then Democratic Governor Pat Brown of not taking hard enough action ‘against the beatniks and radicals,’ the ‘anarchy and rioting.’” [Ed note: The FSM was nonviolent]
5/10/2024, AmherstINDY, Art Keene, Opinion: Fight Back!
"The early movement was also spurred by networks of student protest already formed during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964 and the founding of Students for a Democratic Society in 1960.”
5/10/2024, Time, Adam Tomasi, The Protests That Anticipated Today’s Gaza Solidarity Encampments
"The Free Speech Movement, through bold protests, resisted UC Berkeley’s ban on political activity on the campus—established only to suppress students who raised money for the Southern civil rights movement.”
5/9/2024, USA Today, Dana Taylor, Will the pro-Palestinian college protests lead to lasting change? | The Excerpt
"Robert Cohen:
¶
To me, that's like a red herring. Students are out there because they're upset about the war, all the civilian casualties that come to them instantly on social media. They're not coming because someone's funding it. I mean, people can contribute whatever, but you don't need much money to go out and sit out on the lawn or sit in. All during the sixties, those kind of charges were made like Moscow Gold, the students are getting aid from communists. But the CIA investigated that under President Johnson and they said, ‘No, they're not like communist directed. The students are not dupes of the Communist Party.’ And Johnson was unhappy with that result. So he never publicized the study that came up much later, but I think that's an outside agitator argument.”
5/9/2024, The Conversation, Steve Friess, 5 books to help you better understand today’s campus protests
"‘Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s’
Oxford University Press¶
It took until 2009 for someone to write a definitive biography of Savio, a visionary who sensed how campus protests could change America.
¶
But New York University historian Robert Cohen’s 544-page tome, based on personal papers, recordings of speeches and countless interviews, brings to life accomplishments of a major leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. His ‘Bodies Upon the Gears’ speech in 1964 could easily be adopted as the mantra of today’s pro-Palestinian movement.”
5/9/2024, Honi Soit, Victoria Gillespie, Rain, graduations and pressure on management: Day 16 at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment
"Day 16 also saw two teaching events facilitated — one was run by Joel Geier, at the Quad alcove, speaking to his experience in the UC Berkeley free speech movement.”
5/7/2024, Nonviolence Radio, Alex Gil, Echoes of student activism — from the Free Speech Movement to the Gaza protests
Michael Nagler: ”But there were some reforms, like the fact that I was able to start the Peace and Conflict Studies program some years later. You couldn’t have dreamed of such a thing before the Free Speech Movement. And of course, Ethnic Studies were a little bit different, but it followed the same pattern. Protest followed by innovation.” [Ed note: One innovation was the student-led Free University of Berkeley.]
5/6/2024, Al Arabiya, Yusra Asif, Five times when student protests changed history
"The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley was a watershed moment in 1960s student organizing which rejected the expansion of McCarthyist-inspired rules to silent political activities on campus, and won their basic rights to free speech.”
5/5/2024, La Tribune, Étienne de Metz, Etats-Unis: les étudiants de Columbia contre «Genocide Joe»
"La montée en puissance des mouvements propalestiniens est une aubaine pour les conservateurs, qui considèrent les campus d'université comme un terrain de bataille idéologique depuis plusieurs années. Leur dernière grosse prise de guerre remontait à cet hiver, avec la démission de la présidente de l'université de Pennsylvanie, suivie de celle de Harvard, profils intellos favorables aux démocrates. Après leur audition au Congrès devant la commission d'enquête sur l'antisémitisme dans les facs, diligentée par la trumpiste Elise Stefanik, les deux cheffes d'établissement de l'Ivy League avaient été morigénées pour ne pas avoir condamné plus fermement le risque d'attaques antijuives sur leurs campus. « Depuis, il y a une grosse pression sur les dirigeants d'université», explique Robert Cohen.” The rise of pro-Palestinian movements is a boon for conservatives, who have viewed college campuses as an ideological battleground for several years. Their last big war prize dates back to this winter, with the resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania, followed by that of Harvard, intellectual profiles favorable to the Democrats. After their hearing in Congress before the commission of inquiry into anti-Semitism in colleges, commissioned by Trumpist Elise Stefanik, the two heads of the Ivy League establishment were reprimanded for not having more firmly condemned the risk of anti-Jewish attacks on their campuses. “Since then, there has been a lot of pressure on university leaders,” explains Robert Cohen.
5/5/2024, BizNews, Stephen Mihm, Comparing pro-Palestine protests to the ’60s is wrong – and dangerous
"What became known as the Free Speech Movement borrowed the tactics and rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement, engaging in civil disobedience. In a typical speech, Mario Savio, one of its leaders, declared: ‘Last summer I went to Mississippi to join the struggle there for civil rights. This fall I am engaged in another phase of the same struggle, this time in Berkeley.’”
5/5/2024, The Washington Post, Reis Thebault and Hannah Natanson, College protests. A Trump trial. Raging wars. Is everything ‘on fire’?
"‘They always want to conflate the liberal university’s leadership with the radicals who are disobeying university leadership,’ Cohen said. ‘This is an old playbook.’”
5/4/2024, Berkeley Daily Planet, Gar Smith, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces: Free Speech Edition
"Free speech must be defended, now as it was in our time.
¶
Free Speech Movement Archives Board
¶
Jack Radey, President; Anita Medal, Treasurer; Bettina Aptheker; Robert Cohen; Susan Druding; Lee Felsenstein; Barbara Garson; Jackie Goldberg; Steve Lustig: Lynne Hollander Savio; Gar Smith; Barbara Stack”
5/4/2024, Radio-Canada, Ximena Sampson, Manifestations étudiantes : quels parallèles entre 2024 et 1968?
"Robert Cohen: Les manifestations sont en fait l'expression de la mauvaise organisation des universités en matière de gouvernance et du fait qu'elles sont des lieux très peu démocratiques. Elles fonctionnent de plus en plus comme des entreprises, où les professeurs et les étudiants n’ont pas leur mot à dire.”
¶
The demonstrations are in fact an expression of the poor organization of universities in terms of governance and the fact that they are very undemocratic places. They operate more and more like businesses, where professors and students have no say.
5/4/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Cabanatuan, Jordan Parker, Pro-Palestinian encampment at UC Berkeley expands
"This is basically a camp for alumni of all the UCs to show support for the students and the Palestinian people,’ said Ellen Brotsky, a 1989 UC Berkeley graduate. ‘We have alumni here who participated in the encampments against apartheid and in the Free Speech Movement.’”
5/4/2024, Actual News Magazine, unsigned, A new generation trained at the school of protest in Berkeley
"On the steps and lawn of Sproul Hall, an emblematic building with neoclassical architecture at the University of Berkeley in California, a new generation of students has now rhymed with another past for several weeks, amid tents and messages supporting Palestinian rights and calling for an end to Israel’s war against the Gaza Strip. In connection with a movement that has spread across the country, but also with the spirit of the place.
¶
It was here that between 1964 and 1965, the clique of Mario Savio, Hal Draper and Steve Weissman laid the seed of May ’68 with their Free Speech Movement reclaiming their right to exercise political activities on campus, there that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered, in May 1967, a landmark speech calling for a “radical revolution of values” in the middle of the Vietnam War and in the midst of the country’s existential crisis on civil rights, there also that anger erupted is expressed against the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s or against economic inequalities, fueled by the Occupy Wall Street movement at the end of 2011.”
5/3/2024, Inside Higher Ed, Ryan Quinn, Will Academic Freedom and Campus Free Speech Survive?
"[Robert] Cohen said ‘it’s hard always to distinguish’ between academic freedom and free speech. But he said he sees ‘a very severe threat’ to both. He said he’s never heard of protest encampments being evicted, and people being arrested—and all so quickly—in cases where the encampments weren’t disrupting university operations.
¶
‘You’re basically censoring an unpopular movement,’ Cohen said.
¶
In times of war, ‘academic freedom is always harder to defend,’ Cohen said. ‘Academic freedom applied to American foreign policy means that you’re free to question the reigning orthodoxies’ along with government policy, he said.”
5/3/2024, The New Yorker, Jay Caspian Kang, A Generation of Distrust
"But Savio’s words have since assumed a broader resonance for dissent and civil disobedience of any stripe. Like many other élite institutions of higher learning in America, Berkeley presents itself as a place where historic change took place thanks to the bravery of its former students; in 1997, the university installed a small plaque at the base of the steps and named them after Savio.”
5/2/2024, AP News, Allen G. Breed and Jocelyn Gecker, Today’s campus protests aren’t nearly as big or violent as those last century — at least, not yet
"Another disturbing difference between then and now, says Jack Radey, is the lack of respect on campuses for differing views.
¶
Radey was a 17-year-old activist during the original Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. He says today’s students have succeeded in amplifying the Palestinian cause, but, in some cases, at the cost of civility.
¶
‘We did not look on those students who had not joined the free speech movement as idiots or traitors, but as people we needed to convince,’ said Radey, president of the movement’s archives. ‘You don’t do that by violence or with super-heated rhetoric.’”
5/1/2024, TRT World, Shabina S. Khatri, NYU professor: Gaza protests should spark dialogue, not campus crackdowns
"Robert Cohen: Well, I think it's really problematic because, first of all, in the United States, because of the First Amendment. Hate speech, as long as they don't threaten somebody, is not banned. It's a protected speech by the First Amendment. And the irony is that people on the right who are so critical when the left use that to try to prevent racist speakers from being on campus.
¶
Now they're using that same rationale that this hate speech is threatening the people. Now they're using it themselves to suppress speech because they're saying that it threatens Jewish students. Now, you know, I'm not denying that it's a big country. There have been some anti-Semitic incidents, but there's still a question as to whether people are too quickly equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.”
5/1/2024, Jacobin, Caitlyn Clark, How Labor Can Aid the Student Movement for Palestine
"During the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) of the 1960s, organized labor played a crucial role in supporting the student strike on UC Berkeley’s campus. Joel Geier, a student activist in the International Socialists (IS) during the FSM, recalls:
¶
The local labor movement, including the campus unions — the Building Trades, SEIU [Service Employees International Union], the ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union], and the San Francisco Labor Council — supported the strike. A contribution to shutting down the campus came from an unexpected force: the conservative Teamsters. I led a group of FSMers to meet with Teamster union officials, who agreed with us that crossing our picket lines would be scabbing, and they would prevent all deliveries to the campus. Within an hour, no trucks bringing supplies or food entered the campus, helping to halt the normal functioning of the university. The solidarity of campus workers was outstanding, particularly the underground support from secretaries and clerks of the main university administrators, who acted as part of our intelligence network, providing us with the enemy’s thinking, plans, and memos.”
5/1/2024, Berkeley Daily Planet, Gar Smith, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces: Tents,Tenets&Tensions
"It looked like the lessons of the Free Speech Movement had left a lasting legacy here in Berkeley—an abiding respect for protest and debate limited only by the constraints of ‘time, place and manner.’ An exemplary model for other citadels of learning.”
5/1/2024, Spiked, Tom Slater, They aren’t revolutionaries. They’re bigoted brats
"So let’s retire the Sixties comparisons. In 1964, when Mario Savio – civil-rights activist and student leader of the Free Speech Movement – was leading a campaign of civil disobedience, aimed at liberating Berkeley students from censorship, his cause was just and he was happy to suffer the consequences of his methods. ‘There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious’, he famously said, ‘you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels… you’ve got to make it stop!’. Meal plans did not get a mention.”
4/29/2024, TV5 Monde, Maya Elboudrari, Manifestations pro-palestiniennes: "la plus importante mobilisation sur les campus américains du XXIème"
"Cette diabolisation du mouvement fait peur aux présidents d’université. Mais si eux ont peur, qui va défendre la liberté d’expression et la liberté académique?» Robert Cohen, chercheur spécialiste des mobilisations étudiantes.” [This demonization of the movement scares university presidents. But if they are afraid, who will defend freedom of expression and academic freedom?’ Robert Cohen, researcher specializing in student mobilizations.]
4/29/2024, The New Yorker, Louis Menand, Academic Freedom Under Fire
"Calling in law enforcement did not work at Berkeley in 1964, at Columbia in 1968, at Harvard in 1969, or at Kent State in 1970.”
4/29/2024, Times-Herald, Kristin J. Bender, Student protests: Are they the best and most efficient way to spark social change?
"In December 1964, 5,000 people gathered outside the administration to push ahead for a campus-wide strike to bring down the university ‘machine,’ but after 1,500 people entered the building for a peaceful sit-in demonstration and police became increasingly violent in efforts to remove demonstrators, Berkeley faculty voted overwhelmingly to support the movement.
¶
Today, the Free Speech Movement ‘stands as a symbol of the importance of protecting and preserving free speech and academic freedom,’ according to historical accounts from the university.
¶
Jack Radey, who protested during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s and is now the president of the Free Speech Movement Archives, said students need to ‘fight smart’ when protesting.
¶
‘In general, threatening violence, or doing it, whether by destroying property, or disrupting a speaker or class, or throwing rocks at police who are not violently trying to prevent people from exercising their constitutional rights, is counterproductive, stupid, and fundamentally about good old fashioned macho posturing,’’ Radey said via email.”
4/28/2024, USA Today, Kayla Jimenez, A new generation at UC Berkeley pitches its tents
"Alex Morey, the director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, encourages universities to remain neutral in times of unrest and not to call in authorities unless a demonstration turns violent. The national nonprofit defends Americans rights to free speech and thought.
¶ ‘Peaceful protest is a hallmark of a healthy speech climate on American college campuses and it has been for decades – whether it's the Berkeley free speech movement, or students protesting the Vietnam War era or civil rights,’ Morey said. ‘Generations of students have felt passionately about certain issues and the open air places on campuses are great places to support their views.’”
4/27/2024, Vox, Nicole Narea, How today’s antiwar protests stack up against major student movements in history
"Recent protests have not yet reached the scale of the major student protests of the late 1960s against the Vietnam War or the 1980s against South African apartheid. But on campus, they may be ‘the largest student movement so far’ of the 21st century, said Robert Cohen, a professor of social studies and history at New York University who has studied student activism. In recent decades, there were mass protests against the Iraq War, as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and after the killing of George Floyd, but they were primarily happening off campus.
¶….¶
This isn’t specific to America. All around the world, college campuses are hubs of political activity and young people are at the forefront of social movements.
¶
But the more conservative elements of American society have never really wanted students to play that role. There was a persistent sense throughout major social movements in American history that young people were disrespecting their elders and the value of their education, with contemporary polls showing widespread disapproval of the sit-in movement against racial discrimination, the freedom riders, the free speech movement, and the antiwar movement of the 1960s, Cohen said.”
4/27/2024, The Guardian, Gabrielle Canon, A new generation at UC Berkeley pitches its tents
"’These protests and these days are very different from days past,’ [Dan] Mogulof said. ‘It is not the students united against the administration, as was the case in the early days with the free speech movement. It’s not the students united in opposition to a war or to apartheid – we now have student-on-student, faculty-member-on-faculty-member [aggression].’”
4/26/2024, The Christian Science Monitor, Simon Montlake and Leonardo Bevilacqua, Competing pressures of activism, order test US colleges
"Columbia isn’t facing a crisis on that scale now, and its leaders ought to have shown more restraint, says Robert Cohen, a historian at New York University and scholar of campus activism, who expresses dismay at the arrests of students. The pressures ‘on these administrations have made them much more willing to suppress dissent even when it’s not disruptive,’ he says. ‘It’s a terrible precedent for violating free speech and academic freedom on campus.’
¶
It’s also counterproductive, says Bettina Aptheker, a retired professor who co-led the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964, which set the stage for the student activism of the period. ‘When you repress them, you guarantee that more students are going to come out,’ she says.”
4/25/2024, Ethnic Media Services, Sunita Sohrabji, 60 Years Later, Freedom of Speech Still Eludes College Students
"Lynne Hollander Savio, widow of the late Free Speech Movement co-founder Mario Savio, told Ethnic Media Services she was bothered by the arrests of students asserting their right to speak for what they believe in. Hollander actively participated in the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, and was herself arrested.
¶
‘I think it is absolutely craven,’ she said of Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik’s decision to call in police.
¶
Academic Freedom¶
‘She should be standing up for academic freedom and for the freedom of her students to exercise their Constitutional rights of free speech. She should not be supporting this kind of squelching,’ said Hollander, who serves on the Board of the Free Speech Movement Archives, and is a secular Jew.”
4/25/2024, Gulf News, Fawaz Turki, Gaza war tests academic freedom across US campuses
"The unspeakable horrors that Israel has inflected, and continues as we speak to inflict on the people of Gaza over the last seven months have triggered an anti-war movement across the US, from universities like Yale, Columbia, MIT and New York University on the east coast to ones in the West Coast like UC-Los Angeles, California State Polytech University Humboldt and UC-Berkeley (the latter home of the legendary Free Speech movement, which erupted during the 1964-1965 academic year and which later built the foundation for the equally legendary protests against the war in Vietnam) as well as across campuses all the way from Michigan to Washington state.” [Ed note: Tom Hayden’s 1962 “Port Huron Statement” had a lot to do with building the anti-war movement.]
4/24/2024, Alternet, Robert Reich, How the Free Speech Movement was born — and how it helped Reagan into the White House
"The FSM stands as a model for nonviolent mass organizations built on transparency and consensus.”
4/23/2024, CBS News, John Ramos, UC Berkeley students vow they won't leave campus pro-Palestinian protest until they get results
"‘It's only when student organizers are present on campus that they're criminalized and they're demonized. And when they graduate they are celebrated,’ said Afaneh. ‘Any tour of Berkeley, they will proudly say these are the Mario Salvio steps and say how much they celebrated the Free Speech Movement. I would not be surprised if they do the same thing for us 50 years from now.’”
4/22/2024, NBC News, Alicia Victoria Lozano, Jewish students march in solidarity
"At the University of California, Berkeley, in the San Francisco Bay Area, members of the local Jews for Peace chapter camped alongside pro-Palestinian protesters on the Mario Savio steps, named after a founding member of the Free Speech Movement.”
4/22/2024, NBC News, Alicia Victoria Lozano, UC Berkeley becomes firstWest Coast campus to join pro-Palestinian call to action
"Dozens of students gathered on the Savio Steps, named for Mario Savio, the leader of the 1960s Free Speech Movement, at the University of California, Berkeley, today to protest the Israel-Hamas war and the UC system’s investments in companies that do business with Israel.
¶
….
¶
The movement is considered the first mass act of civil disobedience on a U.S. campus in the '60s as students demanded the school lift a ban on on-campus political activity and secure their right to free speech and academic freedom.”
4/21/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Obit, Katura Schoene 1945-2023
"She attended UC Berkeley during the days of demonstrations and was part of the free speech protest in the 60's including an arrest at the protest.”
4/18/2024, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch, Fear and loathing on America’s college campuses as free speech is disappearing
"The national meltdown over campus protest is happening on the eve of this fall’s 60th anniversary of an event that defined campus politics for decades: 1964’s Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. Harsh restrictions on where students could set up tables for political causes — from fighting racial segregation in the South to college Republicans — united a diverse array of protesters who staged an often-chaotic battle with administrators throughout that fall. The Free Speech Movement tugged at the essence of higher education: Are students essentially children who are wards of the college, or adults with the freedom to voice political opinions? With support from the faculty, the young people of Berkeley won.”
¶….¶
“In many ways, the uproar over Gaza feels like the new ‘Red Scare,’ borne back ceaselessly into the 1950s that preceded the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and everything that’s happened since. But I also agree with [Jonathan] Friedman that this low moment could also spark a turnaround. ‘That’s what censorship does,’ he said. ‘It makes [people] realize that free speech matters.’”
4/18/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Sam Whiting, Kate Coleman, Free Speech Movement veteran who wrote courageous exposés, dies at 81
"On the 50th anniversary of the FSM, in 2014, Coleman recounted her involvement in an interview with the Chronicle. Asked to be reflective about the accomplishments of the movement, she responded in her usual frank and irreverent manner.
¶
‘It liberalized college rules that were ridiculously paternalistic,’ she answered. ‘But the nanny state still exists. Students don’t really have free speech because everybody is expected to be nice.’”
4/15/2024, The Daily Eastern News, Jason Farias, COLUMN: Concerns with free speech zones
"In response to the 1960s Berkeley Free Speech Movement led by Students for a Democratic Society and inspired by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War efforts, universities began passing policies regulating political activity to designated zones." [Ed note: It was the civil rights group CORE which was most active in the 1964 Berkeley FSM. SDS was more active on the east coast. Most anti-Vietnam War efforts came later.]
4/14/2024, Politico, Melanie Mason, ‘The Antisemitism Is Absolutely Disproportionate’ “The students overstepped the line,” says UC Regent John Pérez.
"When you look at the Free Speech Movement, it was about creating the space for all debate, including debate that one disagrees with. What we’ve seen of late is something very different, which is shutting down debate."
4/11/2024, NBC News, Alicia Victoria Lozano, A UC Berkeley law professor confronts a pro-Palestinian student during a backyard dinner
"UC Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, adopted guidelines in 1966 to help students and administrators navigate First Amendment issues, which included creating ‘time, place and manner’ policies."
4/8/2024, Berkekleyside, Carol Pogash, Kate Coleman, who chronicled the Bay Area and her life, has died
"Kate was active in SLATE and was an activist in the Free Speech Movement at Cal. In the 1970s, she wrote a regular column, “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” for the Berkeley Barb."
4/6/2024, New York Times, Clay Risen, Kate Coleman, Who Documented the Bay Area Counterculture, Dies at 81
"As an undergraduate at Berkeley, Ms. Coleman was an early participant in the university’s Free Speech Movement and was among the hundreds of students arrested in December 1964 for occupying Sproul Hall, a campus administration building."
4/5/2024, OB Rag, Frank Gormlie, In Memory of Herbert Shore — November 18, 1939 – February 12, 2024
"He took part in the 1960 Cambridge Woolworth pickets and leafleted for civil rights events. After graduating from MIT, Herb earned his Ph.D in physics at UC Berkeley. Herb stated with pride that he became a professor because he didn’t want a job where his boss told him when to wake up and when to show up for work. When Berkeley was the center of the Free Speech Movement in 1964, Herb participated in sit-ins dedicated to student free speech and academic freedom."
3/21/2024, Santa Barbara Independent, Obituary, Martin Shapiro
"Go West, Young Man By the time he graduated, he had become a skilled guitarist and was eager to continue his music studies. Attracted by the Bay Area student activism of the early 60s, he set his sights on UC Berkeley – and when he learned that Cal’s music department needed a lute player, he stepped up to meet that need.
¶
Marty and his lute caught the attention of young music major Marian Auerbach. The two bonded as humanist Jews and as idealists, supporting the Free Speech Movement, Anti-War and Civil Rights movements."
3/19/2024, The California Aggie, Joshua Clover, Form, Content, and Palestine
"As many readers will know, the Free Speech Movement was not born from repression of ‘speech’ in the abstract. Some students had spent the summer of 1964 taking part in Freedom Rides, a significant aspect in the Civil Rights Movement organized by the Congress of Racial Equality. That fall they and their friends set up tables on campus soliciting support for CORE. When the administration moved to suppress this via increasingly violent means, they were not suppressing ‘speech,’ they were suppressing racial justice organizing."
3/18/2024, Dogster, Brooke Billingsley, 7 Cool Off-Leash Dog Parks Near Berkeley, CA
"Berkeley is a college town in Northern California that is home to University of California at Berkeley, as well as just over 117,000 residents. This progressive city was the location of the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and 1965."
3/18/2024, Berkeley Daily Planet, Gar Smith, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces: Balms, Bombs & BDS
"A report in The Forward, describes a recent confrontation on the Berkeley campus as follows:
¶
‘Last month, a violent mob of pro-Palestinian activists shut down a planned talk by Israel Defense Forces reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat on campus, breaking windows and reportedly attacking other students.’
¶
The incident has triggered a federal civil rights investigation and university officials are treating the confrontation as a hate crime.”
¶
In response, a Jewish member of UC Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement was moved to write the following:
¶
‘Sadly, there were also Jewish Groups [IfNotNow - INN] who 'shut him down.' I objected to their trampling free speech but was ignored. Attacks on free speech from the left are more upsetting to me. I identify with the left; I am [was] a member of INN…. "
3/18/2024, The College Fix, Micaiah Bilger, Israeli lawyer to return to Berkeley after antisemitic mob shut down speech
"‘I’m not that important. I’m a low-ranking officer,’ he said. ‘If you’re not even willing to have a dialogue or discourse, that’s really the end of free speech, which is quite amazing, because the 1964 free speech movement started at Berkeley.’"
3/14/2024, The New Paltz Oracle, Sara Vala, Turning Puppetry Into Protest: Redwing Blackbird Theater
"Prior to coming to New York, [Amy] Trompetter attended UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, a mass campus protest starting in 1964 against the university’s policies prohibiting on-campus political activities. This exposed Trompetter to the true scope of free speech and what it could look like in her own life."
3/13/2024, Commentary, Seth Mandel, Berkeley’s Jews Show Some Spine
"In the late 1950s, the University of California, Berkeley started cracking down on campus politicking. By the ’60s, this effort almost became a total ban. The backlash congealed into the famous Free Speech Movement, whose strategy was to make sure that any rulebreakers were accompanied by dozens (or more) others. This way, the ban’s enemies could paralyze virtually any disciplinary enforcement. The signature moment was a march to a central campus building where participants held giant signs in favor of free speech."
3/12/2024, The American Thinker, Ethel C. Fenig, Bravely protecting ‘free speech’ at the University of California at Berkeley
"The Free Speech Movement began in 1964 when UC Berkeley students protested the university’s restrictions on political activities on campus. Small sit-ins and demonstrations escalated into a series of large-scale rallies and protests demanding full constitutional rights on campus. This led to the university overturning policies that would restrict the content of speech or advocacy. Today, the Movement stands as a symbol of the importance of protecting and preserving free speech and academic freedom. ...
"
3/10/2024, Truthout, Ed Rampell, Once a Fugitive, Attorney for Black Panther Member Recounts His Life Underground
"[ER:] You’ll soon be 82. What would you say is the legacy of the movements you were a part of?
¶
[Stephen Bingham:] I was in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in 1963 and 1964, Freedom Summer, which shook me awake and resonates down to this day in an extraordinary way. One of my housemates in Mississippi was Mario Savio of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. I was involved in the antiwar movement, which continues to reverberate."
3/4/2024, Israel National News, Jacob Gurvis, ‘They're giving a prize to the violent side’
"Berkeley, where student activists in the 1960s formed a Free Speech Movement advocating for unconstrained political speech on campus and touching off a wave of student civil disobedience, has seen multiple instances of unrest in recent years over right-wing speakers coming to the school."
2/16/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Cabanatuan, S.F. shows love for Tony Bennett with cable car dedication on Valentine’s Day
"The car also features shout-outs to a couple of female cable car pioneers: Mona Hutchin, a UC Berkeley student who in 1965 defied the tradition of allowing only men to ride on the outside of the cable cars, and Fannie Mae Barnes, the first woman to wield the grip controlling the cable cars in 1998." [Ed note: Mona Hutchin was arrested in the 1964 Free Speech Movement.]
2/8/2024, Daily Californian, Erkki Forster, Berkeley students aren’t as progressive as we’re made out to be
"This is not to say that UC Berkeley students aren’t at all progressive or involved in activism. In recent years, pockets of students have come out to defend People’s Park, advocate for the chess club and have supported the 2022 UAW strike. Yet, their numbers are dwarfed in comparison to the 1,500 students who sat in Sproul Hall as part of the Free Speech Movement in 1964, or the hundreds of students who defended People’s Park on “Bloody Thursday” in 1969."
2/5/2024, Prospect Magazine, Kate Demolder, Adam Doyle—otherwise known as Spice Bag—on his Northern Ireland mural for Palestinians
"Art by intuition is what created Free Derry Corner. Inspired by the 1956 Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the phrase “You Are Now Entering Free Derry” was coined by Eamonn McCann and painted by local youth Liam Hillen in January 1969." [Ed. Note: The Berkeley Free Speech Movement lasted from the fall of 1964 through the spring of 1965. AND after I wrote them they changed it to "the 1960s Berkeley Free Speech Movement."]
2/2/2024, The Wire, Sandeep Pandey, Watching the Steady Decline of Academic Freedom at IIM Ahmedabad
"Compare this to the Berkeley campus of the University of California, where any outsider can set up a table and say and distribute absolutely any material everyday at Sproul Plaza. The famed free speech movement in the 1960s earned this right on this campus."
1/31/2024, The Nation, Steve Wasserman, Paul Glusman, Judy Gumbo Albert, and Tom Dalzell, Should People’s Park Be Consigned to the Ash Heap of History?
"What’s at stake is history and who gets to make and write it. For years, Berkeley, a small American hamlet, has been a harbor for upstart students who won for it an outsize international reputation as a magnetic pole of rebellion. The San Francisco Bay Area more generally was engulfed by multiple and successive student protests. The most notable included the anti-HUAC protests of 1960, the great civil rights sit-ins of the spring of 1964 at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel in San Francisco, and the Auto Row demonstrations seeking an end to racial discrimination, which began in late 1963 and continued through the spring of 1964.
¶
The Free Speech Movement erupted here in the fall of 1964, followed by one of the nation’s first teach-ins, organized by the Vietnam Day Committee in May 1965; and, three months later, the efforts to block troop trains passing through Berkeley. In 1966 came the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland followed by the riotous anti-draft demonstrations in Oakland in 1967, then the use of tear gas to disperse the May 1968 demonstrations in solidarity with striking French students, followed by the violent effort to break the Third World Liberation Front strike at Cal in February 1969. All this culminated in the ruthless suppression of People’s Park protesters in May 1969.
¶
People’s Park, at its best, was an expression of the utopian yearnings of a generation that sought to make a better world."
1/30/2024, San Francisco Bay View, Cecil Brown, Being separate and unequal at UC Berkeley
"During the summer of 1963 and 1964, whites from all over the country came down to the South to participate along with Black college students in the effort to register Blacks to vote. One of the most inspiring leaders of that Free Speech summer was Mario Savio.
¶
At the end of his sojourn to the South, Mario Savio came back to Berkeley and inspired and starred in the Free Speech Movement."
1/25/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Alissa Greenberg, How to spend the perfect day in Berkeley, CA
"For a small city, Berkeley, California has a remarkably large presence in American culture. That’s in part because of its role as the site of the early Free Speech Movement and related anti-Vietnam War protests, the Asian American movement, the country’s first dog park and so many more firsts and cultural touchstones." [Ed note: “early Free Speech Movement” suggests that there were activists who in 1966, 1967, 1968, etc. considered themselves to be participating in the FSM. Show me one.]
1/21/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Lily Janiak, Joan Holden, longtime San Francisco Mime Troupe playwright, dies at 85
"Holden authored or collaborated on scores of plays, including ‘The Independent Female,’ the Obie Award-winning ‘The Dragon Lady's Revenge,’ ‘False Promises,’ ‘San Fran Scandals,’ ‘Seeing Double’ (another Obie winner) and others for the Mime Troupe; ‘FSM’ (about the Free Speech Movement) and an adaptation of ‘The Alchemist’ for Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ an adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s undercover investigation of minimum-wage life, for Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. During her tenure at the Mime Troupe, the company won the 1987 Regional Theatre Tony Award, the highest nationwide honor a theater outside of New York can earn."
1/17/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, James Sullivan, Review: Writings of Chronicle music critic Ralph J. Gleason a master class in life
"He was on hand for, and often instrumental in, many of the landmark events of his adopted city’s cultural awakening — from the performance poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the founding of the Monterey Jazz Festival to the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, which kicked off 1967’s Summer of Love.
¶
‘His sense for watersheds minor and major was extraordinary,’ said activist Michael Rossman. Gleason considered himself an activist of sorts, writing about race relations, rampant consumerism and the inadequacies of partisan politics without ever falling out of earshot of the music."
1/12/2024, Berkeleyside, Jesse Arreguín, Opinion: Defending democracy in the face of incivility
"Berkeley is home to the Free Speech Movement. We cherish and protect our First Amendment rights. Yet some people who claim to be advancing the Free Speech Movement are the very ones defying the warnings of Mario Savio and suppressing the free speech of others in the name of their cause. In his famous speech on Sproul Plaza, Savio said that civil disobedience ‘doesn’t mean that you have to break anything,’ rightfully fearing that violence would undermine this movement."
1/10/2024, Rafu, Rafu Reports, Manzanar Committee Mourns the Passing of Community Leader, Activist, and Mentor Alan Nishio
"Nishio was born on Aug. 9, 1945, in the Manzanar concentration camp, one of more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated in American concentration camps and other confinement sites during World War II. His activism and leadership work go back to the days of the Free Speech Movement in the late 1960s at UC Berkeley, where he helped form the Asian Americans for Political Action."
1/7/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Jill Tucker, ‘Trump’s border wall’ in Berkeley: Will shipping containers keep protests out of People’s Park?
"A fortress of rusty, dented and secondhand shipping containers popped up overnight Thursday around People’s Park in Berkeley, creating an imposing and arguably ugly barrier around the controversial site — a piece of land now slated for housing rather than homeless tents or historic preservation of the Free Speech Movement’s mecca." [Ed note: Peoples' Park was never a mecca of the Free Speech Movement. It didn't exist yet. The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley lasted from September 1964 through April 1965, during which time the land now occupied by Peoples Park was full of houses. It was only after that the UC managed to buy up all the land and either remove or tear down the houses. The creation of Peoples Park was in 1969.]
1/7/2024, San Francisco Chronicle, Joe Garofoli, Why People’s Park protesters have lost the plot
"Never mind that Sproul Plaza — another storied home of the Free Speech movement — is a few blocks away on the UC campus and remains a regular stop for demonstrations of all kinds." [Ed note: Peoples' Park was never a home of the Free Speech Movement. It didn't exist yet. The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley lasted from September 1964 through April 1965, during which time the land now occupied by Peoples Park was full of houses. It was only after that the UC managed to buy up all the land and either remove or tear down the houses. The creation of Peoples Park was in 1969.]
1/1/2024, Le Temps, André Linden, What's the point of literary studies? An Answer: Letter
"But the big losers of the revolt were the students themselves. Through the breach they had opened for them, professors rushed to monopolize the only field of research, which Berkeley had a monopoly on, abandoning their teaching responsibilities to poorly trained assistants, confronted with crowded audiences, often of foreign origin and with little command of English. The mandarins, whom their students had once thought they had toppled from their pedestals, had remained riveted to it more than ever. More than half a century later, while Mario Savio's fiery words still ring in my ears, I see that little has changed."
12/31/2023, The Palm Springs Post, Bruce Fessier, 2023 In Memoriam Part 2
"Arlene Rosenthal, Oct. 17, Desert Hot Springs. 79. This philanthropist and custom clothing businesswoman couldn’t have been more of a Grace Robbins opposite. Like Grace, she was intelligent and cultured. She championed opera with the Palm Springs Opera Guild of the Desert and her own OperaArts organization, formed after splitting from the Guild. She was a product of the Berkeley free speech movement, and she never hesitated to speak her mind to power. She became president of the nonprofit homeless services provider, Well of the Desert, and, while others debated what to do about the homeless, she moved among them and fed and clothed them. She was an ardent LGBTQ+ activist and feminist who told me she managed people from a feminist perspective. ‘I like inclusivity as opposed to exclusivity,’ she said. ‘Feminism is basically everybody is equal. There is no top or bottom. So, the person in the leadership position must make sure to protect everybody.’"
12/30/2023, Reason, Robert Corn-Revere, October 7: A Turning Point for Free Speech?
"The university setting is precisely the place where these lessons need to be learned and reinforced. As the Supreme Court stressed over six decades ago, ‘The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.’ These principles emerged from the ideological struggles of the Joseph McCarthy era, the demands by students to discuss social issues in the Berkeley free speech movement, the campus demonstrations for civil rights and against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s, and numerous political disputes since then. As the Kalven Report concluded during the campus turmoil of the 1960s, ‘A good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.’"
12/21/2023, Times Higher Education, Nicholas Dirks, Campus leaders shouldn’t be judged on their political pronouncements
"The question of institutional neutrality, however, merits further examination, especially after the recent forced resignation of Elizabeth Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania. After all, there was a time, before the Berkeley free speech movement of 1964, when it meant prohibiting all political speech on campus. Even subsequently, many administrators tried to maintain a posture of neutrality – most famously at the University of Chicago, with the 1967 Kalven Report."
12/17/2023, The New Yorker, Molly Fischer, The Chancellor of Berkeley Weighs In Carol Christ reflects on campus protests, then and now
"This situation is so different from other situations of controversy in that it has really split the student body. If you go way back to the Free Speech Movement, for example, that was the students versus the administration—not a lot of controversy among students. The shape of this particular situation is really different because there is a deep, deep division on the campus."
12/14/2023, The Washington Examiner, Christopher Tremoglie, College campuses have been oppressive, left-wing bullying machines since the 1960s
"Consider the origins of the Left’s ‘long march’ with the vast number of agitators, hippies, and anti-war movements that started in the 1960s. Universities mobilized college students to do their dirty work and stage protests to promote radical left-wing ideals, values, and beliefs. One of the first such demonstrations occurred on Sept. 14, 1964, on the University of California, Berkeley, campus and was part of the deceptively named ‘Free Speech Movement.’" [Ed note: This is the opposite of what actually happened. The UC suppression of free speech on campus was at the behest of the CA Republican Party.]
12/13/2023, The Cinemaholic, Kumari Shreya, Rod Mullen: The Former Synanon Square is Happily Married
"Following his return home, Rod became a student at the University of Idaho before his 1963 transfer to the University of California at Berkeley. During his college years, Rod became more aware of the political climate of the USA and was even arrested during the 1964 Free Speech Movement. When Rod did come to know about Synanon, he could not help but be fascinated. In fact, he ended up donating all of his paternal inheritance to the organization, which apparently did not sit well with his then-wife and financial handler."
12/12/2023, Berkeley News, AJ Fox, Tender and aggressive: Student dancers embody Asian American Greek life
"In a nod to Berkeley’s vibrant history of protest culture, Tam also incorporated the use of bullhorns into the 20-minute performance, along with audio recordings drawn from the Free Speech Movement and the archives of the Department of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies."
12/10/2023, The Sacramento Bee, Susan Thompson-French obituary, 1947-2023
"She was an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley, and a veteran of the Free Speech Movement there."
12/8/2023, Daily Independent, Suzy Hallock-Bannigan, Sun City Learners question their moral compass
"But events in our formative years might even be more important; of course, it would depend on each person, whether the event was traumatic or memorable in some other way. [Robert] O’Donnell said he was attending the University of California at Berkeley during the free speech movement and how that may have shaped his own moral compass."
12/4/2023, North Texas e-News, Wikipedia, On this day -- December 4
"1964 – Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property."
12/2/2023, A terra é Redonda, Felipe Cotrim, Hal Draper
"Essa sua colaboração com o Free Speech Movement de Berkeley merece atenção especial em sua biografia política, pois a experiência histórica do movimento, do qual ele foi cronista, serviu de matéria-prima para suas reflexões e pesquisas – realizadas de modo independente – sobre a prática e a teoria política marxista, a que ele se dedicou dos anos 1960 em diante. O Free Speech Movement foi um movimento estudantil, com atuação especialmente no meio universitário, no contexto das lutas pelos direitos civis nos EUA (década de 1960). No caso específico do campus de Berkeley da UCLA, os estudantes questionavam o modelo educacional burocrático, hierárquico e industrial, e o conteúdo das disciplinas, que eles consideravam como um 'terreno baldio' (‘wasteland’) moral e intelectual.”
¶
Google Translation from Portuguese: “His collaboration with the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley deserves special attention in his political biography, as the historical experience of the movement, of which he was a chronicler, served as raw material for his reflections and research – carried out independently – on the practice and Marxist political theory, to which he devoted himself from the 1960s onwards. The Free Speech Movement was a student movement, operating especially in universities, in the context of the struggles for civil rights in the USA (1960s). In the specific case of UCLA's Berkeley campus, students questioned the bureaucratic, hierarchical and industrial educational model, and the content of the subjects, which they considered to be a moral and intellectual ‘wasteland’"
11/30/2023, H-Net, Jo Freeman, Book Review: Luca Falciola. Up against the Law: Radical Lawyers and Social Movements, 1960s–1970s
"The following year 773 of us were arrested at one time in the Berkeley free speech movement. The NLG did not have enough lawyers to represent everyone and Alameda County did not have enough space or personnel for multiple trials of small groups as had happened in San Francisco the year before.[3] This convinced the NLG that it needed to develop a strategy for mass defense. The strategy emerged as student demonstrations, race riots, and anti-Viet Nam War demonstrations spread over the country. By the time of the Columbia University sit-in in the spring of 1968, the Mass Defense Committee of the NLG was able to recruit several dozen lawyers to represent them pro bono. This strategy eventually resulted in mass dismissals."
11/28/2023, Berkeleyside, Ximena Natera, These are the people of People’s Park
"Berkeley was not originally a very progressive place. That is an inheritance of the Free Speech Movement and the park.
¶
Harvey Smith remembers the area before People’s Park was created. A row of houses stood along the tree-lined Haste and Bowditch streets. Only one of those redwoods remains today."
11/22/2023, GV Wire, Anya Ellis, War in Gaza Ignites Protests, Tensions at UC Berkeley. Would You Expect Any Less?
"The University of California, Berkeley has long been synonymous with student protests. Though most notable for 1960s demonstrations supporting the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements, as well as opposition to the Vietnam War, Berkeley students took to the streets as early as the 1930s against the U.S. decision to end its disarmament policy in an apparent march toward war."
11/21/2023, UCSC News, Tara Fatemi Walker, Bettina Aptheker honored for lifetime commitment to social justice
"A scholar-activist, Aptheker co-led the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley 1964-65, was a leader of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and co-led the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis (1970-1972) that organized a transnational movement for her freedom. She was also an avid supporter of the LGBT movement.
¶
In recognition of Aptheker’s deep and abiding commitment to causes of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion, she was awarded the UCSC Ethos Award." [Ed Note: watch the video linked to the article!]
11/18/2023, SUPicket, Noche Gauthier, Free speech advocate works to bring a legacy of activism to Jefferson County
"Petitpierre started activism in his early teens at his hometown of Berkeley, California in the 1960s. He began as an advocate for free speech, getting hands-on experience with prominent activist Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
¶
‘My time as an activist with the Free Speech Movement taught me about how important it is to have a right to express our opinion, but to also understand that this does not mean a lack of respect toward another’s experience,’ Petitpierre said."
11/18/2023, Washington Examiner, Timothy P. Carney, Raging against the wrong machine on the Bay Bridge
"Another problem is that while a majority of Oaklanders and San Franciscans may agree with them that Israel should stop bombing Gaza, it’s not clear how stopping commuters and parents and visitors from traveling between Oakland and San Francisco is, to use Mario Savio’s phrase, grinding ‘the machine’ to a halt.
¶
The ‘machine’ here is either the Israeli military or the U.S. government. The protesters weren’t inconveniencing the people providing aid to Israel or the people dropping bombs in Gaza. The only ‘machine’ they were grinding to a halt was the daily life of ordinary residents.” [Ed note: The FSM prevailed only after bringing the entire campus to a standstill.]
11/17/2023, Newsmax, Laura Hollis, Free Speech Doesn't Extend to Intimidation, Threats, or Violence
"We can arguably trace this back to the 1960s. Widespread objection to the Vietnam War and outrage over the discrimination against Black Americans prompted much of the campus unrest at the time.
¶
But activists went further than simply calling for justice for minorities and demanding that the U.S. get out of the wars in Southeast Asia. The expression, ‘Don't trust anyone over 30,’ attributed to University of California Berkeley student organizer Jack Weinberg (ironically, part of the ‘Free Speech Movement’ there), became the rallying cry for the ‘baby boom’ generation."
11/16/2023, The Daily Californian, Editorial, UC Berkeley students are not pawns in your political game
"It is no secret that college campuses have historically been the focal point of social movements in the United States. In fact, UC Berkeley has been the catalyst for student activism since the Free Speech Movement occurred in the 1960s.”.... ¶
“For more than a month now, we as an editorial board have grappled with what to say at a time when everyone is watching.”…. ¶
“This introduces a great paradox when examining activism on college campuses.
¶
“We are given no room to mourn, nor to learn. Anytime we speak out, someone is there with a magnifying glass and a microphone, ready to twist our words and destroy the reputations we have just begun to build.
¶
What we need the media to understand is that student activism is not just a headline or eye-catching report, but rather a demonstration of budding scholars exercising free speech to advocate during times of such tragedy and pain.”
11/13/2023, The New Yorker, Louis Menand, The War on Charlie Chaplin
"The Tramp was evoked during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the nineteen-sixties and the Solidarity movement in Poland in the nineteen-eighties. The Tramp stood for the Individual against the System." [Ed. Note: the source may be The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism by James J. Farrell, P304¶
[footnote] 58 “Savio’s image of people clogging the machine recalls Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Little Tramp’ in Modern Times and it was no coincidence that students occupying Sproul Hall watched Chaplin films.”]
11/12/2023, Miami Herald, Robert F. Sanchez, OP-ED Fight antisemitism, but don’t let free speech on campus be a casualty
"Unfortunately, [FL State University Chancellor Ray] Rodrigues, born in 1970, missed out on the campus protests of the 1960s and the lessons learned from them, but one sequence of events became the stuff of legend in higher education circles, so it may have come to his attention.
¶
The 'long-haired hippies' in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California’s Berkeley campus irked voters and contributed to Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1966 gubernatorial election."
11/10/2023, Norwood News, Sile Moloney, Norwood Mourns Beloved Resident & Community Activist Lyn Pyle
"According to the National Council of Elders, Pyle’s activism began when she was arrested in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, California, and later became a longtime community organizer in The Bronx for most of her adult life."
11/09/2023, Los Angeles Times, Michael S. Roth, Opinion: College students were ‘woke’ in the ’60s, annoying to elders and drivers of social change. Meet their successors
"The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was created not just to defend students’ rights to express themselves but to challenge the framework of a society that offered what its most famous leader, Mario Savio, called a sick “utopia of sterilized automated contentment.” The movement engaged in civil disobedience to stop the evils produced by “the System.” Their aim was to awaken people to society’s injustices and the possibilities for radical change."
10/08/2023, Politico, David Freedlander, RFK Jr.’s Ultimate Vanity Project
"For most of the last century, the fight over “free speech” and censorship was coded as something that was mostly a concern of the left. In the early part of the century, the Industrial Workers of the World and their allies in the Socialist Party were arrested in droves for standing on soapboxes at factory gates to make their spiel. The Free Speech Movement began in Berkeley after students protested restrictions on who could set up a table on the plaza of a public university. In the 1980s and 90s, there were battles over profanity on rap albums and whether or not the National Endowment for the Arts should have a say on the work its grantees produce."
10/06/2023, The New Hampshire Gazette, unsigned, Sun, Oct. 1
"1964—Campus cops at U.C. Berkeley arrest Jack Weinberg; big mistake. The Free Speech Movement ensues."
10/01/2023, Clinton Herald, AP, Today in History: October 1, man kills 58 in Las Vegas country concert shooting
"In 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley."
10/01/2023, Times of India, Anuj Tiwari, 1 October What Happened On This Day In History
"There are several notable events that happened on October 1 throughout history, and that's why it's an important day in Indian and world history.
¶
- In 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley."
10/01/2023, Quotidiano di Sicilia, Editorial Staff, Today’s almanac
"1964 – Il Free Speech Movement viene lanciato dal campus dell’Università di Berkeley"
10/01/2023, Futuro Europa, Gianni Dell'Aiuto, Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement
"It all probably started with the Huron Manifesto, the official document with which young Americans became aware of their situation in the new world they were heading towards, but without a doubt the Free Speech Movement had a fundamental importance for the development of the rights movements civilians that moved in the 1960s to give rise to 1968.
¶
The Free Speech Movement, led by university student activists, erupted like a storm of change and freedom. At the center of this movement was a charismatic young leader, Mario Savio, of Italian origins, who became the face of free expression activism. His passion for social justice and his ability to inspire the masses marked a turning point in the history of the student movement and had a lasting impact on his fight for freedom of expression."
9/30/2023, Los Angeles Review of Books, Johanna Isaacson, World Revolution of Youth! On Abigail Susik’s “Resurgence!”
"As the group’s thoughts evolved, they underscored the relationship of teen revolt to key issues of the day: the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the anti-war movement, Black Power, and an array of Third World guerrilla liberation movements."
9/27/2023, Berkeleyside, Family and friends of Gene Poschman, Remembering Gene Poschman, master of Berkeley’s Zoning Code, savior of Tilden’s dog walkers
"As a graduate student at Cal, he received an M.A. in political science and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in political theory and California politics. Among his notable mentors were political science professors Jack Shaar, a prominent faculty advisor to the Free Speech Movement, and Sheldon Wolin, preeminent author and political theorist. Gene’s Ph.D. was awarded in 1970."
9/26/2023, AlterNet, Robert Reich, When the Klan murdered my protector
"As Savio told TheWashington Post, there was a direct connection between the Civil Rights Movement and the Free Speech Movement. Both raised the question of whose side one was on.
¶
‘Are we on the side of the civil rights movement? Or have we gotten back to the comfort and security of Berkeley, California, and can we forget the sharecroppers whom we worked with just a few weeks back? Well, we couldn’t forget.’" [Ed Note: The FSM is associated with the 1st Amendment. But the FSM first embraced the 14th.]
9/22/2023, The Detroit News, Obituary, Peter Stine
"After graduating from Amherst, Peter headed west to earn his doctorate in English at the University of California, Berkeley, where he proudly participated in the Free Speech Movement. During this time he also worked for voting rights in Selma, Alabama; taught at South Carolina State University, a Historically Black University; and led writing classes at San Quentin and Jackson state prisons. His post-graduate studies behind him, he moved back to Michigan to teach at Wayne State University, and then at Oakland Community College."
9/21/2023, Berkeleyside, Brock Keeling, Home where Berkeley soaked in famed communal hot tub is for sale
"Before gaining a reputation for his hot tub, [Deward] Hastings, whose identity was publicly revealed after his death by his estranged wife, was active in the free speech movement while an undergrad at UC Berkeley.
¶
‘In the mid-1960s he was a press operator, putting ink on paper for the movement, first for UC Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement and later at the Berkeley Free Press,’ said archivist and former UC Berkeley librarian Lincoln Cushing. Hastings helped produce hundreds of thousands of printed leaflets for left-leaning groups in the Bay Area during the height of the ‘60s civil rights era. Hastings also worked as a musical engineer."
9/20/2023, UCSC NEWSCENTER, Haneen Zain, Celebrating UCSC’s 2023 Alumni Award Recipients
"The UCSC Ethos Award recognizes alumni who have demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment to causes of social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion, and who exemplify and enrich UCSC’s principles of community. Bettina Aptheker, alumna and Professor Emeritus of Feminist Studies at UCSC, will receive the award for her scholar and activist work during the Free Speech Movement, the LGBT Movement, and the international movement to free Angela Davis. Her actions during pivotal moments in history, along with her 40-year teaching career at UCSC, embody the ethos of the university."
9/20/2023, Digital Journal, Press Release, New book “Rise of the Liberal Colossus” by Carl Boggs is released
"After receiving his Ph.D. from U.C., Berkeley in 1970, Carl Boggs taught at Washington University in St. Louis and then at UCLA, Los Angeles before concluding his career at National University in Los Angeles, focusing on the education of working adults. He participated in the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, among other activities, and then was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement."
9/19/2023, Berkeley News, Gretchen Kell, Sydney Roberts: New ASUC president shares her goals, inspirations
"I visited UC Berkeley the summer before my senior year of high school. It was my dream school. I was in awe of Cal's history and culture. Learning that members of the Black Panther Party spoke here, and that the Free Speech Movement ignited here, inspired me. I wanted to be surrounded by changemakers and in a city with a strong culture."
9/17/2023, Newsd, Newsd, Who is the Co-Founder of Rolling Stone?
"As a student at Berkeley, he was an active participant in the Free Speech Movement."
9/11/2023, Deseret News, William Deresiewicz, Miseducating the American mind
"Already by the 1920s, students were fed up. In 1922, the National Student Forum, a gathering of undergraduate leaders, issued a blistering declaration. ‘To put it baldly,’ it read, ‘a great deal of college is just so many hours of deadly boredom.’ The statement signaled the beginning of a decade of student rebellion at schools from coast to coast. It was then that the teaching evaluation was invented: by students, for students, collected in course guides that were published by students (and only much later co-opted, and taken private, by self-protective institutions). Another wave of protest followed in the 1960s. Both the Port Huron Statement of 1962 and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964, the twin beginnings of the larger student movement, included outrage at the state of college teaching as part of their larger indictments. When Richard Nixon appointed a commission to investigate the causes of the decade’s campus turmoil, it pointed, above all, not to the war in Vietnam, but to the shoddy state of undergraduate instruction." [Ed note: The Free Speech Movement gave birth to several strands of education reform, perhaps the most important, the Free University of Berkeley, 1965-1972, was mentored by Paul Goodman.]
9/10/2023, ScheerPost, Chris Hedges, The Pedagogy of Power
"Sheldon Wolin, our most important contemporary and radical political philosopher, who mentored a young Cornel West when he was Princeton University’s first Black candidate for a doctorate in philosophy, gave us the vocabulary and concepts to understand the tyranny of global corporate power, a system he called ‘inverted totalitarianism.’ As a professor at Berkeley, Wolin backed the Free Speech Movement. Wolin, while teaching at Princeton, was one of few professors who supported students occupying buildings to protest against South African apartheid. At one point, Wolin told me, the other professors in Princeton’s political science department refused to speak with him."
9/9/2023, Los Angeles Times, Michael S. Roth, Opinion: College students were ‘woke’ in the 60s, annoying to elders and drivers of social change. Just as they are now
"The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was created not just to defend students’ rights to express themselves but to challenge the framework of a society that offered what its most famous leader, Mario Savio, called a sick ‘utopia of sterilized automated contentment.’ The movement engaged in civil disobedience to stop the evils produced by ‘the System.’ Their aim was to awaken people to society’s injustices and the possibilities for radical change."
9/6/2023, City Journal, Martin Gurri, Brian C. Anderson, Digital Censorship
"Martin Gurri: I am not a young person, Brian. I have lived through the free speech movement in Berkeley, and the idea that Left progressivism is an extreme version of individualism that must be protected against institutions, and this is a complete reversal of that. It basically suggests pretty explicitly that the vast majority of the public are lambs that can be led to the slaughter by these wolves. And of course the head wolf is Donald Trump, but Elon Musk is not too far behind. These are people who by basically telling persuasive lies can bamboozle millions into acting against their own interest and that the role of government therefore is to intervene in the conversation. So these people are not bombarded by lies. As you say, the Jeffersonian idea that is the one that I grew up with, is that the government is the thing we need to fear, and these people, I have to say, are making indirectly a very good case for that."
9/2/2023, Royal Examiner, James Finck, The Free Speech Movement
"In response to the arrests, the FSM called for a general strike. Both liberal and conservative students supported the idea of free speech, making it almost impossible to hold classes as most students and even some professors refused to attend class. After a couple of more days of chaos, the faculty senate met and voted to support the Free Speech Movement and remove all political restrictions on campus.
¶
One often overlooked aspect of the faculty motion was a proposed amendment which would have limited hate or violent speech. The motion was rejected because faculty understood free speech allows for all speech and that people are supposed to use their own minds to decide if they agree or not."
8/24/2023, ScheerPost, Robert Scheer, The Liberal Darling That Wasn’t: UC Berkeley’s Troubled Past
"Tony Platt: Military training on the Berkeley campus was obligatory until the end of the 1950s. It went on forever, but there’s a long tradition of opposition to that. There was also tremendous political organizing on campus in the twenties and thirties, antiwar organizing that went on. There’s also been a long tradition of activism around free speech issues that went on for many, many decades before the Free Speech movement became successful."
8/10/2023, Albany Democrat-Herald, R. Charles Vars Jr., Obituary
"Charlie represented graduate students in the Free Speech Movement."
8/10/2023, American Greatness, The Left’s War on Free Speech, Jim Nelles
"In 1964, Mario Savio and 500 fellow students marched on Berkeley’s administration building to protest the university’s order. He and other leaders called for an organized student protest to abolish all restrictions on students’ free-speech rights throughout the University of California system – and the free speech movement was born." [Ed note: the FSM ended on 4/28/1965 and concerned itself with political speech.]
7/25/2023, The Vacaville Reporter, July 27 Vallejo/Vacaville Arts and Entertainment Source: San Francisco Mime Troupe: U.S. in ‘Breakdown’ mode, Richard Bammer
"‘We talk a little about The Great Depression in the show,’ said [Daniel] Savio, the youngest son of Mario Savio, a key member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the mid-1960s. ‘There was a law that, when any public housing was torn down the government had to replace it. The law no longer exists.’"
7/25/2023, Harlem World Magazine, LongHouse Reserve Summer Benefit Honoring Mary Heilmann, And A. M. Homes, unattributed
"Influenced by 1960s counterculture, the free speech movement, and the surf ethos of her native California, Mary Heilmann ranks amongst the most influential abstract painters of her generation."
7/14/2023, Counterpunch, Affirmative Action and Me: A Tale of an Old Boys’ Network, Teaching and Politics, Jonah Raskin
"Through an old boys’ network, the university also hired controversial figures such as Mario Savio, who had been unable to find a teaching position on a college campus, perhaps because he was white and male and perhaps because of his notoriety as one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. Some qualified candidates seem to be discriminated against, not because of gender, ethnicity or class, but because of political beliefs and actions. Savio is a prime example of that."
7/12/2023, Cowboy State Daily, “The Machine” And The Consent Of The Governed, Rod Miller
"Here’s a hint. That is an excerpt from Mario Savio’s speech on the steps of Sproul Hall during the Free Speech Movement at the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1964. So it definitely comes at us from the Left.
¶
But it could just as easily have come from today’s Proud Boys or from John Calhoun and his secessionist fire-breathers of the mid-19th Century.
¶
Dissatisfaction with government is not unique to one political philosophy or another, it is not the sole province of the Left or the Right. To either side, ‘The Machine’ can be a government they view as anathema to their interests."
7/8/2023, The Rafu Shimpo, JACL Announces Four National Awards, Rafu Reports
"From his early involvement in the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley to his instrumental role as a founding staff member for the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, [Alan] Nishio has tirelessly championed the rights and empowerment of marginalized communities."
7/6/2023, The Siuslaw News, Caroline Clarice Estes passed away, July 13, 2022, Obit
"Caroline became active as an organizer, facilitator and consultant in movements for peace and social action, beginning with the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the mid-1960s. Here she first used the training and experience of Quaker business meetings to facilitate diverse groups of hundreds of people in making decisions by consensus, at a time when this was virtually unknown outside of Friends."
7/5/2023, The New European, Free speech does not belong to the right… it’s a precious progressive value, Matthew d’Ancona
"This alliance between free speech activism and the liberal left had deep roots. In the 20th century, WEB Du Bois, Martin Luther King, and congressman John Lewis had recognised that, for minorities and the disenfranchised, free expression was the first line of defence.
¶
‘Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent,’ said [John] Lewis, ‘the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings.’ In the 1960s, the same was true of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and its student leaders such as Mario Savio; and, in the 1980s, of eastern European dissidents such as Vaclav Havel who battled against the totalitarianism of the Soviet bloc."
6/26/2023, The Roanoke Times, Letter: Tech policy has a 'Big Brother' vibe, Bill Zutt
"A second, equally insidious policy challenged in the case involves Virginia Tech’s prohibition of petition-gathering and literature distribution except at pre-reserved locations, and then only if one or more of the participants are members of, or sponsored by, a university-recognized organization. This so-called “Informational Activities Policy” appears much like the repressive conduct which spawned the free speech movement at U.C. Berkeley back in the ‘60s."
6/14/2023, Jacobin, How American Universities Turned Red, Steve Fraser
"Rebellions erupted against the ‘multiversity,’ against its depersonalized treatment of students and its bureaucratization, its emphasis on slotting students into vocations, and its studied unwillingness to challenge the established order. This new climate riled up students, who responded across the country with protests, most famously at Berkeley, where student activist Mario Savio gave his famous speech decrying the ‘odious’ workings of an administrative machine that could only be halted by throwing your ‘body upon the gears’ to halt it."
6/13/2023, The Washington Post, L.A. school board president says anti-gay protests make students afraid, Jonathan Edwards and Amber Ferguson
"Her fiery, six-minute speech married Goldberg’s decades-long career as a politician with the lifelong activism that started with her work as a leader of the free speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s."
6/7/2023, The Daily Progress, Decision in Virginia Tech case amounts to state-sponsored censorship, Bill Zutt
"A second, equally insidious policy challenged in the case involves Tech’s prohibition of petition-gathering and literature distribution except at pre-reserved locations, and then only if one or more of the participants are members of, or sponsored by, a university-recognized organization. This so-called ‘Informational Activities Policy’ appears much like the repressive conduct which spawned the free speech movement at U.C. Berkeley back in the ‘60s."
6/4/2023, New York Times, A Tale of Paradise, Parking Lots and My Mother’s Berkeley Backyard, Daniel Duane
"This was all in the air when, in the fall of 1964, university administrators abruptly started enforcing policies prohibiting the use of campus property for political organizing. But one activist defied the ban on Oct. 1, 1964, setting up an outdoor information table for the Congress on Racial Equality. Campus police officers arrested that activist and put him in a squad car, so students sat down around the car — in what turned out to be the opening act of the Free Speech Movement, which soon became about so much else: not just Vietnam but anticapitalism and the nascent environmental movement too." [Ed Note: this use of “Free Speech Movement” encompasses both the Berkeley FSM but the widespread youth movements which preceded and followed. The Berkeley FSM was finite and fell within specifiable dates, and the youth movements both predate and follow the FSM. And of course all that took place all over the world. But in Berkeley, in an article about Berkeley, this decade-long FSM is a fiction and a product of unnuanced hindsight.]
5/25/2023, UC Berkeley News, How does the universe work? Promoting diversity can help answer that, Ivan Natividad
"My parents were students here during the Free Speech Movement. And my dad’s 1976 Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Economic Ethnicity: implications for educational and metropolitan policy and planning,’ can still be found in the stacks of the Doe Memorial Library. So, being at Berkeley made me very cognizant of what was possible in higher education, and the power students and faculty had to make a difference."
5/24/2023, The Daily Californian, In defense of ‘niche subjects’: Ron DeSantis got it wrong, Editorial
"It is no secret that UC Berkeley has long been seen as a beacon for pushing the envelope. From the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s to the Third World Liberation Front’s support for the ethnic studies department in the 1990s, students have consistently been at the forefront of advocating for an all-encompassing educational experience." [Ed note: Following upon the FSM at Berkeley came the Free University of Berkeley, 1965-1972, inspired in part by Paul Goodman. FUB included student research projects and student-designed courses. A good collection of source documents is to be found here:
https://www.fsm-a.org/FSM%20Documents/Free%20University%20Berkeley/Webpages/gallery-01.html]
5/14/2023, UCSD Guardian, UCSD’s Riot Conspiracy Theory, Justin Cho
"In the summer of 1964, philosophy major Mario Savio went to Mississippi to aid the Freedom Summer Project, a cause aimed to help African Americans vote. After this experience, he set up information tables and collected donations on UC Berkeley’s campus. However, the efforts were shut down by the university, as fundraising for political groups on campus was limited to a few select organizations. Savio was enraged that the university had blocked his efforts to spread the campaign, and his efforts to fight back ended up being the origin of the Free Speech Movement."
5/8/2023, CleanTechnica, Student-Led “End Fossil—Occupy!” Protests Shut Down Schools In Europe, Steve Hanley
"The End Fossil Occupy organizers hope this latest wave of climate protests will recapture and recreate the radicalism of May 1968, when anti-imperialist protests by university students in Paris were joined by striking workers and precipitated a wave of revolt across the continent
¶
Being a product of the 60s, I well remember the excitement of living in a time when it seemed like a great leap forward in human relations was taking place. Bob Dylan was singing about how the times they were a’changing and the Smothers Brothers did their weekly dance with the network censors to see how much they could get away with.
¶
The free speech movement was in full swing at Berkeley and change was in the air. On Broadway, Hair! featured nude actors, David Crosby sang about how he almost cut his hair, and hair became a symbol of the Black Power movement."
5/5/2023, Wesleyan Argus, Renewed Chalking Controversy Emerges During WesFest, Sulan Bailey
"On the other hand, Associate Professor in the College of Letters Jesse W. Torgerson highlighted that on other college campuses across the country, limitations placed on chalking are being debated as a free speech issue, rather than one of vandalism and visual eyesores.
¶
'From a beyond-Wesleyan perspective it makes sense that on public university campuses chalking has recently been framed as an issue of free speech and has even been raised as such on venues like Fox News,' Torgerson wrote in an email to The Argus. 'My graduate school years were at UC Berkeley—the birthplace of the so-called Free Speech Movement—where chalking (along with large signs and literal soapbox speeches) was and is a constant feature of the campus pavements.'"
4/30/2023, The San Francisco Chronicle, Malcolm Burnstein: December 2, 1933 - March 6, 2023, obituary
"During the 1960s Mal was active in the National Lawyers Guild, and the lead attorney for the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley."
4/13/2023, The Daily Californian, 'Fight for it': Campus ethnic studies department traces roots in student activism, liberation, Ananya Rupanagunta
"‘You could say that the Free Speech movement paved the way for this idea of speaking out, and the Third World movement was of third world people of color seeking self-determination,’ said Harvey Dong, campus ethnic studies lecturer who teaches Asian American and diaspora studies. “You had the main speakers being third-world people—African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos … that was a big difference, in terms of leadership.’" [Ed note: the FSM was primarily inspired by the American civil rights movement. I would say that any paving of the way in that era was done by people of color.]
4/13/2023, The Daily Californian, Campus cafe, oral history project commemorate Free Speech Movement, Sandhya Ganesan
"There are nearly 50 interviews within the oral [history] project conducted between 1999 and 2001 by historian Lisa Rubens, who was also a student on campus at the time of the FSM. Some of the interviews are still getting added to the archive, according to the library website. One of its focuses was finding subjects that represented the wide spectrum of political beliefs, reflected in the organizations which composed the FSM Executive Committee."
4/12/2023, The Daily Californian, How nonviolent protesting has evolved from '60s to now, Emewodesh Eshete
"This immediately followed the Free Speech Movement in the mid-1960s, the movement that was the beginning of many movements to come and UC Berkeley’s history of protest.” [Ed note: UC has a long history of protest predating the FSM. See Robert Cohen, "When the Old left was Young."]
4/12/2023, The Daily Californian, Matt Walsh, Ann Coulter: What freedom of speech means to UC Berkeley now, Kelsey McIvor
"[Daniel] Sargent emphasized that campus’s adamant support of free speech is a fairly contemporary result of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.
¶
'The Free Speech Movement revolts against this idea of the university as an institution that exercises its right to local parentis,' Sargent said. 'What Mario Savio and the others leaders of the Free Speech Movement advocate for and to a degree realize is a different vision of the university, that of an unfettered marketplace for ideas.'
¶
Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement made it possible for student organizations to both organize and host free speaker events with minimal restrictions, Sargent noted.
¶
Sargent also highlighted the importance of peer review and 'the responsible self regulation of the university by the university' rather than punitive restrictions by the university.”
4/12/2023, The Daily Californian, Alice Waters, Daniel Savio reflect on Free Speech Movement, 58 years later, Rae Wymer
"‘The main lesson is don’t give up,’ Daniel said. ‘You can in fact have an effect but that takes organization, it takes work, it’s not a certain thing and it’s not necessarily going to have all of the effect that you want in the timeframe that they ought to happen. But that doesn’t mean it is not worth the effort and that you can have an effect.’"
4/09/2023, San Francisco Chronicle, Dan Barki, Obituary
"On to Willard Jr. High and Berkeley High before going east to Brandeis where he studied for 2 years. However, that was 1964 and there was a lot going on in Berkeley, so Dan came back to participate in the action, graduating from Cal in 1966. Dan was arrested in the Sproul Hall sit-in, spent a night in the Santa Rita jail and later, given a choice of paying $350 bail or spending 3 weeks in jail, chose the latter. Dan remained politically concerned and active the rest of his life."
3/26/2023, San Francisco Chronicle, Oscar Pemantle Obituary, Robin Pemantle
"Later, as a graduate teaching assistant at UC Berkeley, Oscar became known for his use of Socratic methods. His Poly Sci 1 section was taught to standing-room-only audiences, especially attracting the leaders of the Free Speech Movement in the early 60's."
3/22/2023, Los Angeles Times, How DeSantis’ attack on education draws from Ronald Reagan’s war on UC Berkeley, Michael Hiltzik
"Let’s revisit Reagan’s war on Berkeley, then show how DeSantis, like other GOP culture warriors, draws from his playbook.
¶
Berkeley was simmering with discontent in the mid-1960s, manifesting at first in protests supporting the civil rights movements. When administrators moved to quarantine political organizing and rallies off-campus, the Free Speech Movement, which became the chief instrument of protest, was born."
3/19/2023, Legacy, Bruce Barthol Obituary, unattributed
"In 1964, as a 16-year-old guitar-playing UC Berkeley freshman, Bruce hung out at the Jabberwock coffeehouse on Telegraph Avenue, hearing many old blues greats, folk musicians, and singer-songwriters. He joined the Free Speech Movement, but to his lasting regret he was spared arrest for occupying Sproul Hall when FSM leaders made juveniles leave. He quit school when his roommates Barry Melton and Joe MacDonald invited him to play electric bass in what became Country Joe and the Fish."
3/17/2023, Berkeleyside, Remembering Malcolm Burnstein, attorney for the Free Speech Movement, Catherine Trimbur and Loni Hancock
"During the 1960s Mal was active in the National Lawyers Guild, and the lead attorney for the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. He was one of the trial counsel for the Oakland 7, who were charged with felony conspiracy in connection with anti-draft demonstrations at the Oakland Induction Center and who were acquitted. He also won an acquittal for Dan Siegel, one of the leaders of the People’s Park demonstrations in Berkeley in 1969."
3/16/2023, Portside, The Too-Large-For Life Harry Bridges, Paul Buhle
"The Right and the Center made one more big effort to get rid of Harry. The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities hilariously charged that Berkeley’s political cadre, from local anti-racist demonstrations at hotels to the Free Speech Movement, operated as puppets of Bridges. Attorney-General Robert Kennedy attempted to oust Bridges’ leadership by legal maneuvers, and successfully hurt Bridges’ prestige indirectly, thanks to John Kennedy’s support within the Bay Area Black community during the 1960 election and after."
3/14/2023, Daily Californian, Remembering Free Speech Movement artist, activist David Lance Goines, Madison Creekbaum
"[Tom] Weller said he worked with radical figures during the start of the Free Speech Movement and asked Goines to do lettering for the SLATE Supplement, a student political organization at UC Berkeley.
¶
'That’s how he ended up sitting at a table on Sproul Plaza selling copies on that fateful day when the deans came around and suspended everyone manning tables, thus launching the Free Speech Movement,' Weller said in an email. 'Thus he was plunged into the political upheavals of the 60s, to which he brought his characteristic intensity. He was immensely proud of his 14 arrests.'"
3/13/2023, American Theatre, Bruce Barthol, the Musical Conscience of the SF Mime Troupe, Michael Gene Sullivan
"Bruce arrived at UCB just in time for the explosion of the Free Speech Movement, that amazing moment in American political history we all benefit from, and which conservatives have been at war with ever since. Sit-ins, strikes, occupying buildings—all in the name of educational freedom, of Civil Rights, of teaching real politics and history rather than just corporatist propaganda. You know, all the freedoms of educational thought the right-wing governor of a certain dangly Southern state is trying to undo today."
3/13/2023, Berkeleyside, Remembering Vic Garlin, radical economist, restorer of vintage Jaguars, Family of Vic Garlin
"At Cal, Garlin was politically engaged in campus activities and national movements including Students to Combat McCarthyism, the Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, the student political party SLATE, and the Free Speech Movement. Garlin wrote for the Daily Cal newspaper and was on the editorial board of Root and Branch, a short-lived journal of radical scholarship."
3/10/2023, Berkeleyside, Michael Delacour, People’s Park co-founder, dies at 85, Supriya Yelimeli
"A few years before Delacour became deeply involved in the movement at People’s Park, he lived in the Southside neighborhood with Liane Chu, who had been part of the Free Speech Movement in the early 1960s."
3/9/2023, Berkeleyside, Remembering Tom Luddy: ‘A champion for cinema’, Annie Sciacca
"He was also active in the politics of the time, including the Free Speech movement of the mid-1960s."
3/6/2023, The New York Times, David Lance Goines, Who Shaped the Counterculture Aesthetic, Dies at 77, Penelope Green
“It was an earlier antiwar protest, the Free Speech Movement, which erupted on the Berkeley campus in 1964, that set him on his path. He was a classics major swept up in the politics of the time, and when he and others were threatened with expulsion for handing out political leaflets on campus, it galvanized more than a thousand students to take over Sproul Hall, where the administration offices were.
¶
The sit-in there made national news when nearly 800 students, Mr. Goines among them, were arrested.
¶
He was proud to say he was arrested 14 times in the ’60s. He was thrilled, too, to have been thrown out of school, which he hated, and by the art of printing, which he learned as an apprentice at the Berkeley Free Press, a small publishing house and haven for radicals dedicated to producing material for all sorts of political groups.
¶
‘The revolution ran on paper and ink and the BFP was where it all came from,’ Mr. Goines wrote in his account of the times, ‘The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s,’ published in 1993. ‘The antiwar and civil rights movements kept us running at full capacity.’”
3/5/2023, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces:Tidbits&Obits, Gar Smith
"¡Bruce Barthol, Presente!
¶
Reposted from the Free Speech Movement Archives.
¶
Born at Alta Bates, Bruce Barthol was one of the six juvenile participants in the Sproul Hall sit-in, but he left before the arrests (when minors were told to because only their parents would be able to bail them out of juvenile hall.) A couple of years later, he became one of the founding members of Country Joe and the Fish (Bruce played bass guitar on the 1967 studio album I’m Fixing to Die.)"
3/3/2023, San Francisco Chronicle, David Lance Goines, Berkeley poster artist for Chez Panisse, dies at 77, Sam Whiting
"He was a sophomore pursuing a major in classics in the fall of 1964. At the time, the university was cracking down on people handing out what administrators considered objectionable political materials in Sproul Plaza, which is outside Sather Gate but still on the university campus. Goines was one of those people staffing an information table, which earned him a suspension from school.
¶
His suspension afforded him more time to devote to the cause that took hold when Jack Weinberg was arrested for similar activity and placed in a squad car that was instantly surrounded by students and activists. The car, with Weinberg inside, did not move for 32 hours, partly because Goines sat down behind a rear tire and let the air out.
¶
That was the start of the free speech movement, and in December 1964, Goines was among 800 people arrested for occupying Sproul Hall, the campus administration building. In his citation of Dec. 3, 1964, Goines gave his race as ‘human.’
¶
‘After getting arrested at Sproul Hall, I went on to get arrested about once a week for a period of time,’ Goines wrote in his encyclopedic memoir, ‘The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s,’ published in 1993."
3/2/2023, Alta, Remembering Berkeley artist David Lance Goines, Steve Wasserman
"David had been expelled from UC Berkeley for his participation in the Free Speech Movement. He liked to joke that he never attended the demonstrations that were mounted in those turbulent years, as he was too busy printing leaflets for the protests that others organized.
¶….¶
He wrote several books, including A Constructed Roman Alphabet, which received a 1983 American Book Award for typographical design, and, perhaps most dear to his heart, his nearly 800-page The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s."
3/2/2023, Blind Magazine, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, Robert E. Gerhardt
"'I graduated from high school in ’65, which was the year that the Voting Rights Act was passed by Lyndon Johnson,' [photographer Stephen] Shames says. 'In ’65 my parents were living in Los Angeles, Santa Monica. And so I applied to Berkeley and I got in. Of course 1964 was also the free speech movement at Berkeley, which is why I wanted to go [there]. My dad wanted me to go to Stanford or Harvard, but I wanted to go to Berkeley.'"
2/24/2023, New York Times, Tom Luddy, a Behind-the-Scenes Force in Cinema, Dies at 79, Penelope Green
"A transplant from the East Coast, Mr. Luddy landed in Berkeley in the 1960s, just in time to join the radical political activity that was afoot there, notably the Free Speech Movement that dominated the University of California campus in 1964."
2/24/2023, Berkeleyside, David Lance Goines, iconic Berkeley printmaker, dies at 77, Ally Markovich
"In the 1960s, Goines famously printed the leaflets publicizing the myriad protests of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, a job that got him expelled from the university. After a brief stint back on campus, Goines left for good to pursue printmaking.
¶
A political activist, Goines also used his art to draw attention to causes like AIDS prevention and the anti-war effort. He also published four books, including an 800-page memoir about the Free Speech Movement on campus, and collaborated on three. His work was also the subject of six books."
2/23/2023, The Stanford Daily, Bowling, breakfasts and blunders: Reflections from Daily alums, Staff
"Mary Kay Becker ’66 — News Editor and Night Editor:
I remember holding down the fort an The Daily shack in Dec. 1964 to maintain contact with intrepid reporter (and future editor) Jon Roise ’67 and our brilliant photographer, Bruce Wilcox ’67, when they went to Berkeley to cover the Free Speech Movement demonstrations. They managed to climb to the top of a campus building to get the best possible view."
2/14/2023, Legacy, STEPHEN KAHLER OBITUARY,
"Several memorable recollections of the VCB [UCB] graduate years: (I) The 1964 Free Speech Movement was a campus wide event of which he and fellow physics grads and roommate Abe Bookstein were avid supporters. Anti-war marches were another Berkeley staple for the remaining graduate years."
2/11/2023, Mad in America, Will Hall, 1946-2023, Summer Mad Camp 2023
"Jay [Mahler] came up in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, and he had been part of the very early days of the ‘60s New Left, anti-war, and civil rights protests that were the crucible for protests and activism to abolish psychiatry, days that gave birth to everything in mental health activism today."
2/9/2023, San Francisco Chronicle, Janet Abelson, 1946-2023, Obituary
"She was raised in Southern Illinois and Phoenix, Arizona and moved to California to attend UC Berkeley, where she participated in the Free Speech Movement."
2/9/2023, World Socialist Website, Los Angeles school workers hold strike authorization vote after years-long contract impasse, Dan Conway
"The 78-year-old Goldberg was a student leader of the 1964–1965 Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. Goldberg long ago gave up the radical leanings of her youth to become a Democratic Party official, holding office in the Los Angeles City Council, California State Assembly and the LAUSD school board. She is now a member of the Democratic Socialists of America."
1/26/2023, The Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS", Gar Smith
"In this 90-minute California Historical Society video, Bettina Aptheker discusses her new book, "Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s–1990s." The book explores the history of gay, lesbian, and non-heterosexual people in the Communist Party (despite its sixty-year ban on LGBT members). Queer communists contributed to the political and theoretical foundations for lesbian and gay liberation and women’s liberation; they also helped advance peace, social justice, civil rights, and Black and Latinx liberation movements. Focusing on queer communists in California, Aptheker is in conversation with Estelle Freedman, author and Professor Emerita at Stanford University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw9ODZqHeZo&t=4s"
1/26/2023, The Lancet, Offline: America—a codicil, Richard Horton
"Conflict within universities, sometimes extremely violent conflict, broke the confidence of the public. Universities dismissed student demands for free speech. The flame of student resistance was ignited in October, 1964, at Berkeley when thousands blocked a police car from taking one activist to jail."
1/26/2023, Berkeleyside, Remembering Maria Cranor, rock climber, physicist shaped by time as Berkeley student during Free Speech Movement, Obituary
"She studied anthropology as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley from 1963-68 in the heyday of the Free Speech Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests. She attended marches led by Mario Savio and attended rallies where students put flowers in the bayonets of the National Guard sent to quell the dissidents. By her own account, she was transformed by her time at Berkeley, and left the university intellectually challenged, energized, and committed to progressive politics."
1/25/2023, The Daily Californian, ‘Real origins here on this campus’: Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner discusses magazine, career, Clara Brownstein
"[Greil] Marcus noted how the Free Speech Movement, which he cited was a possible catalyst for Berkeley Alice Waters’ restaurant Chez Panisse, perhaps spurred similar inspiration for the magazine."
1/23/2023, UnHerd, Why gamers can’t play politics, Oliver Bateman
"Though it still sounds somewhat absurd to make this claim, an argument can be made that GamerGate was almost as important as the violent ideological clashes that defined the turbulent Sixties; it was roughly analogous, then, to the Free Speech Movement that took place on the University of California-Berkeley campus during the 1964-1965 academic year, a seemingly minor event in the scheme of things that in hindsight had extraordinary societal ramifications."
1/18/2023, California Globe, 78-Year-Old Jackie Goldberg Elected as Los Angeles Unified School Board President, Evan Symon
"Goldberg, a UC Berkeley and University of Chicago graduate, first entered both education and politics in the mid-1960’s, becoming a student leader in a free-speech movement while receiving her teaching degree at Berkeley."
1/17/2023, Los Angeles Times, Goldberg elected L.A. school board president amid tense labor negotiations, Howard Blume
"Goldberg’s first significant political involvement was as a student leader in the free speech movement at UC Berkeley in 1964. She also worked as a classroom teacher in Compton for 16 years, among other roles."
1/17/2023, Sippican Week, Robert Sanderson, 79, obituary,
"Bob attended Sippican School in Marion, Phillips Academy, Andover, and the University of California, Berkeley where he was active in the free speech movement and played with several jazz bands."
1/12/2023, Chestnut Hill Local,For Local board member, news is a family commitment, Len Lear
"Buddy [Stein], who is six years older, majored in English at Columbia University and went on to graduate school at the University of California. His activism as a member of the college’s free-speech movement led to his arrest during a sit-in at the President’s office and his withdrawal from graduate school. He contributed articles to an underground newspaper, The Berkeley Barb, before finding work editing scholarly editions of Mark Twain's writings for the Mark Twain Project at the university’s Bancroft Library."
1/6/2023, Berkeleyside, Court ruling could upend Cal’s plan to build on People’s Park, Supriya Yelimeli
"The court has tentatively sided with plaintiffs, who have maintained that the park is a historic commodity due to its civil rights impact and connections to the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s." [Ed. note: If ‘history is worth protecting,’ then you should you should stop repeating the falsehood that People’s Park bears ‘connections to the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s.’ The Free Speech Movement, 1964-65 was long over when People’s Park came into being. In 1964-65 that area was still a block of inhabited houses.]
12/29/2022, IndyBay, America’s student loan crisis stems from a war on education as a public good, Lynda Carson
"Though it is under attack by political forces that want to demolish it, for over the past 50 years, People's Park in Berkeley has been a beloved location of nearly 3 acres of land that has been used for anti-war protests, the free speech movement, music concerts, rest and relaxation, a space for the homeless, art shows, political events, a place to meet others, and a special location that Food Not Bombs feeds the people at 5 days a week or more, among other things." [Ed. note: The Free Speech Movement, 1964-65 was long over when People’s Park came into being. In 1964-65 that area was still a block of inhabited houses.]
12/29/2022, The Washington Post, America’s student loan crisis stems from a war on education as a public good, David A. Love
"California Gov. Ronald Reagan fired the first shot by cutting funding to the University of California system and then for the first time making in-state students pay tuition as well as fees, as part of an effort to politicize education and make it a wedge issue. At the time, California public colleges and universities had become centers of student antiwar and civil rights activism. The Free Speech Movement formed at the University of California at Berkeley when students challenged campus policies against political protest and free speech. That student movement was later motivated by opposition to the Vietnam War."
12/23/2022, Malaysian Digest, Exploring The Legal Framework For Protecting Free Speech In The European Union, Julie
"The Free Speech Movement of 1964-65 was a watershed moment in American history, showcasing the power of citizens to take on authority and fight for their rights. The demonstration sparked a nationwide campaign to protect free speech, which was already protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Movement, led by Mario Savio, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, lasted through the academic year of 1964, and lasted for more than a year. Savio’s stirring speeches and his call to students to “Let the students decide!” emphasized the importance of free speech, and he also emphasized the power of citizens to challenge authority and demand their rights. A key component of the Movement was its success in bringing national attention to the issue of free speech and ensuring that the right to free expression would remain available in the future. [Ed. Note: The FSM lasted less than a year and ended 4/28/1965.]
12/21/2022, Above the Law, Much Ado About Nothing: Law Schools Had An Odd Fixation On Free Speech This Year, Chris Williams
"Other legal experts noted that the controversy showed just how mangled the understanding of the First Amendment had become, even at a place like Berkeley, the epicenter of the 1960s free-speech movement. The debate, they said, should focus on whether these bans align with the academic ideal of open, intellectual debate. Even if student groups can prohibit speakers, should they? And should such bans be codified — formally adopted with a bylaw?" [Ed. Note: this seems to be a quote.]
12/21/2022, Legacy Remembers, David Makofsky, 1938-2022, obituary
"He entered UC Berkeley's PhD program in the '60s. Soon, he was protesting the war and sitting in vigils for the Free Speech Movement."
12/20/2022, Berkeley Daily Planet, Free Speech Movement Memories On-air in Australia, Gar Smith
"Robby Cohen, professor of Social Studies at New York University and author of Freedom's Orator (a profile of Free Speech Movement activist Mario Savio) recently conducted a half-hour radio interview on the Free Speech Movement with the host of Australia's Nightlife show. ¶
The publicity for the interview included a photo of Jackie Goldberg standing atop a police car that had been sent to the UC campus to arrest a campus activist—but wound up being nonviolently captured by a swarm of protesting students. The photo of Goldberg speaking from atop the cop-car-turned-lectern was an appropriate choice given the interviewer's focus on the role of women in the FSM.
12/18/2022, Tablet Magazine, Self-righteous professors have spawned self-righteous students and unleashed them into the public square, Russell Jacoby
"The new arguments that question free speech stem from robed academic leftists, an irony that is sometimes noticed. The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley virtually inaugurated the ’60s student protest. Historically on and off the campus leftists fought censorship and defended free speech. No longer.
¶
Now law professors, who often call themselves anti-pornography feminists and critical race theorists, advance ideas to curtail free speech." [Ed note: UC students rekindled their advocacy in 1960 with the SF City Hall protests against HUAC. The FSM was as much about the 14th Amendment as the 1st. Contemporary interest in the FSM seems more opportunistic sparring than reasoned. The FSM ended in 1965.]
12/3/2022, Redheaded Blackbelt, ‘DRAG ME OUT LIKE A LADY: AN ACTIVIST’S JOURNEY’ BY LOCAL AUTHOR, JENTRI ANDERS
"Starting with with her Dixiecrat family in the deep South, she moves through the women’s rebellion she led at a Bible college in Georgia, her arrest in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and her subsequent participation in the anti-war and People’s Park movements there in the 1960s, to dropping out and becoming a country hippie."
12/3/2022, People’s World, Despite the ban, queers made important contributions to U.S. Communist movement, Eric A. Gordon
"While attending UC Berkeley, she was an activist in the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs, the youth group of the Communist Party USA. She became a leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement during the fall of 1964."
11/30/2022, The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Longtime Alexander Valley vintner and journalist Dick Hafner dies at 96
"In 1961, he went to work for UC Berkeley as its public affairs officer — just as the university was headed for a historic run of protests and agitation over issues that included the free speech movement, the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, revolutions in Central America, People’s Park, South African apartheid and civil rights."
11/29/2022, Legacy, Richard Herr Obituary
"Sympathetic to student protests during the Free Speech Movement, he was one of three faculty members to take collected donations and post bail for the students arrested in Sproul Hall in 1964”
11/20/2022, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces/ Commies In The Closet
"In related news, on January 24, 2023 (5:30PM live via Zoom), the California Historical Society will be hosting a free 'Communists in California' discussion between Bettina and Estelle Freedman, author and Professor Emerita at Stanford University. More Info and Register."
11/10/2022, Alameda Post, Today’s Alameda Treasure – 2242 San Antonio Ave. – Part 11, Steve Gorman
"In our last chapter we learned a little bit about Arthur Lipow, who was an academic and historian. He was born in 1935 and grew up in Southern California, receiving a B.A. in sociology from UCLA in 1955. He then studied at UC Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in political sociology in 1969. It was there in Berkeley that he met his future wife, Gretchen Kittridge, when they both became involved in the Free Speech Movement. They would eventually go on to marry other people and raise families of their own, all the while remaining friends."
11/4/2022, Legacy Remembers, IRENE HEINSTEIN, Obituary
"She was one of the early members of SLATE, formed in 1958 at UC Berkeley, which significantly influenced the subsequent Free Speech Movement and counterculture era."
10/31/2022, Centre Daily Times, Under the baobab: Penn State protest messy, chaotic — as democracy often is, Charles Duman
"’But to discuss is not enough. The democratic process is one of carrying into action the ideas and issues freely aired in free discussion. Free speech means not only freedom to discuss issues in abstract intellectual terms, but means freedom to advocate actions based on such discussion ...’ -FSM petition"
10/31/2022, The Daily Beast, Sacrificing Free Speech for ‘Civility’ at UC-Berkeley, Robert McCoy
"As New York University professor Robert Cohen writes in The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, to the opponents of the FSM and broader New Left, ‘the FSM pioneered a new and ultimately destructive style of mass student action,’ which ‘politicized the university and ended the reign of civility within the college gates.’"
10/28/2022, The Daily Californian, ‘His humility was a superpower’: Haas professor emeritus John Myers dies at 89, Ella Carter-Klauschie
"Arlyn [Myers] said her husband was always happy to attend ASUC board meetings that ran late and enjoyed learning from speakers on Sproul Plaza during the Free Speech Movement."
10/23/2022, The Stanford Daily, I was a Jewish student at Stanford in the 60s. Here is what I remember, Lenny Siegel
"I believe it was because they believed that Jewish radicals would threaten the status quo. Jews had long been among the leaders and foot-soldiers of left-wing movements throughout Europe and the United States. Many of the leaders and other activists in Berkeley’s 1964-65 Free Speech Movement, including my own sister, were Jewish. The people who ran Stanford did not want to see a repeat of the rebellion already happening at the larger university across the Bay."
10/20/2022, Santa Cruz Sentinel, 'Communists in Closets': Book Sheds Light on History of Queer Revolutionaries Amidst Anti-Communism and Homophobia, John Malkin
"Bettina Aptheker: Everyone talks about 'coming out' as a queer person. So, I’m using this phrase in a funny way. I came out that way because I was running for election at UC Berkeley in the aftermath of the Free Speech Movement and I thought if students were going to vote for me, they should know I was a member of the Communist Party. The headline in the San Francisco Examiner said, 'Bettina admits it. She's a Red! '"
10/19/2022, The New Republic, Is College Driving Political Division?, Jake Bittle
"The other problem was that the first generation of students who entered this new higher ed ecosystem also happened to be one of the most liberated and rebellious in history, and the colleges became laboratories for their struggle against the old world. The protests and demonstrations led by the likes of Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley free speech movement, soon provoked a backlash from the powers-that-still-were, a political turnabout Bunch captures in the chapter title 'Why the Kent State massacre raised your tuition.' The causality isn’t quite as neat as that, but the big picture is accurate: The haywire activity of the ’60s provoked a hostile reaction from the so-called Moral Majority, focused in part on the radicalism of the decade’s college-age population. As Bunch sees it, this was the origin point of a political anti-intellectualism that would later lead conservative politicians to shift resources away from higher education."
10/18/2022, 48 Hills, In “Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate,” rule-breaking becomes the rule, Genevieve Quick
"The exhibition 'Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate,' co-presented by Casemore and Rena Bransten Galleries, draws upon a slogan from the 1964 Free Speech Movement that Stanford communications Professor Fred Turner addresses in his fascinating 2008 book From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Turner explains that when UC Berkeley students protested the computerization of student records, a protesting student pinned a punchcard to his chest printed with, 'I am a UC student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate me.' [Ed note: source was FSM Newsletter No. 5, p2, https://www.fsm-a.org/FSM%20Documents/FSM%20Newsletters/1964%2012-10%20FSM%20Newsletter%20V.pdf]"
10/6/2022, Washington Blade, Despite the hype, Wenner memoir is a buzzkill, Kathi Wolfe
"He went on to college in Berkeley, Calif., during the height of the Free Speech movement. At 21, he was able to obtain the money he needed to start ‘Rolling Stone.’"
10/3/2022, Berkeley Daily Planet, Barbara Dane: A Life, a Book, a Documentary and a Berkeley Book Party!, Gar Smith
"In October 1964, Barbara Dane, stood in Sproul Plaza atop a police car containing an arrested activist named Jack Weinberg. Dane sang some rousing, FSM-customized versions of classic spirituals like Go Tell It On The Mountain and then lowered her guitar to address the crowd of student protesters: 'It was a long time there in the early fifties—especially when you couldn’t seem to get a rise out of anybody about anything, 'cause everybody thought they had to play it safe, play it cool, don’t take part, and I want to say that I, as a waiter and watcher and prodder and hoping that things would get moving again, I want to thank you all for being here. It’s marvelous.'"
9/30/2022, Daily Press, Today in History: Oct. 1, The Associated Press
"In 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley."
9/26/2022, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces: SmitherDips&Doodles, Gar Smith
"FSM vet (and author) Barbara Garson writes:¶
'When the FSM was still back in the age of mimeography, Deward Hastings helped excavate and repair a photo-offset press. Working on it for days without a break, Deward had it ready for the first issue of the FSM newsletter.
¶
'When I expressed concern about his hours without sleep and rapid movements someone explained that Deward was a 'speed-freak.' I couldn't tell then nor do I know now if that were true.¶
'At the Berkeley Free Press, the machine he restored went on to turn out hundreds of thousands of beautifully printed leaflets for left groups in the Bay Area. Deward was there before there was any press in the Berkeley Free Press.'"
9/21/2022, San Francisco Chronicle, Jann Wenner reflects on the power of music, love of S.F. and his wild ride, Jessica Zack
"I don’t think you would’ve had Bill Graham or even a rock scene without Ralph [Gleason]. Ralph was the only person writing about the rock and roll culture in anything I could read, and about the free speech movement and the Beatles, and it was in the Chronicle."
9/21/2022, East Bay Times, ‘Bastion of weirdos’: Berkeley mourns Hot Tub Guy after nearly 50 years of free soaks, Katie Lauer
"He [Deward Hastings] spent a lifetime wearing many hats. He studied engineering, chemistry and physics at UC Berkeley and operated a printing press during the Free Speech Movement."
9/20/2022, NPR, Some compare today's political divide to the Civil War. But what about the 1960s?, John Burnett, Marisa Peñaloza
"[John] BURNETT: On the West Coast, back in the day, the center of the tempest was the University of California, Berkeley. [Ruth] Rosen was an impassioned grad student and an early activist in the feminist movement. She sits on a bench by a fountain, watching students hurrying past, eyes glued to their smartphones. Fifty-eight years ago, the university was roiled by protests over a ban on campus political activity.
¶
ROSEN: There was a tremendous amount of energy in the antiwar movement and in the free speech movement as well.
¶
BURNETT: She recalls how thousands of students would gather in Sproul Plaza, in front of the administration building, to listen to speakers and sing."
9/20/2022, Berkeleyside, 2 groundbreaking Berkeley mental health institutes celebrate 50 years, Joanne Furio
"In Berkeley, the free speech movement also had an effect, inspiring people to discover their own authority and voices, not only politically but psychologically."
9/18/2022, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Reconciling antisemitism and free speech on college campuses, Steven P. Dinkin
"That idea first took hold in the 1960s. Students at the University of California, Berkeley, had been banned from participating in political activities by school administrators, fearful of the spread of Communism. A group of 500 students marched in protest of the university’s order, and the Free Speech Movement was born. It gave voice to their concerns about civil rights and the Vietnam War."
9/15/2022, Rolling Stone, Watch Bruce Springsteen, Jann Wenner Talk Origins of Rolling Stone, Emily Zemler, Althea Legaspi
"He said during his time at University of California, Berkeley three elements came together. 'It’s a hotbed of political protests. It was the beginning of the student protest movement in the United States' and the free speech movement was in full swing, and sit-ins and other early organizing was taking place.
¶
...He said he had an epiphany during a sit-in demonstration where he heard Joan Baez performing Bob Dylan’s 'With God on Our Side.' He said at that point he was a 'preppy sort of fratty type' but her beautiful singing and the ideas behind Dylan’s song 'made me start to question everything and think I have to do something. You know? And I was hearing it in the music.'"
9/8/2022, Mondoweiss, Teaching Palestine 2022: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice, Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi
"In this framework, the rise of the corporate university, which is directly relevant to Teaching Palestine‘s pedagogical praxis, has shrunk the emancipatory spaces expanded by the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Epistemological and pedagogical transformations challenged Eurocentric colonial education in the U.S. and internationally: New York City’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville; Berkeley’s Free Speech movement; and the student strike at San Francisco State University, led by the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front in 1968-69, or what we refer to as The Spirit of Bandung or the The Spirit of ‘68."
9/5/2022, Balkan Insight, PROPAGANDA POSING AS PEDAGOGY: POLAND’S CONTROVERSIAL NEW HISTORY TEXTBOOK, Tom Junes
"In the West, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests, and the sexual revolution are lumped together with the 'hippie revolution' and portrayed as a violent communist sex cult trying to equate dogs and men, of which Charles Manson and the Sharon Tate murder was the logical outcome. This elaboration on the youth revolt of the sixties is then paradoxically illustrated with a photo of a contemporary Pride March in Poland."
9/5/2022, Belfast Telegraph, Dissident republican attempts to hijack Free Derry corner slammed by veteran civil rights campaigner, Eamonn McCann
"The famous gable wall in the Bogside with the slogan, ‘You are now entering Free Derry’, has been a fixture in the city for over 50 years.
¶
Eamonn McCann, a former MLA and councillor with People Before Profit, had picked the words which he adapted from a slogan used by students in the Free Speech Movement in the University of California in Berkeley. The sign in Derry was painted in 1969 following a heavy-handed police crackdown in the area."[Ed note: no such language was used during the Free Speech Movement. If it was used in Berkeley, it would more likely have been during the 1969 People's Park.]
8/22/2022, SFist, A Violent Weekend at People's Park In Berkeley With a Hate-Crime Assault, Arson and More, Jay Barmann
"These incidents come at a time of high tension around the park, which has been the site of homeless encampments and drug use for many years, in addition to being a symbol of late-60s activism, anti-gentrification protest, and the Free Speech Movement." [Ed note: during the 1964-65 Free Speech Movement the block which became People's Park was full of houses. Yes, there is a shared theme of protest and resistance between the FSM and PP, but it is the accident that the wall opposite PP became available for a mural which depicted a campus scene from the FSM which firmed up the otherwise at-best weak association.]
8/21/2022, The Independent, Long March Through the Institutions, Tom Garrison
"Another fundamental American value is free speech via the 1st Amendment. Liberals and leftists used to be staunch supporters of free speech. The modern day free speech movement began at the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1964.
¶
But since then, the Left, and too many liberals, have twisted free speech so that uncomfortable speech is labeled hate speech or violence. An example of campus intolerance for free speech involved Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon in 2018." [Ed note: the left has supported free speech and truth the whole time. Either you believe that there exists such a thing as hate speech and hate crimes as defined by the federal government, or, somehow, you do not. The Berkeley FSM ended in 1965.]
8/16/2022, South Seattle Emerald, The Call for a National Moral Revival — Part 1, Chardonnay Beaver
"In 1964, [Susan] Partnow enrolled at University of California (UC) Berkeley. Simultaneously, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was in full effect, sparking a fight against the prohibition of free speech on campus."
8/12/2022, The American Conservative, It's Not Those People's Park, Katya Sedgwick
"The University of California acquired the plot in 1967 on the cheap using eminent domain. The school first wanted to build dormitories and offices, then a soccer field, but ran out of money. That’s when the local activists, most of them veterans of the Free Speech Movement, swooped in, quickly organizing a community. With freedom of speech on campus but a distant memory in woke America, People’s Park survives as the sole remnant of 1960s-Berkeley radicalism." [Ed note: what is the source on FSM vets constituting most of the PP activists?]
8/10/2022, Common Dreams, Is the Clock Running Out on Donald J. Trump?, H. Scott Prosterman
"Don't you just love how rabid right-wingers love to expropriate leftist concepts for their own misapplication? Their effort to co-opt the Free Speech Movement of Berkeley and Ann Arbor made them look silly."
8/3/2022, San Francisco Examiner, Honoring the Bay Area skywalkers who built the Salesforce Tower: Joe Blum’s mighty photos, Jonah Raskin
"The exhibit is also dreamland for Blum, who was born in 1941 in Manhattan, to a middle class family, attended UC Berkeley, joined the Free Speech Movement and was arrested and jailed. Blum edited The Movement newspaper that became essential reading for the New Left. Originally a mimeographed newsletter for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), it became a monthly publication affiliated with SNCC and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)."
8/3/2022, WUNC, College is increasingly out of reach for many students. What went wrong?, Terry Gross
[Will Bunch:] "There was just very palpable excitement, first at the HBCUs. But then a lot of white kids said, we want to support this movement. Students at predominantly white universities started going to the Woolworths in their hometowns and started protesting. And it started this cycle - you know, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964, which was basically over, what rights do students have to express their political views on campus? And, you know, students basically won that protest. They convinced the faculty to side with them. And they won the right to speak out and distribute literature on campus. And that just flowed right into the anti-Vietnam War movement. And you had a conservative establishment that thought this was going too far or it was getting out of hand."
8/3/2022, San Francisco Chronicle, UC Berkeley closes off People’s Park as construction begins on controversial student housing, Sarah Ravani
“'It’s 53 years of resistance,' Teague [Lisa Teague, a member of People’s Park Council] said. 'This is a vital piece of the history of Berkeley, of the history of the free speech movement, of the history of the anti-war movement. We all feel its pretty sacred land.'” [Ed note: People’s Park played no role in the Free Speech Movement as it didn’t exist yet. In 1964-65 the block was still filled with houses.]
8/2/2022, Shore Fire Media, Ace of Cups To Release Extended Play E.P., Press Release
“'You Don’t Understand' is a shimmering gem of Byrdsy psych-pop jangle, infused with Spector-esque tension, and propelled by the band’s lock-tight musicianship. The song was penned by Denise Kaufman, who had been active in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, when revered music critic Ralph J. Gleason caught her blowing fiery blues harp at a campus protest."
8/2/2022, New York Times, Why Is America Fractured? Blame College, a New Book Argues., Kevin Carey
"Bunch’s history tracks the missed opportunities to define and finance college as a public good, beginning with the 1944 G.I. Bill’s unexpected success in sending millions of white veterans to college, free of charge. President Harry S. Truman’s Commission on Higher Education followed up in 1947 with a far-reaching vision of enlightened, productive citizens educated by federally financed colleges and universities.
¶
But like so many good things, the idea was spoiled by racists — in this case, Southern lawmakers who worried that federal programs might require them to educate Black people. While an undergraduate named Mario Savio helped found the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley (after registering Black Mississippi voters during the Freedom Summer of 1964), an aging actor named Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity to ride middle-class revulsion toward campus radicals all the way to the California governor’s mansion. Reagan went on to champion an antitax, small-government philosophy that would erode public education revenues for decades to come."
7/17/2022, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces:SMITHERMATAZ, Gar Smith
"When I stood trial for the Free Speech Movement occupation of Sproul Hall in 1964, I was among those who refused probation—because it would have required that we not engage in political protests for a set period of time.
¶
That precondition was clearly a denial of First Amendment rights, so myself and others opted to do time at Alameda County's Santa Rita prison. In my case, that meant I'd spend 25 days in jail but would emerge with the freedom to continue to demonstrate and agitate.
¶
During my stretch at Santa Rita, I was assigned to work on an agricultural chain-gang—hoeing a field of sugar beets under a blazing, ear-burning sun and under the watchful glare of several deputies armed with shotguns.
¶
We usually were trucked to the field in a small bus but sometimes, I'd find myself bouncing down a road in the back of a pick-up truck. On one of these jaunts, I decided to stand up in the open bed of the vehicle while leaning forward on the roof of the cab to steady myself.
¶
That's when I happened to look down and notice a number of messages scratched on the vehicle's roof over the years. The most prominent message read: 'Sonny Barger was here.'"
7/1/2022, The Washington Post, The transformative 1960s still have a grip on America, Michael Bobelian
"He makes a convincing argument. The list of transformative events within this time span included the Kennedy assassination, two historic civil rights bills, the conservative takeover of the Republican Party, a sweeping immigration law, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the launching of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and the Watts riots." [Ed note: both the launching of the FSM and its end a few months later.]
6/27/2022, Truthout, This Country Is a Living Nightmare, William Rivers Pitt
"Before — and probably after — those ballot actions, the time has come for the majority in this country to recognize the inflection point we have arrived at, lest we find ourselves utterly undone by our preference for pleasing arguments over mass action beyond the ballot. I am reminded of the words of Mario Savio, the poet laureate of the Berkeley Free Speech movement:
¶
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
6/26/2022, The Sacramento Bee, William Ansley Dorman 1941-2022,
"He was deeply influenced by his involvement with the free speech movement and civil rights movement."
6/22/2022, The Daily Californian, ‘Incredibly vibrant’: Queer organizations foster welcoming environment, Zachary Khouri
"Its roots stem from the Queer Alliance and the Queer Resource Center, which began with student leaders involved in the Free Speech Movement. " Was that the 1964 Free Speech Movement, where there were several queer leaders? [Ed. note: it's unlear whether this refers to the 1964 Berkeley FSM, although there is no doubt tha there were multiple powerful gay leaders.]
6/19/2022, San Francisco Chronicle, Artisan printer creates one-of-a-kind posters for events, organizations around the world, Marcus Crowder
"His non-fiction history/memoir 'The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s' was published in 1993.
¶
'I think that what had happened during the Free Speech Movement, the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, we had formed a community without really knowing it,' Goines said. 'When you have 800 people getting arrested all at once, and then you keep on going, and through People’s Park and the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, we formed a very strong bond and tended to support one another.'"
6/17/2022, FIRE, From Berkeley to Haverford: Have we forgotten the progressive history of free speech on college campuses?, William Harris
"In the 1960s, students at the University of California, Berkeley formed the storied Free Speech Movement to counter 'the old-school ideas of paternalistic university supervision' that prevented them from fully participating in Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement. Their civil liberties victories helped catalyze new waves of political expression on college campuses across the country, with the effects reverberating for decades afterward."
6/5/2022, Ricochet, The Myth of the Boomer Bogeyman, Austin Ruse
"And who were the political heroes of the New Left? There was the aforementioned Tom Hayden, who drafted the highly influential 'Port Huron Statement.' There was Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement, founded at Berkeley because the administration would not allow on-campus political activity. He was born in 1942."
6/2/2022, San Francisco Chronicle, A fight for the future of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley is underway with a car-free movement, Katherine Li
"Spanning 4.5 miles in length with some of the highest volumes of pedestrian foot in the East Bay, Telegraph has a long history of being a vibrant and diverse community. Born from a 19th century telegraph line connecting Oakland to Sacramento, the avenue evolved from being a commercial district into an epicenter for counterculture intellectuals and progressive change in the 1960s during the Free Speech Movement."
6/1/2022, The Daily Californian, People’s Park entered into National Register of Historical Places, Lance Roberts
"Berkeley’s People’s Park has been entered into the National Register of Historic Places for its role in the Free Speech Movement." [Ed. note: People's Park had NO role in the Free Speech Movement because it didn't yet exist. It was a block of houses.]
6/1/2022, Capital & Main, A Photojournalist’s Lens on ‘More Than a Wall’ David Bacon, Gabriel Thompson
"His path toward journalism passed through activism. As a young child in Oakland, he was questioned by the FBI about his blacklisted radical-leftist father. He was later drawn to Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement and got arrested for the first time when he was just 16, for taking part in a sit-in at Sproul Hall, which was then the main administrative building at the University of California at Berkeley."
5/17/2022, The Christian Century, The most important American Old Testament scholar of the last century is Norman Gottwald, Walter Brueggemann
"He worked amid an emerging liberation theology informed by Marxian categories of analysis. More specifically, he lived and worked in the Bay Area as a faculty member of the Graduate Theological Union in the wake of the Vietnam War. The free speech movement in the university pitted protesting students against an unresponsive administration that was supported in its intransigence by the ideological fervor of California governor Ronald Reagan and his board of regents. The conflict—between gods and between social systems—that Gottwald discerned in the biblical tradition was being reperformed before his very eyes."
5/12/2022, NJArts.net, Writing with rhythm and intensity, Lenny Kaye explores 10 great rock scenes in new book, Cindy Stagoff
"He writes about the beat poets, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and Ken Kesey’s acid tests."
5/8/2022, Berkeleyside, Why hasn’t UC Berkeley built more student housing?, Frances Dinkelspiel
"Kerr comments in his memoir about how bringing students onto campus rather than having them scattered around Berkeley broke the political hegemony of the conservative Greek system and laid the groundwork for the Free Speech movement in 1964. (The Regents fired Kerr in January 1967 because of the student unrest.)"
5/2/2022, The Baffler, Milosz’s Magic Mountain; Czeslaw Milosz in California, Joy Neumeyer
"While Berkeley’s hills remained a serene retreat, life grew rowdier down below. Bewildered by the succession of Zen Buddhists, Merry Pranksters, and Black Panthers circulating through the East Bay, Milosz played the ornery grandpa to their unseasoned radicals. In the essay collection Visions from San Francisco Bay (1969), he expressed disdain for 'youth brought up in affluence, masquerading in beggars’ clothing and revolutionary ideas.' Like Adorno, he was suspicious of some protesters’ proclivity to violence, and he dismissed Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement as 'trivial.'"
5/2/2022, Higher Ed Dive, Why free speech and diversity and inclusion go hand in hand on campus, Lori White
"This view was shaped by my time as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, the home of the 1960s Free Speech Movement. This movement started because conservative lawmakers wanted to prevent “lefty” students from criticizing the Vietnam War and later expanded to include students speaking out about other critical issues. [Ed. note: the Free Speech Movement concerned itself with organizing for the civil rights movement. The anti-war movement FOLLOWED the Free Speech Movement.]
4/30/2022, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Local activist Dan Kovalik takes on liberal cancel culture, Lorraine Starsky
"As part of the generation whose political teeth were cut in the late 60s and early 70s, I was aware of the vigorous fight against rigid northern university administrators who banned representatives of the NAACP and the South Christian Leadership Conference from coming to campuses to describe firsthand the struggles against segregation. Students were prohibited from staffing information tables and collecting funds for Civil Rights organizations, which were branded as 'outside.' This campus policy was widely practiced around the country. The famed Berkeley Free Speech movement put an end to these restrictions against speech and association." [Ed note: thr FSM established rights of students at public universities]
May, 2022, Princeton Alumni Weekly, His Secret Life: Jeffrey Schevitz ... a Cold War spy for East Germany, Adam Tanner
“In 1964, Schevitz joined Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement. And as U.S. intervention in Vietnam intensified, Schevitz became a fervent antiwar activist. Eventually even liberal Berkeley appeared constraining.”
4/25/2022, LA Weekly, MEET PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE WORLD AS A STAGE: SARA JANE BOYERS, Shana Nys Dambrot
"I started UC Berkeley carrying my dad’s Rollei but majoring in poli-sci, but was dragged home when the Free Speech Movement exploded...."
4/21/2022, The Daily Blog, Passing Down The Power, Chris Trotter
"Big Business, Big Government, Big Unions, Big Universities – Big Gangsters! – there had to be a better way! Because, as the Free Speech Movement’s leader, Mario Savio, so eloquently put it:
¶
'There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.'
¶
Stirring rhetoric! But if Savio believed the sentiments he was expressing were new, then he was wrong. Outrage at 'the operations of the machine' is not a new thing, it goes back a long way. And the sort of people and institutions who have given voice to that outrage might surprise you."
4/13/2022, Berkeleyside, Will new falcon be named Savio, Takaki or Ned? You decide, Gretchen Kell
"Savio, for Mario Savio (1942-1996). Savio, who briefly attended Berkeley, led free speech demonstrations on campus in 1964 in reaction to the university curbing the activities of civil rights and political groups there. He helped lead the Free Speech Movement, a model for the Vietnam War protest movement."
4/9/2022, Marin Independent Journal, Theater musical director Daniel Savio helps tell, transform stories, Colleen Bidwill
"My father is Mario Savio. He was instrumental in the free speech movement in Berkeley in the 1960s and he was an important part of my life. In 1996, he died about three weeks before the opening night of our school musical, 'Quilt,' which is about the AIDS memorial quilt. My life is divided into before my father died and after he died, because he was that important to me, to my family and sense of community and being in that particular show at that time both was incredibly cathartic and set me on the path of musical theater being so important in my life."
4/2/2022, The Daily Beast, What the Left Keeps Getting Wrong About Free Speech, Ben Burgis
"I’d beg people who’ve learned to roll their eyes (or make jokes about frozen peaches) when they hear the phrase 'free speech' to look into the history of Ida B. Wells’ newspaper The Memphis Free Speech, or the 'free speech fights' waged by radical labor unionists in the early 20th century, or the role of the Free Speech Movement at UC-Berkeley in giving birth to the New Left."
3/31/2022, The Republican Journal, Morris shares ‘Ode to Hunter S. Thompson’ April 24, press release
"Thompson wrote for the New York Herald Tribune, National Observer, The Reporter, The Nation, Spyder (the voice of the free speech movement at Berkeley) and Playboy magazine." [Ed note: Spider Magazine followed the FSM. Thompson's poem was published in the June, 1965 issue.]
3/28/2022, Mondoweiss, Remembering Madeleine Albright and the Berkeley Commencement, Nadia B. Ahmad
"A protest open to the public was held at the Mario Savio steps of Sproul Hall. The Savio Steps are dedicated to the student protester who led the free speech movement.
¶
Savio is famous for his remarks: 'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!'"
3/25/2022, Muskogee Phoenix, Remember the Ladies: Astronomer, mathematician, statistician and more, Edwyna Synar
"[Elizabeth] Scott joined the mathematics faculty at Berkeley in 1951, although her degrees were in astronomy. In 1962, she became the first female professor in the statistics department. During the 1960s, Scott also addressed social issues, by fundraising for Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement and raising bail for students arrested during the Free Speech Movement."
3/24/2022, Above The Law, Random Neural Firings On Free Speech In America, Jill Switzer
"Whither free speech? I was at Berkeley in the late 1960s, the birthplace of the free speech movement (FSM). Joe Patrice’s post about the latest kerfuffle at Yale Law School (where else?) is just the latest iteration of how much free speech on college campuses has changed in the past 60 years. Berkeley was ground zero for the FSM. I wonder how Mario Savio, the FSM leader, and other FSM leaders would regard today’s happenings, particularly what they would think about cancel culture.
¶
A little background: in the 1950s, McCarthyism was the order of the day and said essentially that there 'was a Red under every bed.' The result: a limitation on student political activities at Cal and elsewhere. Under pressure from Sacramento (Berkeley was and is a state school), Berkeley administrators ordered that students be barred from political activities near campus. Obviously, that did not sit well with the students. In the early 1960s, Cal student Mario Savio and others said 'phooey,' (or less polite language) to those restrictions, and those protests culminated in what became the FSM."
3/18/2022, Berkeley High Jacket, Street Art Displays Berkeley’s Radical Past and Colorful Present, Sofia Rodriguez
"The wall of Amoeba music is home to the People’s History of Telegraph, one of Berkeley’s most famous historic murals. The piece was designed by Osha Neumann, a local civil rights lawyer, and painted by O’Brien Thiele, Janet Kranzberg, Daniel Galvez, and others in 1976. It depicts several scenes associated with the Free Speech Movement that began on campus at the University of California, Berkeley. These include anti-war protests, the emergence of the Black Panther Party, and the People’s Park protest in May of 1969."
3/16/2022, Berkeleyside, Berkeley-reared pianist Michael Wolff pens memoir of ‘jazz, tics and survival’, Andrew Gilbert
"His parent’s marriage didn’t survive the move and his mother, Elise Blumenfeld, threw herself into Berkeley’s two primary pursuits in the 1960s, politics and education. She protested with the Free Speech Movement and against the Vietnam War and earned a series of degrees, including a doctorate in social work."
March 2022, Harper's Bazaar, Fanny Singer reflects on the legacy of her mother, Alice Waters - and the part she's played in it., Fanny Singer
"An ethos of collaboration and dialogue and an emphasis on the power of gathering have been central to Chez Panisse since its beginnings amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the free-speech movement. Activists, writers, artists, and farmers have always animated the dining rooms of Chez Panisse and have given the restaurant a raison d'être."
3/4/2022, Jacksonville Journal-Courier, Dr. Allan A. Metcalf,
"Allan returned to the U.S., switching coasts to the University of California, Berkeley - just in time for the Free Speech Movement. What more could a lover of language ask for while working on his Ph.D.? "
3/3/2022, San Francisco Chronicle, David Melnick, a Bay Area poetry pioneer and co-founder of Gay Artists and Writers Kollective, dies at 83, Sam Whiting
"He then transferred from the University of Chicago to UC Berkeley, arriving just in time for the Free Speech Movement in 1964. He was part of the Sproul Plaza sit-in around the police car holding Jack Weinberg, a leader of the movement, and was arrested and sent off to Santa Rita Jail."
3/2/2022, History News Network, INSIDE THE STUDENT MOVEMENT IN THE SIXTIES: AN INTERVIEW WITH RENOWNED SEATTLE MUNICIPAL LEADER AND AUTHOR NICK LICATA ON HIS NEW MEMOIR, Robin Lindley
"Nick Licata: The student power movement began with the Free Speech Movement (FSM) on the Berkeley University of California campus in the fall of 1964. There were sit-ins in response to the administration banning organizing and soliciting funds for off-campus political action groups. Police subsequently arrested 773 students, and a student strike shut down the campus for five days.
¶
The core movement philosophy was that students, and workers by extension, should have some say over the governance of the places where they studied and worked. That belief spread across the nation's universities resulting in student organizing for institutional changes on and off-campus for a decade."
3/2/2022, Current, A patriotism reclamation narrative?, John Fea
"Earlier, the unpatriotic culprit was the heterodox left of the 1960s, a collection of dissenting social movements that stirred the vehemence of public intellectuals, notably John Schaar, a professor of political theory at Berkeley and erstwhile fellow traveler of the movements--Schaar had been an influence on the student-led Free Speech Movement in 1964. In a later essay, 'The Case for Patriotism,' Schaar would issue a rejoinder to the student movements he helped spur. 'The patriot,' Schaar wrote, 'is one who is grateful for the legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by debts.'"
2/11/2022, Michigan Today, The first Teach-In, James Tobin
"Stephen Spitz - 1968 [Comment]: 'I remember meeting students from Berkeley who had been part of the free speech moment there. It was exciting and mind blowing to say the least.'"
2/10/2022, Cannon Beach Gazette, Column: Author of thrillers, followed by sharks, Chicago and the long sixties, Joseph Bernt
"Other changes since WWII that contributed to the shattering were McCarthyism, the FBI's harassment of dissidents, the Free Speech Movement begun at Berkeley and liberated college students throughout the nation, the success of the 1964 Goldwater campaign in winning five traditionally Democratic states in the Deep South, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965."
2/8/2022, American Theatre Magazine, THEATRE HISTORY FEBRUARY 8, 2022,
"Barbara Garson’s political parody MacBird! opened Off-Broadway this month at the Village Gate Theatre, where it ran for 386 performances, starring Stacy Keach and Rue McClanahan. The play was developed by Garson when she was an undergrad at Berkeley in the ‘60’s. At a rally for the Free Speech Movement, Garson was made a slip of the tongue when referring to the country’s First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson; she meant to compare her to Lady MacBeth but instead said 'Lady MacBird.' The idea of an audacious adaptation of Macbeth with LBJ and Lady Bird as the leads came to her in that instant."
2/3/2022, The Chronicle of Higher Education, From Legendary Activist to Adjunct Agitator, Hollis Robbins
"As an undergraduate, Savio had spent the summer of 1964 - Freedom Summer - in Mississippi, registering Black voters. He returned to Berkeley in the fall with a fiery commitment to freedom in all its forms.. At the time, Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, sought to keep political speech off the UC campuses. But students across the political spectrum wanted to advocate for their beliefs, to meet and pass out pamphlets on Sproul Plaza. Frustrated, Savio united left and right in common cause. On December 2, 1964, Savio helped inspire the speech movement's culminating sit-in with a passionate appeal that would become the most famous dissident speech ever given on an American college campus. A university ought not to be a machine for turning students, 'raw materials,' into a product to be bought by the university's clients, but a place where freedom could be studied, learned, and exercised. If the university couldn't live up to that ideal, its operations should be interrupted:"
2/2/2022, Eureka Times Standard, Letters to the editor: Where have all the hippies gone?, Eric Cortez
"I have seen college students questioning everything and everyone over 30. Now they buy everything the 'establishment' feeds them. They hide in their safe spaces, regurgitating what they hear in their bubbles. From the free speech movement at Berkeley to now canceling anyone who threatens their safe space with opposing ideas."
2/2/2022, Berkeleyside, Remembering Peter Haberfeld, labor attorney who worked alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Robbin Henderson
"Peter was proud of his arrest record: During the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement"
2/1/2022, Wall Street Journal, Spotify and Rogan, the Real Adults, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr
"Neil Young found a way to remind you he exists. So did Joni Mitchell. These children of the '60s may not recall the spirit of the Berkeley free speech movement, but they do the era's sanctimony, with their ultimatum to Spotify to stop streaming their music if it continues to host the antic, disobedient podcast of comedian and actor Joe Rogan."
2/1/2022, Contrasting the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement to now, Stephen Hicks
"The Berkeley Free Speech Movement, was a student-led initiative to increase and enhance the free-speech rights of students."
1/30/2022, 48 Hills, Peter Haberfeld, lawyer, organizer, and legendary community activist, dies, Stephen Bingham
"Peter was proud of his record of four arrests:¶
-during the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement;¶
-while serving as a poll watcher during the election campaign of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to elect candidates to the state's legislature in 1967;¶
-at People's Park in 1969;¶
-and with his wife Victoria Griffith in San Francisco protesting the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq."
1/29/2022, Stacker, Most liberal colleges in America, Caroline Delbert
"The University of California, Berkeley, [#24] has been the symbol of the progressive movement for at least the second half of the 20th century. The campus was instrumental in the Free Speech Movement of 1964, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the People's Park Protest of 1969-where the National Guard was called against the student protesters."
1/28/2022, The New Republic, Hunter S. Thompson and the Four Secrets to Gonzo Journalism's Success, Peter Richardson
"By that time, Thompson had struck up a correspondence with Jann Wenner, who invited him to contribute to Rolling Stone. In many ways, it was an odd match. Wenner often recruited fellow students from the University of California, Berkeley, where he wrote for the student newspaper and covered the Free Speech Movement. Ten years older than Wenner, Thompson was an Air Force veteran who started as a sportswriter and never earned a college degree."
1/27/2022, Jacobin Magazine, Mike Parker, a Life Well-Lived on the Left, Gay Semel
"In 1964, Mike moved to Berkeley, California, as a graduate student in political science and became part of the political ferment of the moment. Mike was a leader of the campus Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and he was on the Steering Committee of the Free Speech Movement (FSM), one of the wellsprings of the 1960s movement for change. The university had imposed a rule, under pressure from corporate politicians like former US senator William Knowland, banning the recruitment of other students to join the civil rights movement.
¶
Mike Parker was always drawing activists around him. One of them was Senator Bernie Sanders.
The FSM not only won free speech at UC Berkeley but also helped spawn a new generation of activists. It was then that Mike, along with well-known Marxist scholar Hal Draper and other young activists, formed the Independent Socialist Club (ISC). The ISC stood for 'socialism from below,' meaning that working people themselves would shape the socialist struggle. It rejected the existing Communist states as another form of class society. The ISC recognized that middle-class students could be an important pool of activists, but that socialists should orient toward the diverse working class."
1/20/2022, LaborNotes, Rest in Power Mike Parker, 1940-2022, Alexandra Bradbury
"Mike's political work throughout his life stretched beyond the labor movement. As a college student in Chicago he was a leader in the Student Peace Union and the Young People's Socialist League (along with Senator Sanders). In Berkeley in the 1960s he was active in the Free Speech Movement and was instrumental in building an alliance between the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party."
1/17/2022, DePauw University, VIRTUAL READING ROOM (FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION),
"R. Cohen and R.E. Zelnik (eds), The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, 2002 University of California Press"
1/14/2022, The Press Democrat, West County High School students walk out of classes again over name change reversal, Austin Murphy
"Back at the Plaza - named, incidentally, for Mario Savio, who gained renown five decades ago as a member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement - Hartsock was followed by senior KatieAnn Nguyen, the morning's most Savio-like speaker."
1/14/2022, Ultimate Classic Rock, 55 Years Ago: Hippies 'Turn on, Tune in, Drop out' at Human Be-In, Martin Kielty
"'We had realized that the change in consciousness and culture we were experiencing had to be communicated throughout the world,' [Allen] Cohen wrote later.
¶
'We felt that the ideals of Peace, Love and Community based on the transcendental vision could transform the world and end the war in Vietnam. In short, we wanted to turn the world on. ... The anti-war and free-speech movement in Berkeley thought the hippies were too disengaged and spaced out. Their influence might draw the young away from resistance to the war. The hippies thought the anti-war movement was doomed to endless confrontations with the establishment which would recoil with violence and fascism. We decided … we had to bring the two poles together.'"
1/12/2022, Monterey Herald, Barbara Shipnuck 1942 - 2022,
"Her tour guide, arranged by a mutual friend, was David Shipnuck, who had been raised in the California wine country and as an undergrad at Cal was part of the nascent Berkeley Free Speech Movement."
1/12/2022, Anchorage Daily News, Letter: The Free Speech Movement, Lee Felsenstein
"Stephan Paliwoda's letter (ADN, Jan. 7) describing the parallels between the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the Capitol with his description of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 repeats many statements from the time that were then and still are either not true or misrepresentations.
¶
As a founding member of the Board of the Free Speech Movement Archives, I would like to direct anyone interested to an important resource of documents, photographs and publications from that time - our website, located at www.fsm-a.org.
¶
I invite your readers to peruse our archive in order to make their own judgments as to his interpretations and conclusions."
1/7/2022, Anchorage Daily News, Letter: Coup parallels, Stephan Paliwoda
"When I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, I was witness to many political demonstrations, including a series in the fall of 1964 called the 'Free Speech Movement.' These demonstrations by students and nonstudents were fomented by politically radical part-time students, who promoted a lie that the university's administration was working to curtail the exercise of free speech at Cal." [Ed note: the FSM was a broad right-to-left coalition which took on an inept and dishonest admnistation. And prevailed.]
12/20/2021, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley commencement for class of 2021 speaks on preservation, Luis Saldana
"[Sahar] Formoli said. 'We are a part of a university that led the free speech movement; a university that didn't back down from a fight for justice; a university that, regardless of what the world said, marched forward for a fight for justice.'" [Ed note: The Berkeley FSM did not lead another FSM. That was it. It did inspire further youth activism world-wide.]
12/17/2021, Berkeleyside, Looking for a good read? Check out these 9 nonfiction books with Berkeley connections, Frances Dinkelspiel
"Czeslaw Milosz: A California Life
¶
He was at odds with the young protesters of the Free Speech and anti-Vietnam movements."
12/15/2021, The Daily Californian, ASUC EAVP supports student-led movement at Turkish university, Riya Chopra
"Master's office put out the statement in response to student leaders of the movement, who reached out to the ASUC requesting support. Despite being across the world, they did so because UC Berkeley is known internationally for being home to the Free Speech Movement - a famous example of student resistance succeeding, said Bailey Henderson, EAVP federal government relations director.
¶
One graphic created by the Bogaziçi University movement depicts a student at a recent protest standing on top of a car along with a 1964 photo of Berkeley student Mario Savio doing the same thing in a famous student demonstration on campus, said Master."
12/12/2021, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"A newly published book by Ellen Shrecker, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, includes a chapter on Berkeley's Free Speech Movement (Chapter 4: 'The Berkeley Invention').
¶
New York University (NYU) history prof Noam Chomsky (who taught at UCB during the Sixties) has called Schrecker's book a 'careful and enlightening account.' NYU history professor Robert Cohen calls the book 'by far the best yet on the national campus political scene, which is not surprising since Ellen is the author of the classic work, No Ivory Tower, on academic McCarthyism.'"
12/10/2021, Columbia University Political Science, Robert Jervis, 1940-2021,
"In 1962, he entered the PhD program for Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, where he distinguished himself by sleeping on a closet shelf and 'almost getting arrested' for his activities in the Free Speech Movement."
12/11/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Ronald Reagan's ghost runs the UC system. Expect strikes until that changes, Sammy Feldblum and John Schmidt
"The explosion of free speech protests at UC Berkeley in 1964, however, diluted voter support for higher education in California. The student movement became a central aspect of Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial campaign the following year, which he launched with the promise to 'clean up the mess at Berkeley.'"
12/7/2021, City Limits, All Ages Bond Over Oysters in The Bronx, Khushba Ahmed, Filomena Baker, Fatoumata Doumbouya and Jeshua Guerrero Lopez
"[Barbara] Zahm, who describes herself as a 'senior activist' originally found her calling in social justice as a college student in the 1960s protesting the Vietnam War and working in the Free Speech Movement.
¶
As a student at University of California-Berkeley, Zahm was horrified to hear about the human rights violations during the Vietnam War. While some of her friends were drafted into the military, she became part of the resistance.
¶
'I couldn't go on with my own life until the war ended,' she said.
¶
As a part of the G.I movement, Zahm participated in protests and organized around military bases, asking veterans to share their experiences. After college, she produced two documentaries: 'Bombs Will Make the Rainbows Break,' portraying the fear of nuclear war that Americans felt in the 1980s, and 'The Last Graduation,' chronicling the education system in prisons and how many such programs were eventually wiped out following the Crime Bill in the 1990s."
12/5/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Phyllis Willett: June 1, 1945 - July 9, 2021,
"Born into a politically radical family in Brooklyn, New York, Willett moved to Berkeley in 1963. She became active in the Free Speech Movement and played an integral role in a community of activists who fought for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam."
12/3/2021, Easy Reader & Peninsula Magazine, Widman helped preserve small town Hermosa Beach during Good Government era, Kevin Cody
"[Lance] Widman began teaching government at El Camino in 1971, after earning a graduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, where he lived in Sproul Hall during the Free Speech movement Mario Savio led from the steps of Sproul Hall."
12/3/2021, Los Angeles Review of Books, Semipublic Intellectual Sessions: "Where's 'the Discourse'?", Lili Loofbourow, Daphne A. Brooks, Jesse McCarthy, Sarah Marshall, Lexis-Olivier Ray
"Chancellor Nicholas Dirks at UC Berkeley, when he was commemorating the Free Speech Movement, specifically said that free speech and civility are two sides of the same coin."
12/2/2021, Washington Examiner, School principles, Virginia Aabram
"UC Berkeley had bowed to protesters' demands to end a ban on political activity and fundraising on campus. Graduate student Mario Savio proclaimed:
¶
'It's been said that we've been revolutionaries and all this sort of thing. In a way, that's true. We've gone back to a traditional view of the university. The traditional view of the university is a community of scholars, of faculty, of students … who get together with complete honesty, who bring the hard light of free inquiry to bear upon important matters. ... We're asking that there be no restrictions on the context of speech save those provided by the courts, and that's an enormous amount of freedom.'"
12/2/2021, Associated Press, This Day in History: December 2, Associated Press
"On this date:¶
Mario Savio, facing camera foreground, leader of the so-called Free Speech Movement at the University of California, gathered a crowd of some 3,000 students in front of Sproul Hall on the Berkeley campus on Dec. 2, 1964. Savio, 21, told the crowd that sit-in demonstrators planned to occupy the second floor of Sproul Hall until the administration dropped disciplinary action against four free speech leaders. (AP Photo)"
11/30/2021, New York Times, Jim Warren, Early Influencer in Personal Computing, Dies at 85, Steve Lohr
"He embraced the liberal politics of the region, marching in rallies to protest the war in Vietnam and supporting the Free Speech Movement, centered at the University of California at Berkeley."
11/29/2021, Rocky Mountain Collegian, CSU's history of student activism is worth celebrating, JD Meltzner
"College campuses often serve as a ground zero of sorts for national social movements that have lived on into the 21st century.
¶
Some notable examples of collegiate activism may come to mind first: the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, The Harvard student strike of 1969 against the Vietnam War or even the tragic shooting at the Kent State University protests. But what about Fort Collins' own Colorado State University? It may seem odd to consider a former agricultural school in Northern Colorado as a hotbed of social activism and protest, but it's the truth."
11/26/2021, Akron Beacon Journal, Commentary: Interests of 1960s anti-war students, Black Panthers sometimes intersected, Rick Feinberg
"My primary focus as a student activist was the Vietnam War. However, both the anti-war movement and the Panthers were connected to the civil rights movement. Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement, which helped launch a decade of student activism, coalesced in response to a university edict that prohibited civil rights organizing on campus."
11/19/2021, The Progressive, Koch's Campus Free Speech Ploy, Isaac Kamola, Ralph Wilson
"Much of the [conservative & libertarian] free speech movement on college campuses is driven by the Koch donor network."
11/17/2021, The Daily Sentinel, Letter, Charlie Quimby
"'Don't trust anyone over 30' originated out of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley that championed the student right to political speech on college campuses, which in turn helped spark broader national activism related to civil rights and ending the Vietnam War.
¶
Berkeley activist Jack Weinberg, not Bob Dylan, first said 'we don't trust anyone over 30' to dismiss a reporter who kept asking him who was really behind the protests, implying that the Communist Party was pulling the strings. The off-hand quote got picked up by newspapers nationwide, sparking outrage from the establishment and adoption by the movement."
11/11/2021, Philadelphia Inquirer, 'Anti-woke' University of Austin is right that college is 'broken,' but its founders are wrong about everything else, Will Bunch
"But I also think the far greater threat to free speech on college campuses is the same danger that animated the Berkeley Free Speech Movement way back in 1964: a political clampdown on academic freedom and expression from an all-powerful government."
11/10/2021, The Williams Record, With free speech under attack at MIT, Williams must commit to free speech, Niko Malhotra
"It is disheartening that the university that was home to the Berkeley Free Speech movement of the 1960s is unwilling, in 2021, to stand up for the principles of free speech and academic freedom so integral to its history."
11/9/2021, Associated Press, Pandemic sparks union activity where it was rare: Bookstores, Hillel Italie
"Moes Books was founded in the late 1950s by the activist Moe Moskowitz, part of the Free Speech and anti-war movements in the 1960s. Moe's is now run by his daughter, Doris Moskowitz, who has spoken of the store's egalitarian atmosphere and its tradition of valuing social consciousness alongside making a profit."
11/1/2021, The Daily Californian, People's Park recommended for National Register of Historic Places, Christopher Ying
"'People's Park qualifies for the National Register due to its critical role in the Civil Rights, Anti-Vietnam War and finally the Student Protest Movement,' said Joe Liesner, a member of the People's Park Council, in an email. 'More specifically, it is the Free Speech Movement that changed the entire character of protest in the 1960s and ignited nation-wide campus results.'" [Ed note: consider the youth movement as the larger context for the student movement; and the FSM as having little to do with People's Park.]
10/25/2021, New York Times, The Past and Future of People's Park, Soumya Karlamangla
"Berkeley had become the center of the nation's counterculture movement, home to huge protests about the Free Speech Movement and against the Vietnam War. And thousands of those left-leaning activists had settled on the affordable south side of campus, exactly where officials were ousting residents."
10/24/2021, Omaha World-Herald, Dr. Richard Zevitz 1944 - 2020,
"Like any respectable young liberal of his day, he then packed his car with Joan Baez records and moved to California on the heels of the Free Speech Movement, where (rather than live out his twenties in a commune) he pursued a doctorate in Criminology from the University of California Berkeley."
10/22/2021, Berkleyside, Apartment building could rise at former site of Albatross Pub, Nico Savidge
"The space at 1822 San Pablo Ave. has been vacant for nearly a year, since its tenant for more than five decades, the historic Albatross Pub, closed its doors. The business — known to locals as 'The Bird' — began as a gathering space for members of the free speech movement and quickly became a destination for nearby residents and UC Berkeley students."
10/18/2021, Tablet Magazine, A Park for the People, Jonah Raskin
"Indeed, the spirit of the '60s-which was born in part during the '64 Free Speech Movement and that flowered in '69 when hippies, freaks, and radicals turned lot 1875-2 into People's Park-has never really ended in 'Berzerkeley,' as it has been characterized, perhaps unfairly." [Ed note: there's a good case to be made for the Sixties having started in 1960.]
10/17/2021, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"As NYU Prof. Robby Cohen (author of The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s) notes: 'Yes, a Cal student was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1960, Douglas Wachter, a soph, who was a red diaper baby and CORE activist. Another Cal student, Meisenbach, was falsely accused of assaulting a cop at the SF City Hall protest…. Or course all this was 4 years before the FSM."" [Ed note: FSM leader Michael Rossman was another vector. In 1961 he became the Recording Secretary of BASCAHCUA, Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities]
10/14/2021, East Bay Times, Former Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times journalist Larry Spears dies at 86, Andrew McGall
"From the 1960s into the 70s, he covered UC Berkeley during its turbulent period of student activism, including the Free Speech Movement and the civil rights and Vietnam war protests."
10/11/2021, Berkeley Daily Planet, The City of Berkeley Should Not Install a Public Toilet in Front of the People's Park Mural, Osha Neumann
"And now you want to block 10 ½ feet of it with your toilet. What section will it be? Maybe the section depicting the Free-Speech Movement, with Mario Savio's words from the famous speech he gave standing atop the police car on Sproul Plaza:
¶
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!"
10/11/2021, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley must accurately portray its relationship with People's Park, Editorial Board
"Campus should not boast about the Free Speech Movement while sugarcoating the history of People's Park and the opposition its development still faces." [Ed note: apparantly what they have in common is that they are both historical.]
10/10/2021, TheNational, Columbus Day 2021: What the holiday means and why many in the US want to change it, Katarina Holtzapple
"Berkeley, California, the birthplace to the campus free speech movement in the 1960s, was the first city to adopt Indigenous Peoples' Day in 1992 as a counter-protest to a 500th anniversary celebration of Columbus's arrival."
10/8/2021, The Daily Californian, 'I'm not American, I'm from Berkeley', Stanley Stott-Hall
"Free Speech Movement Cafe's namesake was, in part, triggered by a House Un-American Activities Committee subpoena issued for a UC Berkeley student. It is in the name; the very idea of 'un-American' is synonymous with Berkeley." [Ed note: “triggered” is an overstatement. There were many, many contributing circumstances. https://www.fsm-a.org/Earlier%20Student%20Activism.html]
10/7/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Alice Waters on the future of Chez Panisse and why she doesn't believe in retirement, Janelle Bitker
"Waters doesn't plan to retire because she doesn't believe in the concept, which she described as 'an American idea' of working too hard and then going off on a cruise ship and feeling lost late in life. She credits attending UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement for her anti-careerist attitude, lacking traditional expectations for Chez Panisse and instead thinking about how she simply wants to live life. She still wants to start a commune, perhaps on a farm in Italy."
10/6/2021, BroadwayWorld, Syracuse Stage Opens Season For Live Performance With EUREKA DAY, Stephi Wild
"'I think to varying degrees, many of the clichés about the Bay Area and Berkeley specifically, are true: very smart, very to the left, wanting to feel like it is always more to the left than anywhere else because of the legacy of Berkeley in the 60s as a place where so many progressive movements-the free speech movement, the disability rights movement-so many progressive movements got their start. So there is a feeling of always wanting to be at the forefront,' [Jonathan ] Spector said. 'That makes it a particularly interesting place to examine these moments where different sets of values come into conflict and where you reach irreconcilable conflicts to values.'" [Ed note: The Berkeley Free Speech Movement ended on 4/28/1965.]
10/1/2021, NNY360, Looking Backward,
"1964: The first Free Speech Movement protest erupts spontaneously on the University of California, Berkeley campus; students demanded an end to the ban of on-campus political activities."
10/1/2021, KALW Radio, Almanac,
"1964 - The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley."
9/30/2021, Berkeleyside, The end of the 1960s? Regents vote to put housing in People's Park., Frances Dinkelspiel
"The area that is now People's Park was once covered with classic Berkeley brown shingle homes. In 1968, the university started buying up houses and bulldozing them, ostensibly because it wanted the young radicals living dispersed. But for seven months, the land sat empty and became a muddy parking lot.
¶
The Vietnam War was raging, the Black Panthers were amassing influence and Berkeley had already seen a decade of political protests and cultural ferment, including the 1964 Free Speech Movement and the Third World Liberation Front strike. Many young people saw the university as complicit with the government and the ruling class."
9/30/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Controversial housing plan for Berkeley's historic People's Park could get final nod this week, Nanette Asimov
"Before the late 1960s, there was no People's Park, just the homes of professors and others who had no wish to sell. In 1967, the regents used eminent domain to force them out. UC bulldozed the homes - then ran out of money. What had been a block of cozy houses became a deserted junkyard.
¶
Students planted a garden in the rubble-strewn field, expecting to turn it into a park where the ideals of the Free Speech Movement of 1964 could percolate. Instead, Gov. Ronald Reagan sent police in to remove the plants and fence the site."
9/30/2021, Culver City News, Eleanor Osgood 1945 - 2021,
"She then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley where she was involved in the Free Speech Movement before earning her BA."
9/27/2021, Under The Radar, The Beach Boys - Reflecting on the 50th Anniversary of "Surf's Up", Austin Saalman
"'Disney Girls' is followed by the somewhat disconcerting 'Student Demonstration Time,' Mike Love's confounding attempt to offer his interpretations of several major events such as the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the People's Park protests, the burning of Isla Vista's Bank of America, and the Kent State massacre. Set to the raw, fuzzed-out melody of R&B standard 'Riot in Cell Block Number Nine,' 'Student Demonstration Time' is certainly one of the group's heaviest songs to date, rollicking to and fro as Love barks cultural observations through a bullhorn, but ultimately achieves little for the band in terms of integrating them into the generation's youth culture."
9/24/2021, The New York Times, Charles G. Sellers, Historian Who Upset the Postwar Consensus, Dies at 98, Clay Risen
"Among the first things Dr. Sellers did when he got to Berkeley was join the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. Working with the chapter, he fought against housing and job discrimination around Berkeley, and in 1961 he traveled with a contingent to Mississippi to support the Freedom Riders. Dr. Sellers was arrested, but he was let off with a suspended sentence.
¶
In 1964 he was among the first and most vocal faculty members to support the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, which opposed efforts by the administration to curtail campus activism.
¶
His involvement began when he saw one of his colleagues arrested during a protest and put in a police car. Immediately, Dr. Sellers joined several students in surrounding the car for hours.
¶
He recalled sitting on top of the car when another colleague passed by.
¶
'Charles, what are you doing up there?' his colleague asked.
¶
'What are you doing down there, Waldo?' Dr. Sellers replied, paraphrasing a quotation from his hero, Henry David Thoreau, who had been imprisoned for not paying taxes as a protest against slavery and the war against Mexico. ('Waldo' referred to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who visited Thoreau in prison.)
Dr. Sellers's radicalism won him few friends among the faculty, but the soft-spoken Southerner became an inspiration for Berkeley's more militant students. He introduced Malcolm X when he came to speak on campus, and he later spoke to a crowd of 7,000 at an anti-Vietnam War rally."
9/22/2021, University of Toledo, UToledo Virtual Gandhi Lecture To Feature Peace Activist, Filmmaker, press release
"[Michael] Nagler is professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, where he founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program and taught upper-division courses on nonviolence, meditation and a seminar on the meaning of life. Nagler also participated in the Free Speech Movement."
9/18/2021, Berkeleyside, Remembering Frank Daar, who helped bring leftist Berkeley candidates to power in the '70s, Roberta Brooks and Loni Hancock
"Frank met his adored wife, Sheila, at a demonstration during the Free Speech Movement in the mid-1960s."
9/16/2021, University of Saskatchewan News, A student for life, Chris Putnam
"Born and raised in California, Cowsill earned his first degree-a Bachelor of Arts in English-from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969. He was profoundly affected by the famous Berkeley Free Speech Movement, in which thousands of students protested for their rights to speech and academic freedom on campus.
¶
Cowsill remembers walking to Berkeley as 'a naïve 17-year-old' one morning in December 1964 and witnessing hundreds of peaceful protesters being hauled away by police in one of the largest peacetime arrests in American history.
¶
'It just shattered all of my illusions about being in that country.'
¶
He became involved in the free speech, civil rights and antiwar movements. By the time he graduated from Berkeley, Cowsill felt alienated from his home country and was determined to move elsewhere. He and his wife emigrated to Canada in 1973."
9/10/2021, KCRW Radio, Celebrating 50 years of Chez Panisse with Alice Waters, Evan Kleiman
"'I was swept away by the free speech movement, civil rights. I never lost my optimism because of that time, and I felt like if we all got together to do something, we could,' says Alice Waters of empowering people to value sustainability."
9/1/2021, LA Progressive, Is GOP Flirtation with Fascism Becoming a Marriage?, H. Scott Prosterman
"Ironically, the Free Speech Movement arose in Berkeley and San Francisco from 1960 through its formal founding in 1964, as a direct reaction to the last years of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)." [Ed note: The problem with claiming that the 1964 FSM started in 1960 is that there were prior such movements, as the 1934 UCLA Free Speech Movement. Read Robert Cohen, "When the Old left was Young." The people who were active in 1964 and 1960 would call this the "student movement."]
8/20/2021, The Australian Financial Review, How the civil rights movement shaped this BCG Australia co-founder, James Thomson
"Drawn by the promise of the free speech movement centred on the University of California, Berkeley, he [Colin Carter] took an apartment near People's Park, which would become the centre of protests that became so violent that the area was put under martial law."
8/17/2021, Calaveras Enterprise, Gilbert Gerald Agatha,
"...as a Highway Patrol Officer....He worked the back-to-back hotspots in the Watts Riots and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement."
8/12/2021, New York Times, Leon Litwack, 91, Dies; Changed How Scholars Portray Black History, Clay Risen
"He returned to Berkeley in 1964, just as the campus was roiling with student activism. Unlike many of his fellow professors, Professor Litwack fully supported the protesters — he canceled his class the day after the police arrested 800 of them during a sit-in at Sproul Plaza."
8/12/2021, New York Magazine, Ben Shapiro's Book Is a Glib Rationale for Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Jonathan Chait
"In another odd aside, he argues that the 1960s Free Speech Movement at Berkeley was actually 'authoritarian.' The students simply wanted power, and they seized university land and gave it over to … unregulated space for the exercise of free speech." [Ed note: Students had long been free to engage in free speech at a spot on the south edge of campus. In Sept. 1964 the UC admin abruptly banned it. There was then no free speech space on campus.]
7/30/2021, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley ranked 2nd-most progressive college in US, Nadia Farjami
"As for campus's score in the freedom of speech category, the 1960s saw UC Berkeley student Mario Savio light the fire for the Free Speech Movement, propelling a legacy of student activism in the years following, according to a previous article from The Daily Californian." [Ed. note: UC's legacy of activism predates Mario Savio. For example, there was a 1934 Free Speech movement at UCLA and 1949-51 student protests at UCLA and UCB over the Speaker Ban. In May 1961, Malcolm X was not allowed to speak at UCB. More here: https://www.fsm-a.org/Prior%20Student%20Movements.html]
7/28/2021, The-CNN-Wire, Remembering the most important civil rights hero most Americans have never heard of, Peniel E. Joseph
"Freedom Summer's influence--and [Bob] Moses'--persisted throughout the 1960s and beyond. White participants, such as Mario Savio, organized social justice movements like the Berkeley Free Speech Movement on college campuses that amplified work already being done by Black activists."
7/27/2021, Counterpunch, Ben Shapiro's Authoritarian Moment, John K. Wilson
"Shapiro is also attracted to conspiracy theories, some of them quite odd. He denounces Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, claiming that it 'was actually a mere pretense designed at gaining power and control.' (p. 89) In reality, the Free Speech Movement united liberals and conservatives alike who objected to campus bans on political speech, but Shapiro argues that 'the students had plenty of areas designated for such activity' and happily endorses speech zones suppressing free speech on campus, at least when he thinks conservatives are not the victims." [Ed note: before the FSM the only free speech area was OFF CAMPUS.]
7/22/2021, Washington Examiner, The Left's war on speech is not the first time it betrayed its values, Samuel Kim
"Democrats' cooperation with social media companies to quell speech is a far cry from the free speech advocacy that came to define the old Left. Liberals would not have dreamed of silencing heterodox voices when they were under attack from college administrators less than 60 years ago.
¶
In fact, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, which came to define student free speech rights, was supported by activist liberal groups like Students for a Democratic Society and civil rights groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee." [Ed note: in 1964 these 2 groups would have termed themselves radical. The FSM was a broad left-right coalition, including Youth for Goldwater, Young Republicans, Catholics for Social Action, and Young Socialist Alliance.]
7/21/2021, The Daily Californian, Free Speech Movement Cafe reopens after extended closure, Lianna Leung
"'Berkeley has long been an epicenter of activism, from free speech to social justice,' Dupuis [Elizabeth Dupuis, director of Doe, Moffitt and the Subject Specialty Libraries] said in an email. 'The Library proudly serves as home to the Free Speech Movement Café as a reminder of the impact that everyday people, working together in common cause, can have in shaping our world.'"
7/19/2021, Dallas, TX, Patch, Liberals Began The '60s Pushing Free Speech. Now They're 'Woke', Kevin Phinney
"And here's the real problem: Policing people's speech does not change their beliefs, and we've been through this before when the Berkeley Free Speech Movement sprang up in the wake of the communist witch hunts of the 1950s.
¶
In that moment, liberals decided that silencing opposing viewpoints was antithetical to rigorous debate, and after multiple protests and arrests pressing for free speech, the faculty at Berkeley voted overwhelmingly to support their students." [Ed note: the 1964 FSM was a broad coalition, not just liberals and radicals.]
7/16/2021, The Daily Californian, Berkeley staple Chez Panisse celebrates 50th anniversary, Kavya Gupta
"Waters attended UC Berkeley in 1964 during the height of Mario Savio's Free Speech Movement, which she cited as having greatly changed her life. She added that the university system was one of the forerunners of 'school-supported agriculture.'"
7/15/2021, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Revolutionary Persistence: Musical Director Daniel Savio on S.F. Mime Troupe's 62nd Season, John Malkin
"'I was born in 1980, 16 years after the Free Speech Movement,' Daniel Savio explains. 'So, I grew up thinking of my father, Mario, as somewhat of a heroic figure. And my mother as well, but she was not as much of a public figure, although she was also involved. I grew up thinking of progressive politics as pretty normal.'"
6/27/2021, The Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"The Berkeley vets who oversee the Free Speech Movement Archives are frequently compelled to correct misleading references to the FSM. Recently an article in The Oxford Student surfaced that alleged a link between the Free Speech rebellion and Marvin Gaye's mega-hit 'What's Going On.' (The song is famous for its refrain: 'Mother, mother/ There's too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother/ There's far too many of you dying.')
¶
The article asserted that: 'The song was inspired by an incident of police brutality during protests in Berkeley, California as part of the Free Speech Movement and protests of the Vietnam War.'
¶
FSM vet Anita Medal took a deep dive into the history of the sixties and discovered that there was, in fact, a Berkeley link to Gaye's 'Anthem for the Ages.' But is didn't have anything to do with the FSM or the anti-war movement.
¶
Medal doubted the alleged FSM-link from the get-go. 'We weren't dying or heavily black. It was black sons, brothers and fathers who were being disproportionately conscripted and senselessly dying in Vietnam,' she initially reported. 'I doubt it's a quote from Gaye.'
¶
Medal doubled down researching the source of the idea and finally announced the surprising news: 'It's neither the FSM nor the Vietnam War. It was People's Park!'"
6/22/2021, The National Post, Analysis: The 'feedback loop' that pits students against politicians in the campus free speech crisis, Joseph Brean
"The recent moves by Conservative governments in Ontario and Alberta to enforce codes of campus free expression are the first major Canadian illustrations of this 'feedback loop' that has become a major strategy of right-wing American campaigning since the mid-1960s, when Reagan capitalized on student protests at the University of California, Berkeley, to win the California governor's race by a landslide.
¶
True to form, it began with a campus free speech crisis. The Free Speech Movement was a major student protest against a university policy banning political activity on campus, which was focused on the anti-war and civil rights movements, and a key moment in the emerging counterculture. Berkeley became a battleground in the culture war. To Reagan, who was seeking to unseat a two-term Democratic governor, it also became an opportunity, so a central pledge of his campaign was to 'clean up the mess' on the Berkeley campus. It worked beautifully."
6/18/2021, The Oxford Student, 'What's Going On': Marvin Gaye's Anthems For The Ages, Freddy Foulston
"The album's title song begins with a smooth bongo shuffle leading into an alto sax flourish before we hear Gaye's voice calling out, 'Mother, mother/ There's too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother/ There's far too many of you dying', a sorrowful verbal opening to a song that is light and pleasant on the ear. The song was inspired by an incident of police brutality during protests in Berkeley California as part of the Free Speech Movement and protests the Vietnam War." [Ed. Note: The FSM was non-violent. Wikipedia points to the 1969 Berkeley People's Park protest as the inspiration.]
6/17/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, In person? At home? Bay Area summer theater has a show for you, Lily Janiak
"This year, the troupe [San Francisco Mime Troupe] extends the idea with 'Tales of the Resistance, Volume 2: Persistence,' which features special guest performances by Francis Jue and music and lyrics by Daniel Savio, son of Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio."
6/15/2021, New York Times, Ezra Klein Interviews Louis Menand, Ezra Klein
"On the one hand, it's true the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was literally about free speech. So this happens in 1964. And the administration at University of California at Berkeley banned political tables on campus. Political tables were like card tables that students would set up with political literature on them to promote civil rights or other causes. And the university banned those from campus. And the students revolted and occupied the administration building, Sproul Hall, and basically forced the university to back down.
¶
And it was called the Free Speech Movement because that's really what the stakes were in that particular protest. But for a lot of the people who were involved in the protest, for a lot of the students involved in the protest, there was a bigger issue, which was the nature of the post-war university. And they regarded the university as treating them as basically human material to be manufactured to serve the needs of government and industry."
6/8/2021, Red Flag, Vale Anthony Ashbolt, Chloe Rafferty
"As an academic, Anthony was always keen to preserve the lessons of past struggles. In particular, his writing on the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 1960s was a defence of the radical left's support for free speech."
Summer 2021, California, Uncovered Letters Reveal a Forgotten and Tumultuous Journey, Andrew Leonard
"But the jewel in the crown of this collection is an 11-page handwritten letter dated December 6, 1964--just four days after the FSM sit-in. It is a blow-by-blow account of the protest and his subsequent arrest. I could hardly contain my excitement as I started to read. For a reporter or historian, a document of this sort is pure gold, the very definition of a 'primary source.' I've read many accounts of the sit-in, but most of them are blunted by the passage of time, or the knowledge of what happened afterward. Ken's account is fresh and of-the-moment." [Ed Note: arrestee Kenneth W. Leonard]
6/1/2021, RealClearPolitics, Group of Tech Execs Takes On Social Media Censorship, Susan Crabtree
[Mike Matthys, a tech venture capital executive who has worked in Silicon Valley for several decades:] "'We're nonpartisan and we like to remind people that if you really dislike Trump or you dislike conservative views, just remember what happened in the 1950s and 1960s when we had the McCarthy era and the Berkeley free speech movement.'"
5/29/2021, Denton Record-Chronicle, R. Sheldon Newman 1934 - 2021,
"He wrote a semi-regular newsletter, Teski Zeiti (roughly translated from German as 'Times are Bad'), which chronicled his community's protests of what was happening in the world, and is included in the Free Speech Movement Papers collection at the University of California at Berkeley."
5/20/2021, Jewish Journal, Heroes of Free Speech, Larry Greenfield
"The 1964 Free Speech movement at UC Berkeley has long since been replaced by illiberal indoctrination, bullying and bias. Conservative speakers are frequently harassed or disinvited. Most recently, a video of a teacher berating a student for respectfully offering a more nuanced opinion about American policing went viral." [Ed Note: the FSM was a production of students activism, not the institution.]
5/15/2021, Berkeley News, Keynote speaker [Adewale "Wally" Adeyemo] to graduates: 'The success of our country is in your hands', Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
"After all, it was Berkeley students who in the '60s, awakened by the civil rights movement, launched a free speech movement that would shape our country. Twenty years later, Berkeley students who recognized that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere started a divestment movement that helped to topple apartheid in South Africa."
5/11/2021, Monthly Review, on the guidance offered in "Sensing Injustice" by Michael Tigar, Jennifer Laurin
"We see Michael as a Berkeley undergrad and law student in the foment of the 1960s - literally finding his voice at the college radio station, and more figuratively in his journey in and out of the Navy reserves, his work challenging loyalty oaths and representing leaders in the Free Speech Movement, and the deep historical dives that he pursued in his earliest legal scholarship."
5/5/2021, The New Republic, Our Friend, the Trump Propagandist, Ronald Radosh, Sol Stern
"Meanwhile, [David] Horowitz had already published his first book, Student. The short volume vividly described the growing unrest on college campuses as students took a leading role in the civil rights and anti-war protest movements. Now 23, Horowitz anticipated the Free Speech Movement, which erupted on the Berkeley campus two years later as students rose up against the university administrators they saw as oppressive. Mario Savio, the movement's firebrand leader, later revealed that he had read Student in New York City. The book so excited him that he transferred to Berkeley." [Ed Note: Savio had moved to LA with his family and also read newspapers.]
5/5/2021, Common Dreams, Cariol Horne, Social Justice Hero, Joan Steinau Lester
"Simply 'put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers,' Mario Savio famously said during Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement, urging listeners to act whenever they saw injustice. That ethic, learned from my parents, was the core of our family values."
4/18/2021, History News Network, Don't Erase Women's Leadership in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Robert Cohen
"To begin with, the first spokesperson for the free speech struggle at Cal-the movement's key voice before Savio and before it even took on the name "Free Speech Movement"-was Jackie Goldberg, a veteran student leader who chaired the initial negotiations with the UC administration. Though Goldberg would soon be replaced by Savio as the Free Speech Movement's key spokesperson, before that happened she played an essential role in achieving a peaceful resolution of the police car blockade."
4/12/2021, The New Yorker, Letters respond to Louis Menand's essay about the New Left, Hannah Leffingwell
"I read with interest Menand's reflection on the legacy of the New Left, but was disappointed to see this nuanced essay about politics in higher education echo a pernicious myth about late-sixties activism: that "American politics descended into chaos" with the rise of the Black Power movement, the women's movement, and the gay-liberation movement. Such language seems to dismiss the significant gains made by these movements and to cast any violence committed by their members as somehow less pure or less effective than the utopian nonviolence of many New Left participants. In addition, this myth allows one to gloss over the power dynamics at play when some activists are portrayed as dreamers and others-depending on their class, gender, race, and profession-are portrayed as miscreants."
4/11/2021, Berkeley Daily Planet, Smithereens, Gar Smith
"Remembering 'Freedom Summer' ¶
The Free Speech Movement Archives (www.FSM-A.org) recently reached out to the hundreds of FSM veterans on its mailing list to share an invitation from the Bob Hicks Foundation. The appeal follows:
¶
Are you a civil rights worker who spent time in Louisiana (esp. Bogalusa and Washington Parish) or other parts of the South where the Deacons for Defense and Justice were active?'"
3/27/2021, Bloomberg Businessweek, Asian Americans Are Ready for a Hero, Karl Taro Greenfeld
"The multiethnic Free Speech Movement and Students for a Democratic Society demanded cultural studies programs for each of the ethnic groups whose histories academia had overlooked."[Ed Note: the demand for ethnic studies came some years after the FSM.]
3/26/2021, The Cavalier Daily, MCCOY: Our Vietnam-era predecessors needed free expression and so do we, Robert McCoy
"[Thomas] Hanna describes that [Dean B.F.D.] Runk's censorship led to a divorce between the University Press and The Cavalier Daily. Still, some University leftists, frustrated that existing publications "virtually ignore[d] issues" such as 'the undeclared war in Vietnam,' founded the leftist Iconoclast in 1966 and The Virginia Weekly in 1967. The latter of the two, according to its founder, was 'designed [to] transform the staid University of Virginia into the Berkeley of the South,' referring to Berkeley's famous Free Speech Movement of the mid-1960s. According to author Dale M. Brumfield, the Weekly published 'headlines from the rapidly emerging New Left movement, including … escalating anti-war fervor on campus.'"
3/23/2021, The Atlantic, The Show That Changed Television Forever, Ronald Brownstein
"In 1964, when the first demonstrations by the free-speech movement erupted at UC Berkeley, [Robert D.] Wood, in one of his on-air editorials, called the demonstrators 'witless agitators' and insisted that they 'be dealt with quickly and severely to set an example for all time to those who agitate for the sake of agitation.'"
3/22/2021, The New Yorker, The Making of the New Left, Louis Menand
"'What can I call it: the existential amazement of being at The Edge, where reality breaks open into the true Chaos before it is reformed?' one of the F.S.M. leaders, Michael Rossman, wrote ten years later:
¶
I never found words to describe what is still my most vivid feeling from the FSM . . . the sense that the surface of reality had somehow fallen away altogether. Nothing was any longer what it had seemed. Objects, encounters, events, all became mysterious, pregnant with unnamable implications, capable of astounding metamorphosis."
3/22/2021, The Flat Hat, What does freedom of speech actually give us freedom to say?, Ezzie Seigel
"When UC Berkeley prohibited political activities on and near campus amidst the civil rights movement and the ongoing Vietnam War, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) was founded in order for students to be able to organize. After a non-violent protest with over 1,500 people, UC Berkeley got a new Chancellor who granted the demands of FSM."
3/21/2021, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Smithereens: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"Meanwhile, [Mark] Kitchell's YouTube Channel is featuring Archival Gems and Deleted Scenes from Berkeley in the Sixties, including these Kitchell favorites: 'The Hells Angels volunteering for Vietnam; the Free Speech Movement's Mario Savio receiving a clip-on tie for a birthday present the day after getting dragged off the stage of the Greek Theater by his tie; '"
3/20/2021, The Daily Californian, More than a professor: The enduring impact of Leon Litwack, Gary Pomerantz
"He dismissed his survey course only once, in December 1964, after police arrested more than 800 students who had gathered for a Free Speech Movement sit-in at Sproul Hall. Litwack supported the movement, and the next morning, he told his students at Wheeler that the day's class was canceled. It would be inappropriate to study, and perhaps celebrate, rebels of the past, he explained, while rebels of the present were being silenced."
3/20/2021, The Daily Californian, Alumni revisit Daily Cal experiences, Sarah Harris and Jocelyn Huang
"'Of course, the Free Speech Movement was the main story in my time there, running from September all the way through January, with mass crowds and protests, celebrities and sheriffs all over campus and so on. I left before the tear gas and bullets started to fly on campus in later years. I did meet a man at a conference in 1995 who showed me his finger that had the end shot off by a shotgun pellet during the People's Park riots. Protests were much more civilized in 1964-65.'¶
- Ron Enfield '66, chief photographer"
3/20/2021, Los Angeles Times, The 'No-Nos' of Tule Lake, Phi Do, Jennifer Lu and Aida Ylanan
"[Satsuki] Ina didn't learn her parents had renounced their citizenship at Tule Lake until she was a college student at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech movement in the 1960s."
3/15/2021, American Institute for Economic Research, WELCOME TO WORD TYRANNY AND CULTURAL BALKANIZATION, Richard Ebeling
"America has entered into a new era of thought control. Back in the 1960s, there was a determined campaign by many conservatives to resist the free speech movement symbolically headquartered on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. Then, the idea was to respect people's right to say what was on their minds, even when it was considered crude, rude and offensive. That many of the students involved in this effort were often radically inconsistent and disrespectful of others' property clouded the message. But at the end of the day, freedom of speech was the underlying principle." [Ed note: The FSM began, ended, and took place on the campus of UC Berkeley, Fall 1964 to spring, 1965.]
3/10/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Citing 'many incidents' of 'poor safety,' Berkeley institution Moe's Books unionizes, Katie Dowd
"Moe's is one of the last legends standing of Telegraph Avenue's once-vibrant used book scene. Gone are Cody's Books and Shakespeare & Co., leaving the anti-establishment, four-story mecca to carry the torch. Moe's Books was founded in 1959 by Moe Moskowitz and his wife Barbara Stevens and soon became a counterculture hotspot. During the Free Speech Movement and Berkeley's frequent anti-war protests, Moe's was kept open in defiance of curfews to shelter protesters."
3/4/2021, Santa Monica Daily Press, OUR HIDDEN HUMAN TREASURES, Charles Andrews
"'I practically lived at the Ash Grove,' she [Elaine Golden-Gealer] said. 'But I never performed there. When I left LA and moved to Berkeley, for the Free speech Movement, I was living with Carroll Perry, the former manager of the Ash Grove. We opened a coffee house called the Cabal Creamery, later renamed the Good Buddy, and started booking acts there. We would get a lot of the people who played the Ash Grove, making a small circuit. They would usually add some place in San Francisco and then have three gigs instead of just one."
3/3/2021, The Northwest Labor Press, Burton David White, 1930-2021,
"White attended UC Berkeley to study for a Ph.D. in Middle English. There, he joined the Public Affairs staff of Berkeley's listener-sponsored radio station KPFA, covering the 1964 Free Speech Movement for the station."
2/23/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Leave the park alone, Neal Fishman
"Regarding 'Let UC Berkeley build its housing in peace' (Letters, Feb. 20): The author got his facts wrong about People's Park in Berkeley. It was not the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. The movement to save the land was an echo of the FSM that had occurred several years before."
2/22/2021, Socialist Worker UK, Gavin Williamson's 'free speech' is an attack on our rights to organise,
"The Berkeley Free Speech Movement in California in 1964-65 fought for the right of students to organise politically and for academics to research and teach radical ideas."
2/20/2021, San Francisco Chronicle, Letters to the Editor: Let UC Berkeley build housing in peace, Kenneth Lowe
"As a student long ago, I learned of the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement and its birthplace, People's Park. Many years later, upon joining the faculty of that famed institution, I was thrilled to learn that my assigned parking space was across the street from People's Park." [Ed note: The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley lasted from September 1964 through April 1965, during which time the land now occupied by Peoples Park was full of houses. It was only after that the UC managed to buy up all the land and either remove or tear down the houses. The creation of Peoples Park was in 1969.]
2/19/2021, The Berkeley High Jacket, The Unknown Future of People's Park: Housing Crisis vs. Community Legacy, Asha Baudart-Gehlawat
"The park has lived through protests, shootings, and the turn of the millennium. It quickly became a hub for the free speech movement and communities of all ages. As Bekka Fink, an activist and former Berkeley High School (BHS) student said, 'I grew up in this park, as an activist in the free speech movement and in the women's movement.'" [Ed note: The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley lasted from September 1964 through April 1965, during which time the land now occupied by Peoples Park was full of houses. It was only after that the UC managed to buy up all the land and either remove or tear down the houses. The creation of Peoples Park was in 1969.]
2/15/2021, New York Times, Kathleen Ham, Who Met Her Rapist Twice in Court, Dies at 73, Katharine Q. Seelye
"Kathleen went to the University of California Berkeley, where she majored in political science and graduated in 1969. 'We spent most of our time going to protests and being totally involved with the Free Speech movement,' Ms. Russell said."
2/8/2021, Newsweek, The Left Has Replaced Social Liberalism with Social Control | Opinion, Zaid Jilani
"But you don't get the sense that Democrats, or the wider progressive movement, really fear that the measures they are advocating will ever be turned against them. During the Trump years, left of center America slowly shed its old politics of social liberation--the one born in UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, sexual liberation, and the civil rights revolution--and have replaced it with something else: a politics of social control.
¶
This new politics of social control means using public and private institutions, almost all of which are now controlled by left-leaning people, to coerce individuals into their preferred modes of being and even thinking."
2/4/2021, The Times and Democrat, Left's assault on free speech, Bill Connor
"Going back to the 1960s, in dynamics like the Berkeley Free Speech movement, liberals staunchly held to Voltaire's famous quote: 'I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' Unfortunately, the modern left has taken the socialist views on free speech.
To Karl Marx and later socialist/communist leaders, free speech was always to be subordinated to the good of 'the people.' The Soviet Union had its own version of the Cultural Revolution 'struggle sessions' to root out 'counter-revolutionaries.' This dynamic can be seen in virtually all socialist regimes. The modern left has become heavily influenced by the socialist understanding of speech as a subordinated 'right.'"
2/3/2021, Indiana Daily Student, Aggressive student unions are powerful tools for activism abroad. We need one at IU, Brian Hancock and Nathan Ryder
"Today -- in an ever corporatized vision of higher education where tuition skyrockets along with enrollment -- student unions create the necessary tools to combat a university increasingly treating its students like raw materials, an analogy originally employed in 1964 by student activist Mario Savio, a leader of the Berkeley free speech movement."
1/27/2021, The Patriot Post, 'Journalists': The New Censors, Douglas Andrews
"Was it mere coincidence that this was where the one-time radicals of the '60s had become the tenured professors of the '80s? And might it be that these leftists now found free expression to be both inconvenient and unnecessary, since they already enjoyed academic freedom? In its place, our universities ushered in political correctness and promptly reversed the First Amendment gains made by the Free Speech Movement begun at Cal-Berkeley in 1965. It was a violent death." [Ed note: FSM began 1964; ended 1965]
1/25/2021, Potomac Local News, Ann Gurtler, founder of award-winning non-profit Trillium Center, dies, Press Release
"She went to UC Berkeley and got a degree in history; she was at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, which had an important effect on her life."
1/24/2021, Berkeley Daily Planet, The American Muddle: Notes from a Podcast, Gar Smith
"By way of introduction, I'm a long-time activist and journalist based in Berkeley, California. I'm the founding editor of Earth Island Journal and a co-founder of Environmentalists Against War, a global coalition of more than 100 peace organizations founded in 2003.
¶
In 1964, I was one of the 800 students arrested during the Free Speech Movement sit-in sit-in at the University of California. The next year, I stood in front of the first troop train to come through Berkeley, carrying soldiers to Washington's Vietnam War."
1/22/2021, Jewish Journal, The Reverse Gold Rush: Is the California Dream Fading Away?, Larry Greenfield
"And California's rich political and social history gave space to a wide variety of democratic experimentation and grassroots passions. The political left can point to the progressive era of reform early in the twentieth century; the agricultural worker's rights movement of Cesar Chavez; the 1960's free speech movement at U.C. Berkeley; and the modern push for marriage equality in San Francisco. The political right admires the legacy of national GOP political leaders, such as California's first U.S. Senator and abolitionist John C. Fremont, and Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, as well as being the base for the national tax revolt movement, which began with 1978's Proposition 13's People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation."
1/20/2021, The California African American Museum, The long fight leading to Kamala Harris, Susan D. Anderson
"One important aspect of the Bay Area's civil rights movement was 1964's Free Speech Movement (FSM). The year Harris was born in Berkeley, students from UC Berkeley and other campuses joined protests by CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), the NAACP, and the Ad Hoc Committee Against Discrimination to challenge segregation and racism in Northern California. Cal students set up tables along Sproul Plaza (a well-trafficked campus hub) and distributed civil rights literature asking for donations and new members. Then UC Berkeley Chancellor Clark Kerr "saw the spread of the Civil Rights movement to the U.C. campus…and tried to stop it." Kerr suspended eight students, including Mario Savio, and arrested student Jack Weinberg. When Berkeley students sat and surrounded the police car in which Weinberg was being held, the FSM was born. As Picture This, a project of the Oakland Museum of California notes: "the FSM not only symbolized the power of student activism, but the influence of the Civil Rights movement on California students." [2]"
1/18/2021, Gwinnett Daily Post, "I have a dream" and the rest of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, Isabel Sepulveda
"#74. Mario Savio's "Bodies Upon the Gears"¶
Delivered Dec. 2, 1964, in Berkeley, Calif.
¶
Mario Savio was a student leader during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, which worked to end the school's restriction on students' political speech. Known for his fiery speeches, Savio delivered his most famous one during a sit-in at Sprout Hall, advocating for civil disobedience: 'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! ... And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels...and you've got to make it stop.' This inspired hundreds to occupy an administrative building overnight, and they continue to inspire countercultural and anti-government movements around the world."
1/14/2021, Daily Californian, Henry di Suvero: A passion for justice and life, Michael Miller
"In 1958, he was one of the founders of SLATE, a campus political party that expressed the early northern student movement and was a precursor to the Free Speech Movement."
1/11/2021, Berkeleyside, Berkeley Rep launches 'Place/Settings,' 10 audio stories set in Berkeley, Daphne White
"While this 'nostalgia for a radical past is not based in reality and is certainly not the present, I really appreciate living in a part of the world that's at least going for that,' [Aya] de León said. 'Even if the Free Speech Movement hasn't been fully realized, Berkeley attracts people who hold that vision and are trying to fight for that vision.'"
1/7/2021, Spiked, Who will defend free speech?, Jim Butcher
"Yet many who took part in the rights-based and liberation movements of the 1960s actually called for greater freedom of speech. Indeed, such was the demand for more freedom of speech during this period that in the mid-1960s students at the University of California, Berkeley, staged a year-long protest known as the Free Speech Movement."
1/6/2021, The Times and Democrat, 2020 casualty: free speech, Bill Connor
"Unfortunately, the influences of critical racial theory and intersectionality pervade among the media and big tech elites. In this, traditional America is considered racist and fundamentally flawed. If you do not hold to this world view, you are considered racist and part of what must be transformed. Views outside this elite world view are considered worthy of being suppressed.
¶
This ethos is contrary to the liberal view of free speech from the civil rights era. The Berkeley free speech movement was about defending all speech, including that which might offend. The ACLU previously defended the rights of Klan members to organize and speak, even while in vehement disagreement."
12/21/2020, Jacobin Magazine, Radicals and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Joel Geier
"The ISC meeting, originally called for 7:30 PM, was rescheduled to 6 PM, so that people could leave for the first organizing meeting of the United Front, the initial name of the Free Speech Movement. Attending the ISC foundation were Mario Savio and Jack Weinberg, who within days emerged as the two central leaders of the FSM. Jack joined the ISC that evening, although he dropped out during the FSM and rejoined a year later. Mario, an inactive YSPL member, did not join, but remained a close collaborator throughout the decade. He agreed with our third-camp politics, civil rights militancy, and emphasis on radical democracy from below, but not with our opposition to all Democratic Party candidates. He was torn between our view and the Communist Party's popular front strategy on elections, which entailed support for some Democrats.
¶
A critical factor in the Free Speech Movement's success was that it remained a broad-based coalition, committed to not excluding any political tendency - a legacy of the anti-HUAC campaign."
12/14/2020, Whatcom Cremation and Funeral, John C. Leggett, Professor of Sociology, Dies at 90, obituary
"John began his academic teaching career at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work as a Lecturer and Research Associate. While there, he helped to found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and supported the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He then joined the faculty of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962.
¶
In his time at Cal from 1962-66, John became an active faculty leader of the Free Speech Movement (FSM), symbolized by his holding the “Free Speech” banner, an iconic image of the Civil Rights Movement re-published in California Magazine, 2014. He was also an active anti-Vietnam War organizer, and member of the Farm Labor Support Committee at UC Berkeley supporting Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in organizing Mexican farm workers. He interviewed Malcolm X in 1963 after the Birmingham Church Bombing, an interview that has inspired generations of students and civil rights activists."
12/3/2020, The Silhouette, "Never Again" all over again, Nina Sartor
"University students have a long and venerable tradition as progressive champions of human rights. From the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley campus to climate change advocacy, university students have a unique cohesion and shared experience that makes organization and protest against injustices a successful weapon of change."
12/3/2020, KSAT, Today in History, Dec. 3, Associated Press
"In 1964, police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in."
12/1/2020, The Penn, December's start brings events that will be remembered for years, Heather Bair
"Dec. 3, 1964
¶
800 students arrested at Berkeley due to protest
¶
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) took place during the 1964-65 academic year at the University of California, Berkeley. Thousands of students participated, and the FSM was the first mass act of civil disobedience on a college campus.
¶
In 1958, students organized a campus political party known as SLATE to promote the right of student groups to support off-campus issues.
¶
In the fall of 1964, student activists set up information tables on campus and were asking for donations for causes connected with the Civil Rights Movement. According to the school rules at the time, fundraising for political parties was only allowed by the Democrat and Republican school clubs."
11/30/2020, The Daily Campus, This Week In History: Nov. 30 - Dec. 4, Gino Giansanti
"Since the administration did little to accommodate the requests of the student-led organization, the FSM launched a campaign to bring university operations to a screeching halt. 6000 students flooded the campus, blocking all access to the main administrative building. Students then staged a sit-in, remaining in the administrative building past closing and through the night, planning to stay until the university met their demands. [Ed note: first came the sit-in and then the supporting picket lines, which were porous.]
¶
At the command of Chancellor Edward Strong, campus police arrested and forcibly removed 776 students over the course of 12 hours on Dec. 3. [Ed note: Not just campus police; and not initiated by Strong. See Berkeley Police Report here: http://www.fsm-a.org/FSM%20Documents/FSM%20Dec%20Documents/Webpages/gallery-01.html]
¶
The administration's handling of the situation only enraged the movement and fueled the fire for future student dissent. As the 60s continued, UC Berkeley would become a hotbed for the political protest of American young people."
11/20/2020, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Right-Wing Medievalist Who Refused the Loyalty Oath, Simon During
"[Jack] Spicer's academic career was impeded when he joined [Ernst] Kantorowicz in refusing to sign the loyalty oath. But [Robert] Duncan transferred the passions of Kantorowicz's ultraconservative recalcitrance to a later political moment of a very different kind, when he joined Berkeley's free-speech movement in 1964. The movement was the campus's first mass act of civil disobedience, and it introduced white America to that form of movement politics which we now associate with 1968. It also established Berkeley's reputation as a hotbed of radicalism. It is worth remembering that the radical left's insistence on autonomy, freedom, and something like personal dignity carries traces, via Kantorowicz, of an ultra-conservative political theology."
11/20/2020, Berkeleyside, Berkeley has started removing the Big People statues on the I-80 pedestrian bridge, Frances Dinkelspiel
"The 28-foot-by-12-foot-by 12-foot sculpture on the bridge's east side depicts what many say Berkeley is all about, free speech, protest and Berkeley cultural contributions. It includes depictions of Mario Savio as he helped launch the Free Speech Movement, the People's Park protests, a musician from the Berkeley Symphony, a man using a wheel chair and the tree-sitters outside UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium."
11/19/2020, Sonoma West Times & News, Faces of West County: Bill Spence, Steve Einstein
"About 1961, right after my service and the Kennedy election, I went to UC Berkeley, and there was an enlightenment starting up there. In '63, we suddenly started smoking that whacky weed, Mary Jane, and we began to start doubting the government, and what was really true and what wasn't. I became involved in the civil rights movement and eventually got into the Free Speech Movement."
11/9/2020, San Francisco Chronicle, A tour of Kamala Harris' East Bay, from her place of birth to her Berkeley school, Amy Graff
"'In 1964, the year of her birth, the Free Speech Movement, the first great student protest of that era, exploded in Berkeley and helped give birth to the student New Left,' [Charles] Wollenberg, author of 'Berkeley: A City in History,' wrote in an email. 'When she was 1 year old, Vietnam Day on the Cal campus began a decade to anti-war activism, and when she was 2, the Black Panther Party started in South Berkeley and North Oakland. By then, Telegraph Avenue had become a major locale of the decade's counter culture.'"
10/28/2020, Inside Higher Ed, Joe Biden as Joe College, John R. Thelin
"The most publicized political protest of 1963-64 was the Free Speech Movement (known as the FSA) [Ed note: Really?] at the University of California, Berkeley. When campus administrators banned student groups from setting up tables to hand out political brochures on campus, it was the one issue that united all students -- left, right and center. Young Republicans and Students for a Democratic Society put aside political differences. They channeled their collective anger into organized resistance against deans and campus staff. All student groups felt their rights to a campus forum had been violated."
10/28/2020, Berkeleyside, Berkeley antiwar organizers separate fact from fiction in 'The Trial of the Chicago 7', Frances Dinkelspiel
"Jerry Rubin came to study sociology at UC Berkeley in 1963 and closely observed the Free Speech Movement, according to Berkeley at War: The 1960s by W.J. Rorabaugh."
10/24/2020, San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area couple capture the drama in 65 years of American protests, Sam Whiting
"But there are also non-obvious and rarely seen images like Jack Weinberg reaching out the window of the police cruiser in which he is about to spend 32 hours to launch the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley; " [Ed Note: click link to see photo. The authors are Ken Light and Melanie Light]
10/20/2020, Antiques and The Arts Weekly, Q&A: Christen Carter & Ted Hake, Madelia Hickman Ring
"[Ted Hake]: The early 1960s growing Civil Rights Movement, which had long used the button as a symbol of membership and a weapon of nonviolence, by the spring of 1964 extended its use on May 2 to mark the first major student protest against the Vietnam War and, that fall, expanded to symbolize support for the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley at the University of California. By 1965, buttons were everywhere. "
10/19/2020, Inside Higher Ed, Liberal, Conservative or Somewhere in the Middle?, Terry W. Hartle and Phil Muehlenbeck
"Ronald Reagan launched his political career by using colleges as a political foil, particularly the Free Speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley. While running for his first term as governor of California, he criticized both the students and professors at Berkeley and vowed to crack down on protests."
10/15/2020, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, CALLERI: The 1960s return in three movies that offer vital points in history, Michael Calleri
"First came the Free Speech Movement. This epic student protest took place during the 1964 - 65 academic year on the University of California at Berkeley campus under the informal leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. His most famous words, spoken at Sproul Hall on December 2, 1964, were: 'Put your bodies upon the gears.' [Ed Note: Savio was an undergrad. The SF student-led anti-HUAC Black Friday action of May 13, 1960 was a key precursor of the FSM. and of sixties youth activism.]
10/15/2020, InMenlo, UNAFF goes virtual - and honors Joan Baez with its Visionary Award, Contributed Content
"She has been among the first to recognize wrongs, and speak out - and sing out - to inspire change. The struggles she stood behind include the 1960s Civil Rights struggle, the Free Speech movement at UC Berkeley, opposition to the Vietnam war, support for migrant farm workers striking for fair wages, opposition to capital punishment, ending the violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, support for gay rights, the nuclear freeze movement, opposition to the Iraq war, many environmental causes, and others. She is cited for having an impact on the transition to a peaceful Chile, Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, and the new millennium's protest movement against economic inequality."
10/15/2020, Fast Company, How one tiny accessory popularized some of the most iconic slogans of the 20th century, Lilly Smith
"By the 1960s, buttons were everywhere. They commemorated major scientific events, such as the first American to orbit the Earth; pop culture, like Tommy Smalls, a DJ known as Dr. Jive who ushered in early rock and roll; and the counterculture. Hake's favorite is a button made by the 1964 Free Speech Movement after its first event in Berkeley, California, which he says 'kicked off a decade of revolution.'"
10/14/2020, Dissent Magazine, Can Biden Be Pushed Left?, Bob Master
"And once Johnson was re-elected, the pace of reform accelerated. The ongoing Black Freedom struggle, coupled with an outbreak of student protests like the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California, created a movement moment."
10/8/2020, Red Flag, Turning rebellion into revolution: Socialism 2020 conference in Perth, Clare Francis
"Activists from the last major upsurge in global struggle, the 1960s and 1970s, addressed the conference. Gumbainggir radical Gary Foley spoke about the electrifying Black Power movement in Australia, which he was central to. US socialist Joel Geier-who was part of the Freedom rides and Berkeley Free Speech movement-spoke about the wave of struggled during the 'long sixties' (1960-75). He gave an insider's account of how the process of mass struggle radicalised a generation and far-left organisations mushroomed in size."
10/8/2020, Cannon Beach Gazette, Missionaries, Yippies and climate change, Joseph Bernt
"Alpert and Judy Gumbo, soon to marry, first met in Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, split when Judy became a dedicated feminist and eventually reunited before the Mayday Protest." [Ed note: per Judy Albert, "He was Albert not Alpert (Baba Ram Das) And that we met at a meeting for the Oakland 7 in either late 1967 or very early 1968 - not the FSM. And that we reunited in 1973 & Mayday was in 1971."]
10/2/2020, Berkeleyside, Remembering Sheila Daar, profoundly accomplished and a positive spirit in the world, Roberta C. Brooks
"She attended UC Berkeley where, as well as completing her studies, she was arrested during the Free Speech Movement and became an activist against the Vietnam War."
10/1/2020, Splice Today, 1964-2020: From Free Speech to Policing Speech on College Campuses, Chris Beck
"Berkeley students fought hard, but peacefully, that entire academic year to win the right to express themselves freely. In the years that followed, American college students owed a debt to those rebels, but the zeal for free speech on our campuses hasn't endured. The Berkeley students agitated for the right to express political opinions, but some universities today define bias incidents as including expressions of bias against particular political affiliations. This is dangerous territory. These schools are encouraging their own students to squeal on others for making political statements that aren't considered polite. As civil discourse has given way to outrage, free speech is viewed as freedom to oppress."
10/1/2020, Orange County Breeze, Today, HistoryNet
"1964 The first Free Speech Movement protest erupts spontaneously on the University of California, Berkeley campus; students demanded an end to the ban of on-campus political activities." [Ed note: perhaps not so spontaneously.]
10/1/2020, KALW, Almanac, Kevin Vance
"On this day in history…1964 - The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley."
9/28/2020, The California Aggie, From the FSM to COLA: A history of labor organization at the UCs, Sophie Dewees
"Graduate students also began organizing at Berkeley. Amid the wide-scale protests against the oppression of free speech during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) in the 1964-1965 school year, graduate students formed the first graduate employee union."
9/21/2020, ESPN, NBA playoffs: The Celtics' Jaylen Brown is a player for this moment, Baxter Holmes
"But he wasn't just going to a world-class institution of higher learning. He was going to Berkeley, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a crowd of thousands in 1967; where the student-led Free Speech Movement of the era was born; where the Black Panthers organized; where rallies, seminars and peaceful protests helped establish a global reputation as a heartbeat of free speech and activism against social injustice. When Dr. Ameer Hasan Loggins, who taught a class on Black representation in the media, met Brown in a recreation center gym on campus, he recalled Brown saying, 'I came out here on my own dime. And I came out here because I want the intellectual rigor, but also want to be involved in the culture of the Bay Area.'"
9/18/2020, Scroll.in, South Asian history is hidden around Berkeley. Two Indian Americans are bringing it into the light, Vandana Menon
"'We don't hear about this radical legacy enough,' said [Barnali] Ghosh. 'People see the Free Speech Movement in 1964-'65 as the start of Berkeley's legacy of activism, but the first ever South Asian protest that we know of happened in the city in 1908.' In 1908, 16 of the 17 South Asians at UC Berkeley protested an event in which a Christian missionary was critical of Hinduism and defended British colonialism."
9/8/2020, The Brooklyn Rail, What's the Use of a University?, Samuel Feldblum and John Schmidt
"Protestors appear in Kerr's thinking, then, as a nuisance to be managed and controlled as the knowledge industry rolls along: an easy prospect, he assures his reader, as 'today men know more about how to control protest, as well as how to suppress it in its more organized forms.' It seems he did not know well enough. As soon as Kerr published these thoughts, of course, they were given the lie. Ronald Reagan, who came to political prominence in part through his revanchist opposition to the Free Speech Movement and the way Kerr was managing it, promised California voters he would be the man to 'clean up the mess at Berkeley.' Elected governor in 1967, he moved swiftly to oust Kerr and violently suppress the student movement."
9/5/2020, The Telegraph, Extinction Rebellion's assault on the free press is an attack on democracy, Janet Daley
"Earlier generations of protesters who fought against racism in the United States or what they believed to be evil wars were often militant and they sometimes broke existing laws when they believed them to be unjust. But they did not, as a rule, try to shut down debate and free speech. (Indeed, the original Berkeley student revolution was called the Free Speech Movement.) Argument was what it was all about. Without argument, democracy is dead and what takes its place is something much, much worse."
9/4/2020, The Wall Street Journal, Land of Free (and Fettered) Speech, Adam Kirsch
"The problem of free speech takes different forms in different settings. Speech controversies on college campuses affect relatively few Americans, but they receive a great deal of attention, since colleges have traditionally been centers of open debate. Students once jealously guarded their speech rights. The Free Speech Movement, the first great student protest of the 1960s, erupted at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, when a former student was arrested by a campus police officer for leafleting on behalf of the civil rights organization CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. At the height of the protest, up to 4,000 students demonstrated in favor of free speech on campus, and 800 went to jail."
9/3/2020, Jacobin, The Berkeley Free Speech Movement, 56 Years Later, Samuel Farber
"He [Hal Draper] follows that dynamic in detail, from the moment the movement starts, when power rested with the campus authorities backed by enormous economic and political interests, to its end, when power had shifted to the side of the students, who obtained the support of the great majority of professors when faced with an intransigent and politically tone-deaf campus and university administration."
9/3/2020, Adventist Review, A Journey and a March, Bill Knott
"Milton [Hare] threw himself into a sequence of marches and demonstrations organized by the Free Speech movement, and soon was lining up pro bono lawyers and raising thousands of dollars in bail money for the hundreds of students who were arrested in the university's crackdown on the protests. As his grades dropped and the Free Speech crisis wound down through the winter of 1964-1965, Milton found himself back in the orbit of his PUC suitemate, Paul Cobb."
8/28/2020, Berkeley News, Berkeley Talks transcript: Why the 1960s song 'Little Boxes' still strikes a chord today, Nicholas Mathew
[Nancy Schimmel,, daughter of Malvina Reynolds] "It seems like every so often a generation of students gets politicized by the police. And that certainly happened with the free speech movement and it happened in 1961. There were students at the HUAC - the House Un-American Activities Committee - hearings in San Francisco in the city hall. They got washed down the stairs with fire hoses and they got politicized. My mother wrote a song about that. It was to the tune of 'Billy Boy.'"
08/25/2020, Counterview, Left-liberals' 'churlish' call to boycott Delhi riots book has one parallel: Dina Nath Batra, Aviral Anand
"Interestingly, in 1964 Berkeley was home to the Free Speech Movement, with left-leaning students demanding the right to distribute anti-war literature." [Ed note: a broad-based coalition of students was demonstrating to to gain the right to distribution pro-Civil-Rights-Movement literature. The Anti-War Movement came a bit later.]
8/25/2020, 7x7, The East Bay's Best Independent Bookstores, Sarah Medina and Mikaela Luke
"Moe Moskowitz became a Berkeley icon when he opened a bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in 1959, right in the midst of the Free Speech Movement and the political chaos that sparked throughout Berkeley." [Ed note: the Free Speech Movement began in September, 1964. It was disbanded in April, 1965.]
8/22/2020, The Arts Fuse, Film Review: More Movies to Watch While Sheltering in Place - Campus Best, Post 1980, Gerald Peary
"Berkeley in the Sixties (1990) — Mark Kitchell’s excellent documentary about campus politics on the University of California campus, from the Free Speech Movement through anti-war protests and the Black Panthers, with Joan Baez and Huey Newton on the left, and then California governor Reagan leading the unapologetic right."
8/21/2020, Wyoming Public Media, Documentary Chronicles Students' Fight For Black Rights During 'Freedom Summer', Dave Davies in for Terry Gross
"[Charles] COBB: One important gain was the challenge of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party changed the national Democratic Party. It's out of this challenge that you get what are now known as the McGovern rules, which expanded the participation of women and minorities in the Democratic Party. And I think attitudes were changed in Mississippi. People saw that it was possible, in a wider sense, to struggle against white supremacy, and it changed the attitude of those students who participated in that. Mario Savio, who would shortly lead the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in California, was a volunteer in Mississippi. So was Barney Frank. I think it changed the attitude of these young people who came South. And it's interesting to note in passing that a number of them have stayed in touch with these communities that they worked in in 1964."
8/12/2020, Fox News, Rep. Eric Swalwell: Kamala Harris will be a great VP and help Biden undo harm Trump has caused, Eric Swalwell
"Within Harris is the girl who saw her mother active in the Free Speech Movement, who rode the desegregation bus across Berkeley, who followed her mother's example to study hard and excel." [Ed note: Harris was born 10/20/1964; the FSM ended 4/28/1965. Perhaps Harris was more inspired by than witness to the FSM.]
8/1/2020, Berkeley Daily Planet, Smithereens: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"For decades, in and out of politics, John Lewis was an advocate for 'Good Trouble.' So it's no surprise that he reached out to the students who were arrested and beaten for occupying Sproul Hall during what became known as Berkeley's Free Speech Movement.
¶
Earlier today, while thumbing through a thumbdrive filled with copies of old documents, I came across a letter of solidarity that Carl Lewis, then chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), had written to the young protesters in Berkeley. The letter, written from SNCC's New York office on December 3, 1964, reads:
¶
'We wish to express our support for our brothers and sisters at the University of California in their fight for full free speech on the university campus.
¶
'University administration attempts to curtail the activity of the Friends of SNCC are an attack on the civil rights movement in the deep South.
¶
'We are shocked at the brutality used by police against the students who sat in at the University's administration building. Police brutality in the South is nothing new to us-but what is happening in the so-called liberal community of Berkeley?
¶
'Students have the right to participate in political activity on and off the campus. We know well the attempts by administrators on the campuses of Southern Negro colleges to break the civil rights movement by not allowing students to meet and advocate ideas on the campus. Now university administrators in the North are borrowing these same tactics. Such denial of students' rights-North or South-is an affront to the ideals of American democracy.'" ¶ [Ed note: see it here: https://www.btstack.com/Black_Support_of_FSM.html]
7/28/2020, Sonoma News, Sonoma's Mike Smith, still fighting the non-violent fight, Christian Kallen
"Smith's life of activism goes back to his youth in Marin County, and his admission to UC Berkeley. His first arrest was there, as he became involved in the Free Speech Movement of 1964 - when he was arrested for distributing political material from what he was told was an 'illegal table.'"
7/28/2020, San Francisco Chronicle, On the ADA's 30th anniversary: The heroes among us, Brad Bailey
"What many people may not know, however, is that Hale [Zukas] is one of the country's premiere disability pioneers and that Berkeley is the birthplace of the modern disability rights movement. He was a math major at UC Berkeley, and is fluent in Russian. At the height of the Free Speech movement, Hale was taking classes while Joan Baez was playing in Sproul Plaza."
7/28/2020, Frieze, Lynn Hershman Leeson's Game of Doubles, Jennifer Kabat
"This quest for human connection and healing is key to Hershman Leeson's work. Although Breitmore and Lorna were reclusive, searching for fulfilment within their own sealed-off worlds, their creator has a fundamentally optimistic view of technology. When we met, she spoke about the importance of San Francisco to her work, and her participation in the 1960s Berkeley free-speech movement that inspired the technological utopianism of early computer programmers."
7/28/2020, Cannon Beach Gazette, Column: Mario Savio branded radical for demanding constitutional speech rights, Joseph Bernt
"The consequences of the Free Speech Movement's victory went far beyond Berkeley. Colleges and universities revised student handbooks to acknowledge the First Amendment. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas suggested in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that teachers and students 'do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression at the schoolhouse gate.'"
7/27/2020, The New York Review of Books, A Brief History of Dangerous Others, Richard Kreitner and Rick Perlstein
"Four months before Selma, an organizer of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley had been asked by a reporter whether the student activists had received behind-the-scenes direction from Communists. He responded, 'We have a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over thirty'--a now-famous line whose forgotten contextual significance was that it was quite impossible to imagine activists under thirty (including SNCC members) having anything to do with an institution so old-fashioned and sclerotic as the CPUSA. And yet a marquee voice of the American establishment could hardly explain 'SNCC's far out radicalism' in any other way-even as, meanwhile, Americans were being beaten and murdered merely for requesting the right to vote."
7/27/2020, Daily Emerald, Opinion: The forgotten power of Berkeley, Parsa Aghel
"Institutions, by their very nature, seek stability through the status quo. Every so often, though, the status quo becomes so egregious that our institutions' consciences awaken, rising to check a government that teeters toward tyranny. In 1964, peaking anti-communist paranoia compelled universities like the University of California, Berkeley, to ban student political activism groups, inciting rageful dissent among students and the birth of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The university's unique response has come to define the institution, even half a century later.
¶
Berkeley faculty overwhelmingly supported the movement. The administration, too, hired a chancellor solicitous to student activism, sanctioning the demands of FSM. The administration sided with justice.
¶
This became the essence of Berkeley: pedagogical success by promoting student activism. Berkeley became renowned for being America's radical institution, creating an environment where learning transcended the classroom walls. Its professors, like Sheldon Wolin, are known for rebirthing modern political theory. Wolin's theory of grassroots democracy, in particular, drew from the FSM movement. Empowering students became a newfound responsibility of the university, allowing the institution to take a stand against the government while engaging both its students and faculty."
7/24/2020, Daily Californian, Let's rename Barrows Hall for Margy Wilkinson, Nancy Lemon
"I suggest that the new name should honor Margy Wilkinson (1943-2020), who received her bachelor of arts from UC Berkeley in 1966. Wilkinson was a devoted campus community member, working at UC Berkeley for 40 years, leading a strike for pay equality for service workers and acting as a mother to the Cal Band. Moreover, she was an industrious activist for workers' rights, organizing a local chapter of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, helping to create the Coalition of University Employees--the union for clerical workers, with 19,000 members statewide--and acting as its chief negotiator.
¶
A driving force in the labor movement in the UC system for more than 40 years, Wilkinson demonstrated in the Free Speech Movement and in favor of the Black Panthers and Angela Davis, and was part of many other progressive causes. Her dinner table was a community meeting place for many organizers."
7/21/2020, Fox&Hounds, How California helped inspire "Union", By Jordan Blashek and Christopher Haugh
"Somehow, the Golden State fashioned our two different--and at times opposing--worldviews. Chris, a Berkeley kid, was inspired by the afterglow of the Free Speech Movement, the Black Panthers down the way in Oakland, and Rolling Stone back when they still published out of San Francisco. It was their foil, Ronald Reagan, who formed Jordan's earliest political consciousness a few hundred miles south in the hills of Encino."
7/16/2020, Berkeley News, Femi Ogundele: A diverse student body fosters excellence, Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
"But it's also the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, and activism still takes place, in many forms, on our campus. It's definitely an institution built for students, by students."
7/14/2020, Spiked, David Starkey and the threat to academic freedom, Benjamin Schwarz
"Such institutions cannot, therefore, apply any political or moral litmus test to the ideas and speech of their constituent scholars. Thus, in a controversy that heralded the Free Speech Movement, Ernst Kantorowicz, the German emigre medievalist and deeply conservative anti-Communist (and anti-Nazi), famously argued in 1949 that, by requiring a loyalty oath to weed out Communists and Communist sympathisers on its faculty, his adopted institution, the University of California at Berkeley, would destroy itself as an academic community. For the academy to serve its proper function, Kantorowicz recognised, the only criteria for membership must be professional competence and scholarly ability--not the forswearing of any creed, however apparently reprehensible."
7/13/2020, San Francisco Chronicle, Margy Wilkinson, Berkeley protester for 60 years, dies at home at 76, Sam Whiting
"It was May 1960 and Wilkinson, then known as Margy Lima, was an Oakland Tech high schooler who'd crossed the bay to protest McCarthyism. Three years later, she drove cross country to witness Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall in Washington, and a year after that, she was inside Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, proudly being arrested while helping launch the Free Speech Movement."
July 2020, Jacobin, The Threat to Civil Liberties Goes Way Beyond "Cancel Culture", Leigh Phillips
"Frederick Douglass recognized that there could be no struggle for abolition without a defense of freedom of speech, and that abridgment of that freedom is a double wrong, for 'it violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker'; Eugene Debs was tried and convicted for sedition, and his trial and those of his comrades would set in play the crystallization of American free speech legal protections that are the envy of the world entire; and the New Left and counterculture of the Sixties that in many ways gave birth to the current left began with the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 under the leadership of giants like Mario Savio."
7/9/2020, Berkeleyside, Remembering Stuart Fredrick Pawsey, Guest contributor
"Outside of work, Stuart was engaged in the larger community. His political activity extended from the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s to supporting immigrants in 2019. As an active volunteer, he contributed to La Pena Community Chorus, International House Board of Directors and House Committee, St. John's Presbyterian Church Grounds and Facilities Committee and Berkeley High's math classes for English language learners. He and Glenda often hosted international students for extended stays in their home."
7/8/2020, The Sacramento Bee, From McClatchy High School to University of California president: A Q&A with Michael V. Drake, Sawsan Morrar
"I've always been an active protector of free speech. I think it's an important part of who we are, and there's a great line that (past UC president) Clark Kerr said that it's not our job to make speech safe for students; it's our job to help make students safe for speech. We do what we can to help develop the whole person so that our students can interact appropriately with information that they receive, and are adult enough and intelligent enough to be able to process. I've always actively championed the content neutral policy toward speech and speakers. I would say that that requires that speech and speakers be heard, so content neutral means content neutral. One doesn't have to like or approve of what someone is saying. We are a place where people can bring ideas and where our students can participate and make up their own minds. So I'm an active supporter of the First Amendment. I think it has served this country well, and we need to continue to support it."
7/5/2020, LA Progressive, Will Capitalist Consumer Culture Absorb Another Generation of Protest?, Walter G. Moss
"In his Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), conservative columnist David Brooks wrote: 'We're by now all familiar with modern-day executives who have moved from S.D.S. [a radical student organization that flourished in the 1960s] to C.E.O. . . . Indeed, sometimes you get the impression the Free Speech Movement [begun in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley] produced more corporate executives than Harvard Business School.'"
7/3/2020, San Francisco Chronicle, Veterans of social justice protests reflect on a lifetime of taking it to the streets, Jan Newberry
"Peter Haberfeld, 78, retired attorney, Oakland. 'I was arrested for the first time at Sproul Hall at Berkeley during the Free Speech protests in 1964 and marched against the Vietnam War in '65 and '66. Later I was a poll watcher for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Holmes County, Miss., where I was beaten, arrested and charged with assault on a 'peace officer.'
¶
This feels like a watershed moment. It's exhilarating that there are so many determined people angry at the system. People are more informed now than they were in the 1960s. We owe a lot to Black scholarship and journalism. I'm confident that there will be a backlash. There will always be high points and low points. It's important not to get discouraged.'"
7/2/2020, Berkeleyside, It's summertime. Dig into these books with a Berkeley connection, Michael Berry
"In her award-winning novel, Shrug, Lisa Braver Moss recaptures the revolutionary mood in Berkeley during the Sixties, when Beatlemania and the Free Speech Movement left the town rocking. Told from the perspective of Martha Goldenthal, a teen dealing with domestic abuse and an embarrassing muscular tic, the book explores the connections between art and independence."
06/29/2020, Berkeleyside, Remembering Margy Wilkinson, a life-long organizer for social, economic and racial justice, Guest contributor
"Before she got involved with city issues, Wilkinson was at UC Berkeley, where she was involved with the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and then went on to organize the first contract for classified workers at the university." Ed Note: Margy was arrested in the FSM.
6/18/2020, Daily Freeman, Letter: Many people of Italian descent more deserving of statues than Columbus, Michael Erwin
"There are so many people of Italian descent who are actually worthy of celebrating, because they played an active role in the struggle for labor rights, LBGTQ rights, human rights and civil rights. A few examples: Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (anarchists and social/economic justice activists framed and executed for murder), Maria Barbieri and Angela Bambace (who helped organize garment workers in the sweatshops of New York City), Carlo Tresca (who was involved in the Industrial Workers of the World and the Italian railroad workers' federation and published two progressive newspapers), Mario Savio (one of the founders of the free speech movement at Berkeley), Vito Russo (a gay rights activist and film historian, and founding member of ACT UP and GLAAD), and Sylvia Baraldini (an anti-imperialist who did solidarity work with both the black liberation and Puerto Rican independence movements)."
JULY/AUGUST 2020, Commentary Magazine, How I Ran Afoul of Campus Cancel Culture, Steven F. Hayward
"The wall in the middle of the wood-paneled main hall of the Goldman School on Hearst Street features a photo of Aaron Wildavsky, the founding dean of Berkeley's public-policy graduate program in the late 1960s. Wildavsky had been the chair of the political-science department during the free-speech movement of the 1960s and thus had a front-row seat for the evolution of radical student politics over the last third of the 20th century."
6/12/2020, The Irish Post, Seattle protesters' takeover of city blocks echoes 'Free Derry' of the Troubles, Rachael O'Connor
"The Troubles was sparked in part by a civil rights campaign which took inspiration from the 1960's US movement led by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.
¶
The US movement included the 1964 occupation of Sproul Hall in Berkeley, California, which saw 1,500 activists from the Free Speech Movement and other student political groups take over the hall in protest before being removed by police, with 773 students being arrested for their involvement."
6/12/2020, Fox News, Laura Ingraham bashes 'Marxist' demonstrators, says 'they want you to think that all hope is lost', Victor Garcia
"'There's nothing about this bunch that's liberal because the old liberals started the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 and it was devoted to reversing the prohibition on political activities on campus,' she explained. 'Now, don't get me wrong, they were radicals, but at least they actually believed in free expression. I think they generally liked the country.'"
5/24/2020, Facing South, Remembering Ray Eurquhart, a lifelong activist radicalized in the military, Kerry Taylor
"While he had not been involved in the civil rights movement or any other 1960s-era protest movements, Eurquhart developed sharp political views during his time in the military. He began discussing politics with airmen who provided firsthand accounts of campus protests like the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California."
5/14/2020, Berkeley Daily Planet, The Golden Age of May 1970, Phil Allen
"It seems like only yesterday. In rainy autumn of '64, I was a high-school sophomore who'd read the accounts of the burgeoning Free Speech Movement-before the name was coined-in the Chronicle I threw each dawn. Gratis the UC administration."
5/9/2020, The Wake Weekly, A progressive case for campus free speech, Corey Friedman
"Liberal students who opposed the Vietnam War spearheaded the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, bucking a ban on campus political activism to hold protest rallies and sit-ins in the mid-1960s. Mario Savio, a grad student regarded as one of the movement's key leaders, was an avowed socialist."
5/7/2020, Nichi Bei Weekly, Q-and-A with longtime activist and mentor Alan Nishio, Glen Kitayama
"AN [Alan Nishio]: The Free Speech Movement had a tremendous impact on my life because it was the first time that I became involved politically. When the student strike was called and picket lines were formed, I found that I could not be neutral. I either had to cross the picket line or join it. I learned more about the issues involved and then joined the strike. This experience was one that forever moved me as I changed my major from accounting to political science and never looked back!"
5/6/2020, New Frame, New Books | Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties, Mike Davis and Jon Wiener
"Then Republicans, led by Ronald Reagan (then a candidate for governor), started attacking welfare recipients, calling them 'welfare queens', as the centrepiece of their campaign (along with attacks on Berkeley's Free Speech Movement). Reagan won the election that November."
4/29/2020, Berkeley Daily Planet, New: People's Park: Chancellor's Mistakes Redux, Christopher Adams
"Whether that legend is true or not, by the 1950s the campus was eyeing much of the area south of the campus for expansion. Its first move was to buy the commercial blocks on Telegraph Avenue just south of Sather Gate (actually the 'gate' is a bridge over the creek).
¶
That move precipitated the University's first big fight over land use in l964. The students had used the sidewalks leading up to Sather Gate to set up tables for every sort of political and social cause. Once the land became part of the campus, the chancellor, Edward Strong, decreed that the tables would have to go. The students rebelled, and the Free Speech Movement was born."
4/15/2020, The Guardian, Erased from utopia: the hidden history of LA's black and brown resistance, Mike Davis and Jon Wiener
"For the past half century, a number of stereotypes have framed our recollections of this age of revolt, but the Los Angeles experience confounds most cliches. In the standard narrative, for instance, college students, organized as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Free Speech Movement (FSM) in Berkeley, were the principal social actors, and the great engine rooms of protest were found at huge public university campuses in places like Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, and Kent. (The exceptions, according to this narrative, were some historical Black colleges and Ivy League Columbia.)"
4/9/2020, Illinois Times, U of I protests of the 1960s, Cinda Ackerman Klickna
"[Michael V.] Metz explores the Free Speech Era, 1965-1967, in Part II. The impact of a 1964 large student protest against the prohibition of political activity at the University of California, Berkeley, spilled over onto other campuses."
4/2/2020, The Daily Californian, 'They carried a torch for a period of time': Female business owners in Berkeley share their stories, Thao Nguyen and Clara Rodas
"Impressionable and inspired, Alice Waters attended UC Berkeley in the 1960s before eventually establishing the renowned Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. Waters quickly became a part of the Free Speech Movement, impressed by Mario Savio's leadership.
¶
"I felt always empowered, I felt like I could do what I wanted to do and I never thought I wasn't able to do that because I was a woman," Waters said."
3/27/2020, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflection on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"FSM Activists Still Active
¶
One of the veterans of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement (now a teacher and a boardmember of the Los Angeles Unified School District) has long been a progressive voice in Southern California politics. She recently sent a message to colleagues in the Bay Area who have been working hard to secure the transfer of the Free Speech Movement Archives to UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library. Her message underscored the alarming impact of the coronavirus infection that is rampaging across the state.
¶
"Hope all of you are well, as are we in Echo Park. I must apologize for being unavailable, but since last Wednesday-in five workdays-LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District] has given out more than a million meals to our students, their families, and the homeless. And we are spending about $100 million to get 100% of our students connected to the Internet and with an I-pad or Chromebook to use while schools are closed. I just cannot focus on anything but all of this right now."
¶
Once an activist, always an activist."
3/25/2020, SF Reporter, Spring Poetry Search, Julie Ann Grimm
"[Terence Gilmore ] Cady is a recovering semi-retired trial lawyer, nationally certified child welfare law specialist. Graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, class of 1965. Active in the Free Speech Movement at Cal-Berkeley, 1964-65. He has lived and worked in Santa Fe since 1993 and written two novels, numerous short stories and poems which feature the darker sides of socially marginalized people, including children who are victimized by predatory and just plain mean adults and, in some cases, by lawyers and judges."
3/12/2020, Voices of Monterey Bay, Suffrage and suffering, Kathryn McKenzie
"Aptheker's own background has been steeped in activism and feminism. Born in 1944, she grew up as a 'Red Diaper Baby,' the child of a union organizer and a Marxist historian. She was a leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964, and in the 1970s, worked to defend Angela Davis, a longtime friend and fellow Communist Party member, in her high-profile trial."
3/11/2020, The Washington Post, Higher education's mandatory political participation, George F. Will
"The Free Speech Movement, an early tremor of the earthquake that shook campuses in the 1960s, began on Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley, in 1964. Today eight of the 10 universities in the UC system are administering faculty hiring practices that involve coerced speech, enforced political conformity and mandatory political participation.
¶
Any academic seeking a position is required to write a 'diversity, equity and inclusion' (DEI) statement affirming support--sometimes even 'enthusiastic' support--for, and demonstrating activism in support of, a systemwide orthodoxy. In the required statement ('Demonstrating Interest in and Ability to Advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion'), an applicant should show that he or she has been active, and must promise to be active, in advancing the approved agenda. This process explicitly subordinates assessments of academic excellence." [Ed note: Will's definition totalitarian is forced participation in matters of state. Thus fostering faculty and diverse student participation is a totalitarian act. Fostering is not forcing. The FSM began on Bancroft Avenue. Sproul Plaza was off-limits for political speech.]
3/8/2020, Finger Lake Times, Freedom is a shared value, Tony Del Plato
"Living freely means speaking, voting, marching, standing or sitting for what matters, without threats. In 1964, the "Berkeley Free Speech Movement" arose because students insisted that the university lift the ban on campus political activities. Students asserted their right to free speech and academic freedom."
03/02/2020, Berkeley Library News, "They Got Woken Up": SLATE and Women's Activism at UC Berkeley, Amanda Tewes
"SLATE--so named because the group backed a slate of candidates who ran on a common platform for ASUC (Associated Students of the University of California) elections --operated between 1958 and 1966, and ignited a passion for politics in the face of looming McCarthyism and what many perceived as the University of California's encroachment on student rights to free speech. These students translated political theory they learned in the classroom to action, even when it went against University policies. Perhaps SLATE's most important ideological contribution to Berkeley's campus and to other social movements is the 'lowest significant common denominator.' This concept allowed the group to form a big tent coalition between Marxists, liberal Democrats, and others by only choosing political positions and actions that the whole group could agree on."
2/25/2020, The New Republic, How Business Schools Fail Up, David Sessions
"Clark Kerr saw his own field of industrial relations, Schrum writes, as an effort to 'steer labor protest movements in the underdeveloped world away from communism' and to create 'a general strategy to inform U.S. tactics in that area.' The participation of dozens of American universities in government-funded economic development projects in the postcolonial world likewise was part of a broadly conceived effort of national defense against communism. When the Berkeley Free Speech Movement made Kerr its central villain, it was precisely because his vision of the university was so thoroughly associated with the military-industrial complex and the horrors of the Vietnam War."
2/25/2020, Indybay, The Art of Protest - Speakers,
"U.C. Berkeley, birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, paved the way for mass protests and prolonged student strikes across the country against the Vietnam War and the draft, for black liberation and ethnic studies, and a variety of other struggles for social justice. This legacy of protest continues to be felt in the social movements of today."
2/23/2020, Mashable, On college campuses in the 2020s, there's a new movement afoot, Natasha Piñon
"Nearly 60 years ago, Jack Weinberg, a U.C. Berkeley student whose arrest spurred the era-defining Free Speech Movement, made a simple, somewhat tossed-off, comment to a reporter: 'Don't trust anyone over 30.' In the process, he helped further ignite a generational wedge that sticks with us today, marking college campuses and the young people they contain as the initiators and supporters of a host of social movements, from anti-war protests to Occupy Wall Street. "
2/21/2020, Rafu Shimpo, ALAN NISHIO TO BE KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT 51ST MANZANAR PILGRIMAGE,
"Nishio, 74, was born on Aug. 9, 1945, at the Manzanar concentration camp. His activism and leadership work go back to the days of the Free Speech Movement in the late 1960s at UC Berkeley, where he helped form the Asian American Political Alliance."
2/19/2020, Jewish News, Rabbi Michael Lerner talks spiritual activism, revolutionary love, Ellen O'Brien
"Still, it wasn't until he became involved in the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley that Lerner himself became an activist and a leader. His involvement culminated in a sit-in at Sproul Hall on Dec. 2, 1964, where 800 students were arrested the next morning. The arrests led to a student strike, the firing of the university chancellor and an agreement by the university not to limit the content of students' speech and advocacy.
¶
'What I learned in this is something quite amazing: That ordinary people could have an impact on history, on what was going on. That is an insight that carried me to this moment,' Lerner said. 'By standing up for what we believed in and being willing to sacrifice for it, we made a tremendous impact on the consciousness of people at that time. And that convinced me that the realists were mistaken. Even though it was true that they had a lot of power, there was also a lot of power in us, and that showed up again many, many times in my life.'"
2/13/2020, Berkeleyside, Protesters interrupt an open house on building student dorms at People's Park, Brandon Yung
"'I think that the spirit of Berkeley is individuals sharing freely their thoughts and opinions,' Kyle Gibson, the director of communications for Capital Projects, told Berkeleyside. 'If we're talking about a site that has ties to the free speech movement that has to be part of the process of how we are going to address it. More than anything I think those voices contributing to how we are going to memorialize People's Park are exceptionally crucial.'" [Ed note: During the FSM there was no People's Park. The land held houses that were later torn down.]
2/12/2020, Berkeley News, Made of honor: History major secures plaque for Spanish Civil War hero, Gretchen Kell
"'A few of their descendants have already reached out to me," he [Milton Zerman] said, 'One, a Berkeley grad himself, said that tales of his father's exploits in Spain motivated him to take part in the legendary Free Speech Movement.'"
2/11/2020, The Daily Californian, An ode to Berkeley, Atharva Palande OR Katherine Shok
"UC Berkeley, at the time, had prohibited protests and any such acts of civil disobedience. Going to UC Berkeley, of course, students protested this. When one student, Jack Weinberg, was arrested, Savio took the lead of an impromptu sit-in that lasted for more than 30 hours. While the Free Speech Movement merged with the anti-war movement, Savio emerged as a prominent student activist who would help alter the course of free speech not only at UC Berkeley but throughout the nation." [Ed note: Jack Weinberg was arrested on Oct. 1, 1964; the sit-in around the police car happened spontaneously and was not led by Savio.]
2/4/2020, San Jose Mercury News, Not just Market Street: This iconic Bay Area avenue could ban cars too, Nico Savidge
"As the gateway to Sproul Plaza on the Cal campus, Telegraph Avenue served as a backdrop to some of the most historic events in Berkeley history, from the Free Speech movement in the early 60s, to the anti-war protests later in the decade."
2/1/2020, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McDermott: 'Cancel culture' is a betrayal of everything liberalism once stood for, Kevin McDermott
"The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the mid-1960s--an early offshoot of the Civil Rights movement and one of modern liberalism's proudest moments--didn't demand that people express certain opinions; it demanded that people be allowed to express their opinions, period. Confident in the truism that unfettered debate tends to elevate what should be elevated and debunk what shouldn't, they embraced the classic liberal axiom: I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
1/28/2020, The Signal, Impeachment sparks student activism, Kevin Hornibrook
"No experience stands out more than that of college students - throughout American history, the youngest demographic of voters have demanded change. The year 1963 saw University of California at Berkeley students stand up for free speech, sparking a nationwide dialogue in their Free Speech Movement. The 2010s saw demonstrations for womens' rights, racial equality and environmental issues." [Ed note: the FSM spanned 1964-65]
1/27/2020, San Jose Mercury News, Mavis Staples: Legendary singer's momentous weekend in SF, Andrew Gilbert
"'We were a big family, really -- Albertina Walker, Sister Mahalia Jackson, they would come over to the house,' Mavis wrote me in an email exchange after she spoke on a panel discussion on music and protest at UC Berkeley as part of the campus commemoration of the Free Speech Movement's 50th anniversary."
1/26/2020, The Daily Californian, Free Speech Movement Cafe celebrates 20 years at UC Berkeley, Olivia Buccieri
"In fall 1964, thousands of campus students protested at Sproul Hall after campus administration banned political expression on Sproul Plaza. Savio then made his famous "Operation of the Machine" speech on Sproul's steps, calling for expanded free speech on campus. His acts of civil disobedience were pivotal moments for the campus Free Speech Movement.
¶
Ross said he admired Savio's actions when he was on campus majoring in philosophy, but felt the movement had died down by the 1980s. Those involved in the Free Speech Movement inspired him and others to establish the café because people like Ross wanted to publicly spread awareness of the movement to future generations."
1/22/2020, Yale Daily News, IFTIKHAR: The students before us, Iman Iftikhar
"The first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus, the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65 at the University of California, Berkeley, was influenced by the emergence of the New Left, the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement - all of which originated on the political left. But even before students at U.C. Berkeley rose in defiance of on-campus political silence, black students in the U.S. South were creating new ways of practicing freedom of speech. In 1917, thousands of African-American students from across the nation participated in the anti-lynching "Silent Parade" in New York. In 1924, at Fisk University in Tennessee - influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois' commencement speech at the school - students staged walkouts in light of concerns surrounding the university's disciplinary rules that undermined black identities." [Ed note: the anti-war movement FOLLOWED the Free Speech Movement.]
1/15/2020, Chicago Magazine, Troublemakers, Erik S. Gellman
"Objecting to the government's use of special test scores and class rank in deciding who got deferred from the draft, some 450 students took over the U. of C.'s administration building for five days in May 1966. They demanded that the school stop testing and reporting the data to the Selective Service, arguing that it buttressed a caste system. [Art] Shay's emblematic photo features U. of C. grad student Jackie Goldberg, who had been a leader of the Free Speech Movement protest while at Berkeley, guiding activists in a discussion. A sign behind her states, 'Don't Use My Grades to Murder Students.' The demonstration and others on campuses around the country helped end the use of this information as major criteria for the Selective Service, even if the burden of the draft still fell disproportionately on working-class and minority youths." [Ed note: see photo at link]
1/10/2020, Policy Options, The complexity of protecting free speech on campus, Dax D'Orazio
"Although critiques of higher education likely predate the socio-cultural upheavals of the 1960s, that period is essential for understanding the contours of the contemporary debate. An obvious exemplar is the Free Speech Movement on the University of California - Berkeley campus, in the early 1960s. Student activists, some of whom had recently returned from volunteering in the Freedom Summer of 1964 were incensed that the Berkeley administration forbade political advocacy (aside from political parties). Protests and sit-ins attracted thousands of students, eventually led to the administration relenting, and galvanized student movements across the country and around the world."
12/17/2019, Berkeleyside, Opinion: The future of Telegraph Avenue is a shared street, Rigel Robinson and Stuart Baker
"Telegraph Avenue was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, where thousands of UC Berkeley students fought for their right to engage in political activism on campus."
12/10/2019, Los Angeles Times, Adulting' is hard. UC Berkeley has a class for that, Hannah Fry
'Adulting is one of dozens of student-run courses in the university's DeCal (Democratic Education at Cal) program, in which students create and facilitate their own classes on topics that include those practical and fun and often aren't addressed in traditional curriculum. The project is rooted in the ideals of Berkeley's free speech movement, launched in the 1960s when students pressed for and won greater academic rights.'
12/3/2019, The Inquirer, Resist and Revolt: What students today can learn from Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, Prabhat Jain
"'Listen up everybody! All foreign students, people who are not registered at the University, seniors and disabled people all need to leave right now. If you do not leave, you will be arrested and many of you will be shipped to the country where you came from and others thrown into jail for trespassing on private property,' Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement, screamed into the loudspeakers."
11/23/2019, The Times-News, Don't apologize for doing your job, Robin Abcarian
"I talked about this a short while later over coffee with a couple of fellow Berkeley graduates, all of us free speech nuts. We agreed that if we ran the world, we'd call out the National Guard to protect free speech on campus, to give even the loathsome Milo a mic.
¶
Of course, the irony of the Northwestern students' 'invasion of privacy' backlash is that we are in an era where privacy is practically dead. Instagram, Snapchat, whatever: pictures, or it didn't happen! And yet students object to news coverage of themselves publicly protesting odious political policies because they may suffer some theoretical harm."
11/21/2019, Time, 'OK Boomer' Captures the Tension Between Young and Old. Must It Be So Dismissive?, Stephanie Zacharek
"Maybe this is the time to remind everybody of a much older catchphrase, a meme of its day. The words 'Don't trust anyone over 30' originated in the mid-1960s with Jack Weinberg, an environmental activist and a leader of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, a group of young radicals who fought for the kind of change that many in today's younger generations also desire. It's young people's right to want to change the world, and to find their own words, but it's the action behind the words that counts. OK, Gen Z. Show us what you've got."
11/21/2019, The Saint, Fight to protect your freedom of speech, Missy Bolt
"Similarly, free speech used to be a hallmark of university life at the University of California, Berkeley. The Free Speech Movement originated there, with students holding mass protests against limitations on academic freedom and free speech on university campuses US-wide. But today's UC Berkeley? It has become a cariacature of itself. In recent years, its students have attacked and banned 'controversial' speakers instead of debating them. Attacked! Banned! Hardly what the Free Speech Movement fought for."
11/19/2019, The Daily Californian, Protests are important for making political change, Charles Lea and Tessa Stapp
"The campus has co-opted this movement into its identity in order to take credit for speaking out and being the first to do so. However, the campus itself was the adversary students fought against at the time of these movements. This co-opting of political activism as part of the establishment is not unique to UC Berkeley."
11/13/2019, Washington Post, The problem with 'OK, boomer', Holly Scott
"Yet, generational slogans were more complicated than memory has it. Even the line 'don't trust anyone over 30,' first uttered during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964, wasn't originally meant as a barb at older people. Tired of reporters insinuating that the student movement was secretly directed by communists, Jack Weinberg made up the line to deflect red-baiting. By saying students didn't trust anyone over 30, he meant there were no communist puppet masters pulling the strings."
11/12/2019, Daily Californian, Campus herbicide use works against UC's sustainable mission, Herbicide-Free UC Team
"In addition to its scientific leadership, the UC system also serves as a moral leader, stretching back to the Free Speech Movement."
11/11/2019, Esquire, Yeah, It's Funny That Donald Trump Junior Was Silenced by Free-Speech Conservatives, Jack Holmes
"Essentially, the 'campus free speech' crowd's playbook consists of: one, saying liberal college students are hostile to free expression; two, going to college campuses and saying things that will piss off liberal college students; three, declaring the protests that inevitably ensue-which they had the clear intent of attracting-constitute a campaign by liberal college students to 'silence' them. There's never any mention of, say, the extensive efforts at both the state and federal level to make it functionally illegal to criticize Israel's policies towards its Palestinian residents. And of course there's no mention of the fact that the President of the United States has declared the free press to be an enemy of the state. Those are the kind of First Amendment issues these folks are less concerned about."
11/8/2019, The New York Times, With ‘Shadow Stalker,’ Lynn Hershman Leeson Tackles Internet Surveillance, Tess Thackara
"SAN FRANCISCO -- 'I found my voice through technology,' artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson is saying, sitting in an old-world bar here, wearing a long jacket with quotes from French philosophers embroidered on it.
¶
She has lived in the Bay Area since the 1960s, spending formative years in Berkeley and participating in the free speech movement. Through technology, she said, she 'found amplification, microphones--and it was an era when women were silenced.'"
11/7/2019, California Magazine, At Berkeley's California Typewriter, the Selectrics Keep Humming, Cirrus Wood
"UC Berkeley was an IBM campus, so every department had its own collection of machines. And since the campus was vast and hilly, and the typewriters heavy, [Herbert] Permillion would cover his route in a three-wheeled motorized cart. 'I've gone through some of the action that's happened at the University,' he said nonchalantly. Once, during the Free Speech movement, he got caught in a crowd on campus. He doesn't remember who was speaking, but the students surrounded his cart and climbed on top, first to gain a better view, then to spout their beliefs."
11/4/2019, Reporter Magazine, MORATORIUM TO END THE WAR: 50TH ANNIVERSARY, Morgan LaMere
"'It started in Harvard University, it's an outgrowth of McCarthy-era suppression of labor unions and left-leaning activists in general when people were being purged from the U.S. government,' she [Tamar Carroll] said. 'A film that showed an HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) committee meeting was shown at Harvard University, and students felt that [what] the film depicted was contrary to democracy as they understood it.'
¶
Carroll suggested this was where students began protesting the Cold War, and where the activism of the New Left, a new form of student social activism, first originated. Later, the University of California Berkeley would help create the Free Speech Movement and protest for other causes alongside those who participated in the 1960 HUAC protest. It was from this early activism for free speech that protests arose in the Vietnam era."
11/1/2019, Berkeley News, Berkeley Talks: Author Andrew Marantz on the hijacking of the American conversation, Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
"Christ first met Marantz in 2017, when he was working on a New Yorker story about free speech issues on campus, after the cancellation of an event with then-Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos led to a wave of criticism that Berkeley--home of the Free Speech Movement--had tried to shut down free speech.
¶
'When I was here covering the Milo circus,' said Marantz, 'the underlying premise was, 'This is a public university, therefore, the First Amendment applies, therefore, he has to be able to speak.' …What I'm questioning is whether that should be the interpretation of First Amendment law for time immemorial, or whether we can change our interpretations of laws just like we've always changed our interpretations of laws.'"
10/28/2019, Simmons Voice, And Then There Was the Word, Sidney Berger
"Sometimes the situation dictates how a word or phrase is to be taken, even if that interpretation is wrong. When I was an undergrad at Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement was on (I just dated myself!), and students were bent on shutting down the campus to get across to the administration that students' rights had been trampled on. The grinding to a halt of all campus operations was called a moratorium--literally, a pause, a delay of action. The classes were going to be stopped; so was the normal operation of the campus. There was going to be a moratorium of normal activities."
10/26/2019, The Berkeley Daily Planet, ¡Patrick Hallinan, Presente!, Gar Smith
"excerpt from his official biography ...
¶
'Patrick began his social activism at age six by selling stamps in support of refugees of the Spanish Civil War. He delivered his father's acceptance speech for the Progressive Party Presidential nomination in 1952 while his father was in jail on a contempt of court charge arising from his defense of labor leader Harry Bridges. During his father's incarceration, Patrick traveled the country with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois in support of his father's candidacy and the progressive movement. He was a leader in the Free Speech Moment at Berkeley, directed the West Coast Mobilization against the War in Viet Nam and, along with his entire family, was arrested in the San Francisco Auto Row sit-ins.'"
10/26/2019, Berkeley Daily Planet, Remembering Brad Cleaveland, Author of the Magna Carta of Student Rebellion, Gar Smith
"Herbert Bradford Cleaveland, one of the founders of the Free Speech Movement and a longtime resident of Berkeley's Redwood Gardens, passed away on October 21 at the Oakland Health and Wellness Center. Brad had been in fading health for the past few weeks."
10/24/2019, Newsmax, Scott Johnston to Newsmax TV: College Liberalism Has 'Taken a Very Dark Turn', Theodore Bunker
"'Colleges have always been liberal,' Johnston admitted on 'America Talks Live,' to host John Cardillo. 'Yale was a very liberal place when I went there, but it's taken a very dark turn, particularly on matters like speech. The free speech movement started at Berkeley in the 1960's . . . and that was a movement by campus leftists.'" [Ed note: the 1964 FSM coalition included Campus College Republicans, Cal Students for Goldwater, Conservatives for an Open Campus, and University Society of Libertarians]
10/20/2019, History News Network, Can a 1960s-like Counterculture Emerge?, Walter G. Moss
"What followed in the 1970s and 1980s was the disappearance of the 1960s counterculture and the absorption of many of its former adherents into the 'system.' In his Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), conservative columnist David Brooks wrote: 'We're by now all familiar with modern-day executives who have moved from S.D.S. [a radical student organization that flourished in the 1960s] to C.E.O. . . . Indeed, sometimes you get the impression the Free Speech Movement [begun 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley] produced more corporate executives than Harvard Business School.'"
10/18/2019, The Berkeley Daily Planet, The Battle for People's Park, Gar Smith
"I was one of the post-FSM activists who lost my home when UC ordered the demolition of the houses in the Dwight/Haste/Telly neighborhood. As Stew Alpert put it in his 'Hear Ye! Hear Ye!' broadside, UC 'tore down a lot of beautiful houses to build a swamp.'
¶
It was no coincidence that one of the houses targeted for demolition contained a den of 'off-campus agitators,' including Free Speech Movement vets and civil rights activists. The residence came complete with a phone bank, meeting rooms, and printing machines (which, in those days, meant hand-cranked mimeographs)."
10/18/2019, The Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"Back in 1965, Rabbi Michael Lerner served as a member of the Free Speech Movement's coordinating committee before getting himself indicted by Nixon's Justice Department for organizing anti-war demonstrations at U of Washington. Over the past half-century, he's written 11 books, including 'The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right.' And now. Rabbi Lerner has written a new book, Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World (University of California Press).
¶
Lerner, who has worked as a psychotherapist studying political and social movements as well as 'studying the psychodynamics of American society (in part as principal investigator of an NIMH supported systematic study of the American middle class)' believes he has hit upon "a new strategy for healing and transforming our world before the life support system of the planet is destroyed and before reactionary white nationalism becomes the shaper of the politics of the 2020s and 2030s.'"
10/15/2019, Berkeley News, Author Andrew Marantz talks trolls, tribulations and tumult, Roqua Montez
"Berkeley, of course, also has a bit of experience dealing with right-wing provocateurs and the subsequent issues revolving around free speech. In one of the more notable events, campus police had to evacuate the then-Breitbart editor and controversial speaker Milo Yiannopoulos from campus and cancel his February 2017 event amid an apparently organized response that resulted in the destruction of property at UC Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.
¶
A wave of criticism followed, with free speech advocates advancing the erroneous claim that Berkeley--the home of the Free Speech Movement--had tried to shut down free speech. A long list of conservative speakers lined up to speak on campus in an effort to test that unfounded assertion."
10/13/2019, Davis Enterprise, As if a $5 coffee wasn't bad enough, Bob Dunning
"I still remember back during the revolutionary '60s how Mario Savio and his buddies would come up to Davis to tell those of us attending the University Farm exactly what the Free Speech Movement was all about."
10/8/2019, Lebanon Express, Gloria Tafralian Wilson 1942-2019,
"Glo worked her way through college using work study programs and finding work during holiday breaks and during the summer. After graduating, Glo continued working at Cal. These were interesting times in Berkeley--the Free Speech Movement, People's Park protests, and anti-war demonstrations. Rather than go into detail about her experiences, it is sufficient to say that she knew and never forgot what it's like to be tear gassed."
10/2/2019, The Leader, Today in History, Oct. 2, AP
"Standing atop the crushed roof of a campus police car, a University of California student asks Cal students to identify themselves during third day of Free Speech Movement demonstrations at Berkeley, Ca., Oct. 2, 1964. One student has been arrested and confined in the police car which is surrounded by the demonstrators. (AP Photo)"
10/1/2019, San Francisco Chronicle, Carl Irving 1928 - 2019,
"...Carl went to work for the Oakland Tribune. During his time there he was assigned to cover higher education, including UC Berkeley. In 1964, he made an inquiry to the UC administration regarding the legal status of a small strip of property at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues where students manned tables advocating on political issues. The answer to that question (that the property actually belonged to the University, not the City of Berkeley) and the article that Carl wrote, eventually sparked the famed free speech movement ..." [Ed note: perhaps best to consider this to be among the sparks.]
10/1/2019, Jamaica Observer, This Daily In History - October 1, AP
"1964: The US Free Speech Movement is launched at the University of California at Berkeley."
9/28/2019, Liberation News, UC Berkeley students say 'No tech for ICE', Zach Chacon
"As students marched past California Hall, housing Chancellor Carol Christ's office, they chanted, 'Carol Christ, you know it's true, the crimes of ICE depend on you,' pointing out the hypocrisy between the campus's words and its actions. Students then marched through the historic Sather Gate and onto the Free Speech Monument, contrasting the school administration's idealization of its radical past with its resistance to present-day progressive voices."
09/27/2019, Random Lengths News, Above the Fold: The Story of a Renegade Journalist, James Preston Allen
"If you're old enough to remember the free speech movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, the anti-war demonstrations that came later or the confrontation over People's Park on Telegraph Avenue when Gov. Ronald Reagan called out the National Guard, then the name Robert Scheer and Ramparts magazine probably sound familiar."
9/20/2019, The Daily Californian, Berkeley leadership for social movement on climate and justice, Daniel Kammen
"The climate crisis we now face cries out for an even greater wave of use-inspired basic and applied research, and critically, for social activism. This will take different forms for each of us, but in the tradition of the Free Speech Movement, I am convinced that there is no better place to get this done than at UC Berkeley."
9/20/2019, Berkeley News, Admissions director Femi Ogundele on what makes a Berkeley student, Femi Ogundele
"And then I also think it's important for us to really uplift the work that has been done around building equitable spaces on this campus for years. I think one of the things that I've noticed when I was applying for the institution versus what I know now, the free speech movement is obviously something that Berkeley's incredibly proud of, but student activism has been a threat ever since. And when we take a look at all of the other things that the student activism has created here, I think that it's a very easy and compelling argument to go out and talk to a teenager and tell them, if you're looking for an institution that will respond to the student voice, Berkeley is the place to be."
9/18/2019, Heavy.com, The Revolution Club: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Elizabeth Sloan
"[Bob] Avakian became a political figure during the turbulent time of the 1960s, his biography states. He was first introduced to political life during the Free Speech Movement while he was studying at University of California, Berkeley. He went on to join and become a leader of the resistance and protests against the Vietnam War. Then he reportedly became an early and supporter of the Black Liberation struggle and closely associated with the Black Panther Party. Later, Avakian's biography says that he played a critical leading role in the political and ideological struggles of the New Left Movement, which ultimately led to the founding of the Revolutionary Communist Party."
9/13/2019, Los Angeles Times, Column: Justice Gorsuch calls for 'civility,' always a code for shutting down free speech, Michael Hiltzik
"Prior to that, Nicholas Dirks, then the chancellor of UC Berkeley, stepped into a quagmire when he marked the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement on that campus by asserting, 'We can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas.'
¶
Dirks got hit with an uncivil reaction from critics who properly interpreted the call for civility as a weaselly dodge around the principle of free speech. As Ken White of the group legal blog Popehat observed: 'Civility is an admirable value. ... But speech need not be civil to be entitled to robust protection. Berkeley's free speech movement did not seek to protect civil speech; the Vietnam War was not an occasion for civility.'"
9/12/2019, Broadway World, Rainbow Theatre Project Kicks Off Season With BLUE CAMP, BWW News Desk
"'Blue Camp is set in 1964. The year of the Civil Rights Act, of the first demonstration against the gay ban in the military, of the Beatles first album released in the U.S., of the war on poverty, of the release of the Warren Commission Report, of Malcom X's 'Bullets or Ballots Speech,' of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, of Susan Sontag's 'Essay on Camp," and of The Gulf of Tonkin,' states Hanna. 'Against this background and facing a dishonorable discharge from the Army a group of gays and a group of straight soldiers who have committed crimes come to terms with the possible loss of the G. I. Bill and the real possibility of being swept up in the fervor of events leading to the Vietnam War.'"
9/10/2019, CNN, Free speech wars miss the point of college, Michael S. Roth
"Some older liberals may wax eloquent about the Free Speech movement and People's Park, but they rarely repeat the powerful words of its leader, Mario Savio: 'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop!' It wasn't civility this leftist icon of free speech was calling for; it was passionate disruption."
9/9/2019, Townhall, Free Speech Should Not Be A Partisan Issue, Eric Cervone
"While conservatives have long had a reputation for being uptight prudes, progressive puritans are increasingly the gatekeepers of acceptable ideas. Today, Americans across the political spectrum are increasingly afraid to speak their mind. On college campuses, conservatives are highly reluctant to speak up during class discussions related to race, politics, and gender out of fear of retribution from professors and classmates.
¶
It wasn't always this way. The term 'free-speech movement' is synonymous with campus protests that took place at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s. The students involved in those protests generally affiliated themselves with the New Left, and advocated positions that certainly were not considered conservative."
9/9/2019, Marin Indpendent Journal, A hero to those who remember, a gray-haired math professor to those who don't, Susan Mines
"What? A math professor admitting he preferred English? He was probably just being kind. Trying to make me feel less idiotic.
¶
There was something familiar about that face. Especially the deep dimple in his chin. Where had I seen him before? Weren't the students addressing him by his first name? What were they calling him? Mario?
¶
Suddenly it all came together. Shock overcame any discretion I might ordinarily have possessed. I blurted out--loudly enough to cause snickers around the room--'Oh my God! You were our hero.'
¶
He smiled shyly and nodded in a diffident, self-conscious way. Clearly this wasn't the first time he had dealt with this situation. He seemed uneasy. And maybe a tiny bit pleased.
The last time I encountered this man he was standing barefoot on top of a police car trapped in a mob of thousands of students in Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus in the early, heady days of the Free Speech Movement. And he was speaking to the crowd. Not speaking. Orating. What an inspiration he was! What confidence he showed! What brilliance!
¶
But that was over 50 years ago. That era--my youth--was out of the pages of history books to the bemused students in the computer lab who indifferently returned to their machines after my outburst. After all, they weren't even born when this fiery young graduate student with the movie star name of Mario Savio became our hero. To them he was just Mario, the gray-haired math teacher."
9/5/2019, People's World, Leon Wofsy: The Organizer (1921-2019), Conn Hallinan and Max Elbaum
"In the fall of that year, the university was embroiled in a battle over free speech and the right of students to organize politically on the campus. It was a critical moment in the history of the country. Students had gone into the South during Freedom Summer to help register black voters and challenge Jim Crow laws. When Bay Area students came home in the fall, they joined the growing northern civil rights movement that was confronting racial discrimination in San Francisco and Oakland.
¶
The ability to use campuses to organize boycotts, picket lines, and sit-ins was essential to the civil rights movement, and the university was determined to choke off that venue. That it failed was in part because of Leon Wofsy.
¶
There were many reasons the university was forced to retreat from its efforts to muzzle political activism, but a key moment for the Free Speech Movement (FSM) was when the Faculty Senate supported the student's demands. That might not have happened were it not for Leon.
¶
At the time, the FSM's nickname for the Faculty Senate was 'the hutch,' a body composed of rabbits that would bolt for their burrows at the first hint of trouble. But Leon could organize anything, even rabbits. He didn't do it alone, of course, and many other faculty members contributed, but Leon knew how to get people who spook easily to hold their ground.
¶
He built up a core of people and began to push the Senate--gently, because rabbits are timid--to act. This was not something he did out front. He was a formidable debater (as Ronald Reagan would discover), but his style was small meetings, phone calls, breakfast gatherings, persuasion. He got people to move at their own pace--and then to go a bit further.
¶
Good organizing means dampening one's ego, particularly in academia, where high self-regard is sort of part of the job description. But Leon always knew that the people being organized, not the organizer, were the point. It was frustrating and at times plain painful, but the Senate majority stood up to the university in 1964, even if its fortitude later diminished."
9/3/2019, Berkeley Library News, From Chez Panisse to Silicon Valley: Podcast explores UC Berkeley's undeniable influence, Virgie Hoban
"But this was Berkeley, after all; the restaurant is nestled on Shattuck Avenue, a few blocks from campus. For Waters, an activist on campus during the heydey of the Free Speech Movement, revolution was nothing new.
¶
'What Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse team did was probably the most radical gesture in restaurants and cooking in America in the last century,' said food writer Chris Ying, in an interview conducted by The Bancroft Library's Oral History Center. 'It's important that it happened in Berkeley.'"
8/30/2019, San Francisco Chronicle, Leon Wofsy 1921 - 2019,
"Also while at Berkeley, Leon was a leader among the faculty in supporting students during the Free Speech Movement, opposing war, fighting apartheid, supporting progressive movements in Latin America, and increasing the representation of women and minorities in the sciences and the broader academic community."
8/23/2019, Biddeford Journal Tribune, California may define the 2020 race, David M. Shribman
"Like states big and small, California and its electorate are not monolithic. California, after all, spawned both the conservatism of William F. Knowland and the liberalism of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, and was the birthplace of both Haight-Ashbury flower power and Breitbart News alt-right disruption."
8/22/2019, ChristianHeadlines, The Declining Respect for Clergy: Cultural Trends and Self-Inflicted Wounds, John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera
"Actually, the decline in trust and disregard for institutions predates Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War. After all, the 1964 Free Speech movement at Berkeley had a signature saying: 'We don't trust anyone over thirty.' It's a line that came to sum up the view of many Baby Boomers towards all authority. Governmental, parental, and clerical included." [Ed note: many clergy took respected roles during the fsm: see: http://www.fsm-a.org/FSM_Religious_Voices.html]
8/21/2019, The New Republic, Who Gets to Speak Freely?, Jacob Bacharach
"The reportage is more engrossing than the history, which can occasionally shade into a kind of term-paper gloss on complex events and politics. A history of the ACLU's transformation from a radical labor organization that viewed equality of material conditions as a necessary precondition to any universal right of expression into a bastion of 'milquetoast progressivism' is a captivating and well-told piece of context. The sections on the Berkeley-led campus free speech movement are less so, and I would have liked to see a deeper engagement with the way the radical individualism of 1960s counterculture moved leftism away from a more collectivist and labor-oriented outlook. (The antics of 'alt-right' figures like campus barnstormer Milo Yiannopoulos or white nationalist media personality Richard Spencer are self-consciously derived from '60s individualistic radicalism, with its penchant for shocking the squares, for épater le bourgeois.)"
8/21/2019, Berkeley News, Carol Christ to new students: 'Shape Berkeley, even as it shapes you', Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
"Free speech-the constitutionally protected right to believe what we wish and to express ourselves as we wish-is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a learning institution. It has a special meaning at Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement, in which students in the 1960s united to fight for the right to advocate political views on campus.
¶
A commitment to free speech involves not just defending your right to speak and the rights of those you agree with, but also defending the right to speak by those you strongly disagree with. This is not easy. You may feel that some speech attacks your very identity. However, rather than seeking to shut down or shut out those we disagree with, the right response is to question, contest, debate. Universities exist in search of truth - we must embody and model a community that responds to things like hate speech with more speech, with rebuttal, with counterpoint."
8/19/2019, The Daily Californian, Berkeley bops to set your 1st year to, Pooja Bale
"'Student Demonstration Time'--The Beach Boys
¶
The Beach Boys took a pause from their classic surf rocks songs to write an ode to student activism at various colleges, and UC Berkeley is the first one mentioned. Step back into the nostalgia of the Free Speech Movement as your walk through Sproul Plaza is soundtracked by this inescapably catchy song." [So this is the historial impact? Sigh.]
8/18/2019, The New Yorker, The Misconception about Baby Boomers and the Sixties, Louis Menand
"Even the younger activists in the civil-rights movement were not boomers. John Lewis was born in 1940, Diane Nash in 1938, Bob Moses in 1935. The three activists who were killed during Freedom Summer in Mississippi, in 1964, were all born before 1945. Stokely Carmichael was born in 1941 (in Trinidad and Tobago), Bobby Seale in 1936, Huey Newton in 1942. Malcolm X was born in 1925, four years before Martin Luther King, Jr.
¶
Mario Savio, the de-facto leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, was born before 1945. Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman were all born before 1940."
8/17/2019, The Daily Post, News photographer Al Bullock captured history, Emily Mibach
"Bullock worked at KGO until 1992. During his tenure there, he was behind the camera, catching the best shots for stories about the Free Speech movement in Berkeley in the late 1960s, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974, and the Jonestown massacre and assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978."
8/14/2019, EdSource, High school starts early for California freshmen in 'summer bridge', Sydney Johnson
"During this year's visit to UC Berkeley, Ukiah freshmen toured campus libraries and went to the top of the Campanile, a clock tower that overlooks the San Francisco Bay Area. One program leader stood on Sproul Plaza reciting an excerpt from activist Mario Savio's famous speech during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement."
8/14/2019, Berkeleyside, Berkeley arts commission votes to remove controversial sculptures on I-80 bridge, Tony Hicks
"The sculpture on the east side of the bridge, closer to Aquatic Park, depicts what many say Berkeley is all about: free speech, protest and Berkeley's cultural contributions. The 28-foot-by-12-foot-by-12-foot piece shows linchpin moments in the city's history, including the People's Park protests, Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement and the tree-sitters outside Memorial Stadium. The west side sculpture includes someone flying a kite, a boater, a jogger, a dog catching a Frisbee and a bird watcher looking through binoculars."
8/13/2019, San Francisco Chronicle, Charles Franklin Rudnick May 11, 1945 - August 10, 2019,
"While at Berkeley in the 1960's, Charles witnessed firsthand the Free Speech Movement through his camera lens."
8/11/2019, History News Network, Counterculture 1969: a Gateway to the Darkest and the Brightest, Harlan Lebo
"The Free Speech Movement--which had developed at UC Berkeley in 1964 as a response to, of all things, the university's policies that restricted political activities on campus--took root as the first significant civil disobedience on college grounds; most other major universities would soon follow with their own protests, especially in support of civil rights and opposition to the war."
8/1/2019, Princeton NJ Patch, Princeton Seniors Celebrate 'Surfer Girl' Anniversary, press release
"Another big topic of interest recalled by many residents was The Free Speech Movement that took place during 1964-65 at UC Berkeley."
7/27/2019, Alternet, Before Occupy, there was People's Park, Truthdig
"What, then, are readers to make of all this? Steve Wasserman offers some perceptive historical observations in his afterword. He places the battle for People's Park in the longer history of radical protest in Berkeley. He notes the controversy of the protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1960; the great civil rights sit-ins of spring 1964 at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco and the Auto Row demonstrations, peopled largely by Berkeley students; the historic free speech movement of fall 1964 on the Berkeley campus; the historic antiwar teach-in organized by the Vietnam Day Committee in May 1965; the efforts to block troop trains in Berkeley in 1965; and the Third World Liberation Strike at UC in February 1969 to create ethnic studies programs. This is the context for the People's Park battle."
7/23/2019, Los Angeles Times, Bob Olodort, the inventor of the label printer and portable keyboard, dies, Dorany Pineda
"After graduating from Hamilton High School, he studied psychology and photography at UC Berkeley, where he participated in antiwar protests and the Free Speech Movement."
7/15/2019, ABC7, 70 Years of ABC7: See the 1960s Bay Area through the lens of local TV, Jennifer Olney
"In 1964, Channel 7 news broadcasts included devastating floods in Northern California, Native Americans' first attempt to take back Alcatraz and the start of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley.
¶
People sitting in their living rooms could see students, spurred by the civil rights movement, demanding their right to speak on campus. A massive sit-in forced classes to be canceled. More than 800 students were arrested. Viewers saw police drag some of them down stairs and heard the fiery rhetoric firsthand." [Ed note: includes FSM video, some rarely seen.]
7/8/2019, Chicago Monitor, Muslim Student Associations: Fostering Community and Promoting Activism, Afreen Mohiuddin
"In 1964, students at the University of California at Berkeley started the Free Speech Movement, protesting policies that restricted their free speech and academic freedoms."
7/5/2019, Tablet Magazine, Another Summer of Love, Andrea Cooper
"[Denise] Kaufman drew upon that foundation of activism when she was arrested as a freshman at Berkeley as part of the Free Speech Movement. She spent the next year crossing the U.S. on the bus with the Merry Pranksters, a group of friends led by author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) who some credit with launching the psychedelic era."
7/4/2019, The Berkeley Daily Planet, In the East Bay-- San Francisco Mime Troupe's TREASURE ISLAND, a New Musical, Margot Smith
"The lyrics for TREASURE ISLAND are written by Daniel Savio. Daniel is the son of famed 60s activist Mario Savio--a leader of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 1960s."
6/27/2019, The Epoch Times, Booker's Attack on Biden Reveals Important Divide Between Progressives, Liberals, Clifford Humphrey
"A fourth core belief liberals maintain is free speech. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement was born out of the intolerance students perceived toward the first stirrings of neo-progressivism itself. Now that same campus is infamous for its riots against certain political speakers."
6/19/2019, Splinter, The Revenge of the Poverty-Stricken College Professors Is Underway in Florida. And It's Big., Hamilton Nolan
"Susan Peterson has lived a colorful life. She married and divorced a rock star. She's been a champion collegiate swimmer. She was at UC Berkeley during the legendary Free Speech protest movement. She's worked as a mime, and ran a successful company offering mermaid-themed birthday parties to Florida children. She also taught English as a second language off and on for years, both at colleges and in public school systems. In 2012, she began teaching at Miami Dade College.'
6/19/2019, Inside Higher Ed, 'Panic Attack' on Campus Radicals, Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
"This unwillingness to hear out certain opinions is much more evident in [Robby] Soave's free speech chapter, though. Here, he discusses how the Free Speech Movement, which originated at the University of California, Berkeley, originally benefited liberal activists. He questions why students do not seem to support the concept of free expression."
6/10/2019, SF Station, SF Mime Troupe Celebrates 60 Years of Comedic Theater, staff
"This year, using the classic tale of Treasure Island as its inspiration… the show follows Hawkins, a civil servant in San Francisco, who accidentally stumbles upon the unethical plans of a developer, L.J. Silver. The lyrics are written by Daniel Savio, son of famed Free Speech Movement leader, Mario Savio."
5/30/2019, New York Times, Can Californians Still Find a Path to Mobility at the State's Universities?, Miriam Pawel
"Then came more complicated decades: the Free Speech Movement, which helped propel Ronald Reagan to the governorship; Proposition 13, which slashed state revenues; Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action; and multiple recessions."
5/24/2019, Robotics Business Review, The Essential Interview: Dr. Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley, Joanne Pransky
"[Ken] Goldberg: My proudest moment was when I was hired at UC Berkeley in 1995. Since I was a kid in the 1960's I've always idolized Berkeley including the Free Speech Movement--and social justice movements during a time when its students questioned authority. Berkeley is a public university and has this amazing reputation in terms of innovation and rigor, not only in the sciences and engineering, but also in the arts, humanities and social sciences."
5/19/2019, The Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"Former Free Speech Activist Scores a Stunning Election Win
¶
According to the independent news platform, L.A. TACO, former Berkeley Free Speech Movement activist and State Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg has won 'a blowout victory' in a runoff for a critical seat on the Los Angeles Unified School Board (LAUSB). Goldberg, 74, enjoyed the solid backing of the teachers union for campaigning as a critic of charter schools. Goldberg won a whopping 71 percent of the vote.
¶
Goldberg's victory shifts the LAUSB majority. Now only three of the seven members are charter-friendly. Goldberg will replace LAUSB president Ref Rodriguez, a pro-charter advocate who was forced to resign after pleading guilty to felony conspiracy charges.
¶
Evoking her Berkeley past, Goldberg told a room of cheering supporters in Echo Park: 'This is not the end, this is the beginning. We need a movement to make the changes we need.'"
5/15/2019, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Party of Utopia: A Report from the 43rd Annual Society for Utopian Studies Conference, Bonnie Johnson
"1968 WAS A MOMENT of reckoning across the country, but perhaps nowhere more than in Berkeley. UC students there had already protested war and McCarthyism in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s--and in 1964, when the school administration tried to curtail campus organizing for civil rights, the Free Speech Movement was born."
5/15/2019, L.A. Taco, JACKIE GOLDBERG WINS SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION, SHIFTING LAUSD CHARTER SCHOOL BALANC, Erick Galindo
"'This is not the end, this is the beginning,' Goldberg told her supporters Tuesday night in Echo Park. 'We need a movement to make the changes we need.'
¶
Goldberg, 74, represented this same district in the 1980s, when she cemented a legacy as a progressive activist that goes back to the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the early 1960s"
5/10/2019, Berkeleyside, 11 years of radical thought and action in Berkeley led to creation of People's Park, Tom Dalzell
"And then came the Free Speech movement in the fall of 1964. It was the first mass act of civil disobedience as practiced in the civil rights movement on an American college campus in the 1960s.
¶
Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban on on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement burst into the headlines on October 1, 1964, when Jack Weinberg was sitting at a CORE information table on campus. He was arrested when he refused to show identification and placed in a police car in Sproul Plaza. Up to 3,000 students and supporters surrounded the police car; speeches and the Free Speech Movement began. He was released without charges 32 hours later.
¶
On December 2, 1964, several thousand students occupied Sproul Hall in support of the Free Speech Movement. In the early morning hours of December 3, law enforcement moved in and almost 800 protesters were arrested.
¶
In January 1965, the university relaxed rules for political activity on the Berkeley campus
¶
The next manifestation of the growing student movement was a 35-hour-long teach-in about Vietnam at Cal. on May 21 and 22, 1965."
5/1/2019, KentWired, The times they are a-changin: protest music from May 4 to today, Adriona Murphy
"In 1971, the Beach Boys also had their say with 'Student Demonstration Time.'
¶
This particular song references four other instances in which police or military intervened in student protests: the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley; Bloody Thursday at People's Park in Berkeley, the Isla Vista riots in Santa Barbara and the Jackson State shootings."
4/15/2019, Berkeleyside, Opinion: Support Berkeley's Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign, Alan Tobey
"Demonstrator in utero? Kamala's mother was a research chemist who had been on campus since 1960, not forgetting her civil rights past. She was noted for working through both of her pregnancies to the last possible hour. The Free Speech Movement officially started on Sept. 14, 1964, when the campus administration cracked down on protesters, and it reached a first dramatic peak when thousands occupied Sproul Plaza on Oct. 1 and heard the famous Mario Savio speech. Kamala was born on October 20. This is an unconfirmed speculation, but surely Kamala's activist mother had to have been present for some of these protest scenes, especially including the big one, with Kamala on board. If so, Kamala's involvement in civil rights work began in Berkeley even before she was born."
4/10/2019, The Williams Record, Students, faculty spar over free speech, speaker invitations, Arrington Luck
"Gerrard posed several questions to [Luana] Maroja and Perina, including, 'Given the benefits of speech, given that the costs are not borne equally, do you have suggestions [for] what we do with that situation?' To this, [Nico] Perino responded with an anecdote from Hosea Williams, a Black civil rights leader, to support her statement that 'the free speech movement is truly a movement born out of the civil rights struggle.' Maroja reiterated her belief that speech is essential to learning. 'Yes, it is a burden,' Maroja said of free speech, 'but it is a burden I want to fight.'"
4/1/2019, Legaltech News, Nervous System: The First Social Network, David Kalat
"This overlap between the worlds of computer science and the Bay Area's fabled counterculture emerged, naturally enough, from a Bay Area countercultural computer scientist. Lee Felsenstein was an engineer at Ampex, an American electronics company. He was also an antiwar activist and member of the Free Speech Movement who lived in a commune. He and his housemates dreamed of connecting the entire city of Berkeley to a single computer network."
Spring 2019 issue, California, The Strange Case of Ex-Radical David Horowitz, Chris A. Smith
"Although he missed out on the Free Speech Movement, his 1962 book, 'Student,' on Berkeley's burgeoning student movement, inspired Mario Savio to enroll at Cal."
3/21/2019, San Francisco Chronicle, UC Berkeley in spotlight as Trump expected to issue campus free-speech order, Michael Cabanatuan
"On Wednesday night, the Associated Students of the University of California was considering a resolution supporting free speech, condemning violence and noting that UC Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, has come under a 'misconception... that depicts the University to be one that is against free speech.'"
3/12/2019, The Daily Californian, UC faculty must have right to boycott Israeli academic partnerships, Andrew Ross and John King
"Why is it disturbing for us to see an administration at UC Berkeley so much at odds with faculty and student opinion? For one thing, we expect UC Berkeley administrators to act as stewards of the legacy of the Free Speech Movement. They are abdicating that role by failing to support the right of community members to boycott Israel. Indeed, UC Berkeley was widely criticized by students, faculty and alumni in the course of a similar face-off over another country's racially abhorrent policies in the mid-1980s, when the administration opposed the student push for divestment in South Africa. The resulting conflict convulsed the campus for almost two years and ended with a significant victory for faculty and students of conscience. In the annals of the anti-apartheid movement, Berkeley is remembered as a landmark struggle. Indeed, on the occasion of Nelson Mandela's death, a university chancellor praised it as 'one of Berkeley's finest moments,' neglecting to recall, however, the harshly punitive measures--fines, arrests and threats of suspension--rolled out by the administration in response to student and faculty advocacy of a just cause."
3/11/2019, The [UC San Diego] Guardian, UCOP Addresses Trump's Idea to Tie Federal Funding to University Free Speech, Troy Tuquero
"Berkeley is regarded as the birthplace of the 1964 Free Speech Movement, which was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. Student activists launched massive, year-round protests against the administration's ban on on-campus political activities." [ed note: Opposition to the Vietnam War came AFTER the Free Speech Movement.]
3/8/2019, The American Prospect, The Charter School Movement Washes Out in California, Rachel M. Cohen
" [Jackie] Goldberg has been a well-known figure in local progressive politics for decades. A veteran of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and later a public schoolteacher, she was elected to two terms on the Los Angeles school board from 1983 to 1991. After that, she served six years in the state assembly and eight as the first openly gay member of the Los Angeles City Council, where in 1997 she authored and passed what was effectively the nation's first living-wage ordinance. This earned her the reputation as a real darling of the progressive left in the city. Goldberg was also a strong supporter of the recent Los Angeles teachers strike, and the teachers union spent roughly $660,000 to elect her."
3/8/2019, Jerusalem Post, 1960S ALL-FEMALE SUMMER OF LOVE BAND REACHES NIRVANA 50 YEARS LATER, Howard Blas
"'Outside of Sprout [sic] Hall, every political perspective was represented by the card tables full of brochures and people on soapboxes. There was a sense of 'We can do this! We can change the world. We have to!' I was in heaven there!'
¶
[Denise] Kaufman vividly recalls that, within a few weeks of arriving at Berkeley, the campus police removed all the tables and told the organizations that they could no longer operate in any way on the campus.
¶
'This started the Free Speech Movement,' she continued. 'From the first day, I was one of the students ready to fight this battle. Within two months, 700 of us got arrested and our free speech rights were eventually upheld.'" [Ed note: Denise Kaufman was arrested in the 1964 FSM.]
3/4/2019, University of California Press Room, Statement affirming the University of California's commitment to free expression, UC Office of the President
"The University of California has a longstanding history of fighting for and protecting free speech for all. Our university was the home of the free speech movement in the 1960s, and our steadfast commitment to upholding the values of free expression and the robust exchange of ideas has not wavered since. President Trump's announcement of a possible executive order mandating that colleges allow free speech on their campuses or lose critical federal research funding is misguided and unnecessary; UC already has clear policies and procedures in place that protect anyone's right to peacefully protest or speak on our campuses."
3/4/2019, KNOCK, Vote For Jackie Goldberg For School Board, Miranda Cristofani
"4. Civic Integrity. Let's put it bluntly: Jackie Goldberg is a badass woman who has always been on the right side of activism and history. She has a long history of working for democracy and equality in education. In the early 1960s, she emerged as a prominent leader in the Free Speech movement at Berkeley (see the picture of her standing on a car speaking to a crowd)."
3/4/2019, Breitbart, Pollak: Students Want College to Be 'Political Utopia that Doesn't Allow for Dissent', Pam Key
"He [Joel Pollak] continued, 'Broadly it requires a much bigger effort. I think the problem is oddly generational. At some of these campuses, Berkeley for example, the faculty and members of the administration actually have in some cases a more open attitude toward free speech than some of the students. You have this campus, which in 1964 was the birthplace of the free speech movement, generating graduates who have become professors and administrators who really do believe in having every idea on campus that they can. And they are struggling with a student body and an activist community around the university that does not like free speech. And that views the university as a kind of microcosm where they want to create a kind of political utopia that doesn't allow for dissent. So we have to move toward a cultural shift that administrators and professors are able to do and that comes into the culture in general.'"
3/1/2019, New York Times, A Right Hook in Berkeley Revives Debate Over Campus Speech, Thomas Fuller
"The attack on Feb. 19 took place at Sproul Plaza, the birthplace and symbol of the Free Speech movement, the protests by students in the 1960s demanding greater political expression."
2/25/2019, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"So how do FSM vets feel about being used as a UC fund-raising tool? Here's a sample of responses that trickled in following UC's announcement:
Vet 1: 'Big Give'? More like 'Big Take.' Invoking the FSM to 'win big prize money'? That takes the prize.
Vet 2: The FSM did provide 'life-altering discoveries' but UC's role was akin to the role the influenza virus played in the discovery of the flu vaccine.
Vet 3: I'll tell them how much we appreciated all the time and effort the University put into helping us create the Free Speech Movement: 'Without their effort, it would not have been necessary.'"
2/17/2019, L.A. Taco, JACKIE GOLDBERG IS BACK: LIBERAL L.A. VETERAN TAKES ON CHARTER MOVEMENT IN L.A. SCHOOL DISTRICT SPECIAL ELECTION, Philip Iglauer
"One figure relishing the new atmosphere after the strike in January is Jackie Goldberg, who has emerged as the candidate to beat by virtue of her massive name recognition and liberal street cred. Goldberg, a veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, sat down for an interview with L.A. Taco at her home of 40 years in Echo Park."
2/16/2019, Berkeley Daily Planet, SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"On Feb 15, 2019, Barbara Stack, the dedicated steward who looks over the Free Speech Movement Archives (FSM-A), flashed word that www.fsm-a.org had received its first online visit from a resident of Ho Chi Minh City."
2/14/2019, UC Berkeley News, Buxbaum still going strong after seeing Berkeley through years of turmoil, John Hickey
"His first taste of the building tide of unrest that would engulf Berkeley came in 1964. One of his law students came to him with the news that a couple of her sorority sisters had been at an FSM sit-in, had been arrested and were sitting in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. Could Buxbaum do something to help bail them out? He could. And he would make multiple trips to Santa Rita in the coming weeks to attempt to free dozens of others.
¶
'The work that had to be done started with those December 1964 arrests,' Buxbaum says. 'I was like the frog in slowly heating water. I was in.'
¶
The FSM trials began in April of 1965 and ran into the summer. Of the approximately 800 arrested, 773 pleaded not guilty. By having those 773, including most of the FSM ringleaders, take the same plea, that meant they would all get the same sentence. It took two years before the final appeals of sentences--mostly fines and probation--were made."
2/7/2019, EdSource, CA Gov. Newsom's higher ed advisor to tackle access and financial aid issues, Larry Gordon
"Going back 55 years ago to the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, there has always been tension between governors and the boards that govern university systems. Other than the budget, what are the governor's goals in how these systems are run?"
2/7/2019, Berkeleyside, Accusations of elder abuse and lies swirl around landmarking process for Save the Bay founder's home, Frances Dinkelspiel
"[Marion] McNiven prepared the landmark application for both houses. She argues that 1450 Hawthorne Terrace is not only eligible for architectural reasons, but for cultural ones as well. She makes the point that Donald McLaughlin held a UC Regents meeting in the house during the turmoil of the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Sylvia McLaughlin was inspired to fight bay fill by what she saw out of the window. Sperry fought to save old-growth redwoods and was an early member of Save the Redwood League, according to the application."
2/6/2019, UCI News, Safeguarding the First Amendment, Jim Washburn
"'There are constant issues with regard to free speech on campuses across the country--and related issues in terms of how to promote civic engagement on campuses,' Chemerinsky says. 'As a university administrator, I'm always excited to create programs nobody else is doing. It's so important to have a sustained and systematic study of these issues, and the University of California should be the leader. The free speech movement started at the University of California.'
¶
Prior to that mid-1960s, Berkeley-based effort, political activism was routinely prohibited on campuses. The hard-fought successes of the campaign opened the door for students to advance civil rights and women's rights, oppose the Vietnam War, and have a voice in other controversies."
2/6/2019, The Crimson, Student Activism Has Lost Its Spirit, Sahil Handa
"Young skins have become thinner, aspirations have grown smaller, and bigots have seized the countercultural mantle. Potential allies have been left politically deserted and students have grown perennially distracted. The notion that members of the free speech movement could have once marched alongside sexual liberators and drug legalizers is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine." [Ed note: Unity requires communication and organization. In 1964 The Crimson covered the FSM and Mario Savio visited the campus. See Crimson articles below, December 8-15, 1964]
1/24/2019, Detroit Free Press, Decades of poetry, activism earn Gloria House prestigious Kresge Award, Julie Hinds
"As a young woman, House played a role in some of the key justice movements of the 1960s. She joined the free speech movement as a graduate student in comparative literature at the University of California Berkeley, then left campus in 1965 to work for the civil rights movement in the deep South, specifically for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee."
1/24/2019, Berkeleyside, Did Kamala Harris' Berkeley childhood shape the presidential hopeful?, Natalie Orenstein
"'Growing up in the flatlands of Berkeley, I was raised on stories of activism of the 1960s,' Harris told Berkeleyside. 'From my mother, I learned about the civil rights movement, which was of course allied with the anti-war movement and the Free Speech Movement. She would tell us about students picketing Mel's Drive-In for not hiring black servers and CORE organizing sit-ins to protest the federal government's inaction to combat discrimination in the South, and Maya Angelou or Fannie Lou Hamer holding forth at the Rainbow Sign."
1/22/2019, Angelus, Made in LA: A Catholic contrarian, Greg Erlandson
"Dale's [Dale Vree] biography can be found in his fascinating memoir and social commentary titled 'From Berkeley to East Berlin and Back.' He left UCLA for Berkeley in the early 1960s, becoming a Marxist and an atheist and active in the Free Speech Movement."
1/21/2019, Washington Post, Nathan Glazer, urban sociologist and label-defying intellectual, dies at 95, Harrison Smith
"Dr. Glazer sometimes traced the pivotal moment in his intellectual evolution - his 'mugged by reality' moment, as it were--to the 1960s, when he became disillusioned with the student Free Speech Movement while teaching at Berkeley. But that was just the beginning of a career spent grappling with the chief tenets of the left and the right."
1/20/2019, The Associated Press, Sociologist and intellectual, Nathan Glazer, dead at 95, Hillel Italie
"Glazer himself would prove unhappy with the new thinking of the 1960s. As a faculty member in 1964 at the University of California at Berkeley, he was appalled by the student Free Speech Movement and condemned its 'enthusiastic and euphoric rejection of forms and norms.' He and Kristol soon helped launch a seminal neo-conservative journal, The Public Interest, which Glazer edited from 1973 to 2002."
1/19/2019, New York Times, Nathan Glazer, Urban Sociologist and Outspoken Intellectual, Dies at 95, Barry Gewen
"He had taken a teaching post at Berkeley in 1963, just as the student rebellions of the 1960s were erupting. Opposed to the growing American military involvement in Vietnam and supportive of social policies designed to help the poor, he initially sympathized with the student protesters. But as they grew more extreme--'nihilistic' was Mr. Glazer's word--he turned away from them and his own leftist past as well. He moved toward what he saw as a hard-won pragmatism but what others saw as a reactive conservatism."
1/5/2019, The Irish Times, 'You are now entering Free Derry': 50 years on, Freya McClements
"In the early hours of January 5th, 1969, he scrawled the words 'You are now entering Free Derry' across the house's gable end--and Free Derry Corner was born.
¶
The words were those of author and politician Eamonn McCann, adapted from a similar slogan used by students involved in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in Berkeley." [Ed note: there is no evidence that this slogan was used during the Free Speech Movement. It may have been used by persons who had been involved in the FSM along their future life trajectories and as part of other projects.]
12/28/2018, KCBS Radio, Protesters Thwart Plans To Cut Down People's Park Trees, Bob Butler
"The park got its name in the 1960s when it became an unofficial headquarters for the free-speech movement that flourished on Berkeley's campus." [Ed note: People's Park was established in 1969. The Free Speech Movement lasted from 10/3/1964 when the name was adopted to 4/28/1965 when it was explicitly dissolved. The only connection is the Free Speech Movement image on the mural near the park.]
12/21/2018, Davis Enterprias, Obituaries: Geraldine Jane Hagie,
"Among her many fascinating experiences were, attending UC Berkeley during the free speech movement, working for D-Q University in its heyday, and raising her family in Davis."
12/20/2018, Berkeleyside, As staffing crisis continues for Berkeley police, officers who left reveal why, Emilie Raguso
"It's undeniable that many in Berkeley have strong feelings about how they want their police force to function.
¶
'This community is very sensitive to government overreaching,' said Alison Bernstein, who has lived in Berkeley since she was 4 and served on the city's Police Review Commission for many years. She said Berkeley's history with the Free Speech Movement and other significant political efforts has definitely shaped community expectations. 'With the history that we've come through, I understand why people are loath to have helicopters and canines.'"
12/15/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, Contest of opinion, Gar Smith
"Regarding 'Free speech isn't supposed to be easy' (John Diaz, Insight, Dec. 9): As a veteran of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, I share the concern over the 'prior restraint' of inflammatory speech. Still, when a provocateur known for preaching violence, division and hatred comes to campus and you need to arrange for extra insurance and police, it's clear that you've got a problem. But there are better ways to handle controversial speech. Consider, for instance, the hallowed tradition of the academic debate. Instead of giving a single polarizing speaker total control over the podium, host a public contest of opinion."
12/12/2018, Berkeleyside, How a little-known Berkeley group sparked the 1960s student movement, Liam O'Donoghue
"The narrative about Berkeley's emergence as a mecca of the counterculture and leftist politics often puts its start with the launch of the Free Speech Movement. The raucous protests that erupted on Sproul Plaza in 1964 helped incite a confrontational student movement that would spread across America and become one of the defining forces of the decade. National media coverage of impassioned young people giving fiery speeches while standing atop a police car also made Berkeley a magnet for idealistic students, militant activists and curious rabble-rousers. Thousands arrived, ready for action. This town, and the rest of the country would never be the same again.
¶
However, a crucial chapter of this story is usually overlooked--the years of organizing that made the Free Speech Movement possible. The roots of this pivotal moment go all the way back to the mid-1950s when a group of students began efforts to shift the focus of student government from campus activities towards political issues such as civil rights. By 1958, this group established a political party called SLATE."
12/8/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, Truce achieved in Berkeley free speech fight, John Diaz
"Here is the welcome bottom line: Conservatives are guaranteed a platform at the university of the 1960s Free Speech Movement. The demonstrators who have tried to silence high-profile appearances by right-wing provocateurs such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter will not be able to stop future appearances by threatening havoc.
¶
And, just as important: The conservatives who have tried to claim censorship and martyrdom when they encounter the conditions imposed on all other groups have lost their talking point. The Young America's Foundation agreed to this deal and will be paid $70,000 of its attorney fees."
12/3/2018, The News-Gazette, This day in history, Dec. 3, 2018, The Associated Press
"In 1964, police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in."
12/3/2018, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Who tragedy, and other iconic photos from December 3, Associated Press
"1964: College Demonstrations ¶
University of California students and sympathizers of free speech movement are sealed off behind police line in front of Sproul Hall in Berkeley, Calif., Dec. 3, 1964. More than 200 officers were removing 500 limp demonstrators from the hall where they had been locked up for the night. (AP Photo)" [ed note: 800+ were arrested]
12/2/2018, The Daily Californian, What is UC Berkeley? 8 times when UC Berkeley was an answer on 'Jeopardy!', Camryn Bell
"Episode: #3995 ¶
Category: Freedom Fighters ¶
Question value: $400 ¶
Question: Mario Savio set off the Free Speech Movement when political activities were banned on this UC campus in 1964. ¶
The Savio Steps are indicative of how significant Mario Savio has been to UC Berkeley and its role in the Free Speech Movement. Luckily the contestant got this one right."
11/28/2018, Inside Higher Ed, Civility at Berkeley, Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
"In October 2017, members of the College Republicans moved to oust the president of the group, Troy Worden, who had supported Yiannopoulos's 'free speech week.' Worden is now an intern for The Daily Signal, which is published by the Heritage Foundation. He has still clashed with the Berkeley administration as of just last month, when he wrote a piece for The Daily Signal claiming Berkeley was limiting free speech. Mogulof said it was riddled with inaccuracies and misinterpreted the institution's new policies. The College Republicans did not respond to a request for comment."
11/27/2018, Los Angeles Times, A dream deferred: Pioneering all-female rock band Ace of Cups is finally having its moment, Michele Willens
"They were soon part of the fabric of their place and time. None more so than [Denise] Kaufman, who dropped out of UC Berkeley (where she was arrested in the free-speech protests) at 18, and temporarily hopped on Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters bus. At various points, she was apparently the focus of many a famous male's life. (Hint: Check out the current biographies of Paul Simon and Jann Wenner)"
11/23/2018, Corvallis Gazette-Times, Letters show dip in civil discourse, George Ice
"One of the reasons I attended the University of California at Berkeley as an undergraduate was its legacy from the Free Speech Movement. It is disappointing to see our debates dissolving to name-calling rather than civil disagreement and resolution. If my attributions about either party are incorrect, then let's see some resolution."
11/20/2018, World Magazine, Convictions and consequences, Sophia Lee
"UC Berkeley birthed the Free Speech Movement in 1964, but this incident is just the latest crisis threatening the school's historic image as a bastion for free speech and inclusivity. One student at the meeting said there was no space for conservatism that was 'hateful,' adding that for such ideas, freedom of speech should be revoked. Another called [Isabella] Chow's speech 'corny as hell' and said remarks can kill people."
11/19/2018, The Washington Examiner, At Berkeley, rational discussion descends into darkness, Mark J. Perry and Sean Kennedy
"The deep irony of the campus mobs devouring one of their own is not the what or the why, but the where. Berkeley was the home of the 1964 Free Speech Movement--where the unlikely bedfellows of leftists, anarchists, and even arch-conservative Barry Goldwater backers, came together to stand up for students' right to protest, speak up, and actively participate in the campus discourse."
11/15/2018, Wired, A 1970s ESSAY PREDICTED SILICON VALLEY'S HIGH-MINDED TYRANNY, Noam Cohen
"As political organizations became more radical during the 1960s, [Jo] Freeman told me, she would think back to the first organization she joined while on campus-the Young Democrats. They may have lacked the passion of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, which Freeman also joined, but they were able to get things done by having clear leaders and clear rules of governance. 'At the Young Democrats, I watched men--there weren't any women chairs--chair meetings using Robert's Rules of Order and get through an agenda in three hours that would have taken the Free Speech Movement three days.'"
11/10/2018, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Cruzin': Santa Cruzans not afraid to speak up, Steve Kettmann
"Coonerty, a former Santa Cruz mayor and current member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, then went on to cite the words of the leader of the 1964 Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, Mario Savio.
¶
''There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part,'' Coonerty recited, quoting from Savio's famous Sproul Plaza speech of December 1964. ''You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.''
¶
If you're a Bay Area person of a certain age, you've heard those lines a thousand times. You know just where Savio's voice would catch, you know it by heart like some early Dylan song you long ago memorized. And those words have probably been cited too often, 'Fire' shouted too often--but not this time."
11/9/2018, The Berkeley Daily Planet, The Times, They Were A-Changing. Paula Friedman Tells a Sixties Tale in The Change Chronicles, Gar Smith
Paula Friedman first came to the attention of local booklovers with her 2011 novel, The Rescuer's Path, which Ursula K. Le Guin called 'exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.' The Change Chronicles is equally involving, especially since it is rooted in Friedman's personal experience as a reporter for the Berkeley Barb and a participant in what became known as the 'Port Chicago Vigil.'
¶
As Friedman noted during her BHS reading, her novel covers a period of critical historical transformation-- following Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, paralleling the anti-war movement, and anticipating 'the junction before the women's movement.'
¶
This new tale of love and political struggle begins in 1965 as it follows the political and emotional adventures of a young Berkeley Barb reporter named Nora Seikh. After bravely disengaging from an abusive relationship, Nora falls for a 'flamboyant activist' who sweeps her off her sandals only to bid a fond adieu when he discovers he's left her pregnant.
11/6/2018, The Daily Californian, Vote to uphold UC Berkeley's free speech legacy, Lynne Hollander
"When Savio returned to Berkeley in the fall of 1964, eager to continue the struggle for civil rights, he and other student activists were told that they could not use the Bancroft strip, the little piece of land at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue--or any place else on this campus--to support voter registration in Mississippi or any civil rights activities, whether in the South or in Berkeley. They wouldn't be allowed to raise money, recruit members or advocate on behalf of any other political or societal concern.
¶
In response, students formed the Free Speech Movement. We fought the ban with civil disobedience, direct action and eventually were able to get it overturned. The UC Board of Regents agreed to abide by the Constitution of the United States and allow free speech and its associated activities to take place on campus. There were many leaders in that struggle; Savio's moral clarity and eloquence led him to become the most famous."
11/5/2018, Document Journal, Has the internet broken the marketplace of ideas? Rethinking free speech in the Digital Age, Cody Delistraty
"'Those who identify as 'extremely liberal,' have always been, on average, the most supportive of free speech (even for racist speakers),' wrote Justin Murphy, an assistant professor of politics and international relations at the University of Southampton, who analyzed the data. 'Historical phenomena such as the left-wing Berkeley Free Speech movement of the 1960s has not been reversed by contemporary SJWs [Social Justice Warriors]; extreme liberals carry on that tendency' of supporting free speech. 'The inference here,' Murphy continues, 'is simply that SJWs are actually not extreme liberals.'" [Ed note: the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement was a left-right coalition.]
11/3/2018, Reason, Students for a Freer Future, Robby Soave
"Libertarians had their own clubs too. An Alliance of Libertarian Activists came into existence at Berkeley in the '60s. A leader of that group, Danny Rosenthal, was arrested over his involvement with the Free Speech Movement, which united all kinds of politically active students against the University of California's censorious administration." [Ed note: Danny Rosenthal wasn't arrested in the Free Speech Movement, but in the subsequent Obscenity or Filthy Speech Movement. However, the University Society of Libertarians appears as part of the FSM coalition on a document dated 12/4/1964.]
11/2/2018, The Paisano, Be comfortable being uncomfortable, Editorial
"One of the purposes of protest is to bring attention to societal problems, that would not otherwise be addressed. In the 1960s, The University of California, Berkeley heavily restricted the activity of political student organizations on campus. Students who wanted to stop racial discrimination and the United States' participation in the Vietnam War could not have those discussions with their campus peers. This culminated in the Free Speech Movement, which challenged the administration at Berkeley through protesting. Because of their efforts, universities remain spaces of open debate. If universities were to censor speech because some students disagree with the message, then the university would be undermining its duty to expose students to new ideas."
10/30/2018, The Daily Californian, Original Free Speech Movement members speak at voting rally at Sproul Hall, Sarah Chung
"Dean of Students Joseph Greenwell urged voters to appeal to friends, partners, family, and even those with opposing opinions to vote and help advocate for those who are unable to vote.
¶
'I came to this campus because of the Free Speech Movement,' Greenwell said. 'That (movement) has changed systems. That has changed the world and has given us a little bit of a better place that we live in, but it is not over — we have got to continue in this path.'"
10/29/2018, ABC News San Francisco, Leaders from free speech movement rally students at UC Berkeley to get out, vote, Anser Hassan
"It's been 54 years a since the Free Speech movement ignited on the steps of Sproul Hall at U.C. Berkeley.
¶
The student-lead protest fought to overturn an on-campus ban on political activities. Some of the original members spoke Monday afternoon at Sproul Hall with a specific message for students.
¶
'There is never enough that you can do. And we will see if (young people) turn out to vote. That's the least you can do,' says Lynne Hollander Savio, the widow of Mari Savio, who lead the free speech fight more than half a century ago. Her message to young voters: use your vote as a voice for change.
¶
'Don't be apathetic. You can affect change. And, you should be working for change because we need a lot of improvement,' says Hollander Savio."
10/28/2018, History News Network, Will Voters Trust Candidates Under 30?, Wallace Hettle
"In fairness to [Jack] Weinberg, it is worth giving some context. He helped lead the Berkeley Free Speech movement in 1964, when students fought against the suffocating control of the university. Weinberg was arrested while distributing literature from the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) without permission from the school. Students surrounded the police car with Weinberg inside, preventing it from moving. Electrifying photos of graduate student Mario Savio speaking from the car's roof marked a dramatic turning point for student politics.
¶
In its wake, Weinberg was interviewed by a reporter whose questions implied 'we were being directed behind the scenes by Communists . . . . I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.'" [Ed Note: There were a lot of older people who advised and shaped the FSM: Bill Mandel on the Executive Committee, Socialist historian Hal Draper, Howard Jeter of the Democratic Party, psychiatrist Neal Blumenfeld, attorney and activist Ann Ginger, pacifist Ira Sandperl, firebrand Brad Cleaveland, Women for Peace activists Alice Hamburg and Madeline Duckles, singer and activist Barbara Dane, and clergy including Rev. James Fisher and Walter Herbert. And many more.]
10/18/2018, The Daily Californian, Third World Liberation Front Research Initiative launches crowdfund, Shelby Mayes
"Pablo Gonzalez, lecturer in Chicanx studies, said the research initiative is important to Berkeley's history, and he expressed that the Free Speech Movement is an overrepresented part of Berkeley's history.
¶
'The Third World Liberation Front research is in part where we see the TWLF offer something to the Free Speech Movement, which has been primarily viewed as white male,' Gonzalez said. 'The FSM doesn't happen if students of color don't protest the fact that while they are coming to the university, they are still feeling that what they're learning does not only not reflect their experiences but also has a racist pedagogy.'" [Ed note: The 1964 Free Speech Movement did, in fact, include both male and female people of color among its participants and arrestees.]
10/15/2018, Washington Post, 'Going low' only validates Trump and debases America, Richard Cohen
"You might disagree. But recent political history strongly suggests that bad manners make for bad tactics. Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California twice by running against student demonstrators at the University of California at Berkeley. Reagan, who is invariably lauded as a gentleman, called the campus 'a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters and sex deviants.' The demonstrations did little to change America, but they eventually made Reagan president of the United States." [Ed note, with thanks to Prof. Robert Cohen: this theme played a very minor role in Reagan's campaigns. The FSM did not cause his electoral victories.]
10/15/2018, USA Today, 10 reasons you need to explore quirky Berkeley, Lois Alter Mark
"This plaque in Sproul Plaza pays tribute to the Free Speech Movement
¶
Sproul Plaza, on the UC Berkeley campus, played a pivotal role in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. It commemorates some of those historic moments with a plaque that honors Mario Savio, leader of the movement, right by the steps where he gave his own speech.
¶
There's also a round cement stone set into the walkway, which reads, 'The soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction.' The actual monument is the invisible air space rising from the soil-filled hole in the stone, providing an area for anyone to speak their mind.
¶
These tributes to the importance of free speech are powerful and sobering, and as relevant as ever."
10/15/2018, The New Yorker, The Rise and Fall of Affirmative Action, Hua Hsu
"A person ran up the slope toward us to say that Mario Savio, a hero of Berkeley's free-speech movement in the sixties, had just died. Through a bullhorn, another person recited the famous speech that Savio had delivered on the steps of Sproul Hall: 'There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels . . . upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that, unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!'
¶
I remember wondering whether we weren't actually defending the machine. Our idea of freedom seemed so limited compared with that of the people who came before. Decades after John F. Kennedy's grand vision to act affirmatively, affirmative action's last stand involves seats at the most élite universities in the world."
10/10/2018, The Daily Signal, UC Berkeley Limits Free Speech … Again, Troy Worden
"The University of California at Berkeley, regarded as the birthplace of the free speech movement, has done away with one of its historic 'free speech zones.'
¶
Carol Christ, chancellor of UC Berkeley, last month emailed a statement to students, faculty, and staff detailing changes to the university's policy regarding free speech events on campus.
¶
Among the changes is designation of the West Crescent section of campus as a 'free speech zone,' meaning it will not be subject to additional restrictions imposed last year on other areas of campus.
¶
But Christ also announced that Lower Sproul Plaza, which historically has been considered a free speech zone, along with Upper Sproul Plaza, now will be subject to those restrictions."
10/9/2018, Overton County News, UC-Berkeley settles discrimination suit,
"YAL [Young Americans for Liberty] President Cliff Maloney Jr. added, 'As the birth place of the Free Speech Movement and a public university, UC-Berkeley has done the right thing in agreeing to respect the First Amendment in this matter. I applaud the students for standing up for their constitutionally protected freedoms and advocating for a level playing field.'"
10/5/2018, The Spectator, Free speech and expensive schools in South Dakota, Joseph Bottum
"The old liberal demand for free speech (enshrined in adulatory accounts of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964) is being battered these days by a newer liberal demand for protection from offense. Given the general leftward drift of American colleges over the past 40 years, the transition may indicate nothing more than the fact that everybody praises dissent until they win, becoming the ones dissented against. But one way or another, 'free speech' has now become a rallying cry for those perceived as academic conservatives--with 'free speech equals hate speech' the counter-chant from academic radicals."
10/3/2018, San Francisco Chronicle from Washington Post, The bipartisan war against speech, Max Boot
"At my alma mater, the home of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, violent protesters last year forced the cancellation of appearances by Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos. Both are absurd and sinister figures who should never have been invited in the first place, but once the invitation was extended it should not have been rescinded under threat of force.
¶
Yet many of those who claim to speak for liberalism have a different view. A Cato Institute-YouGov survey last year found that 52 percent of Democrats favor a ban on hate speech, while 72 percent of Republicans oppose it. So does that mean that Republicans are pro-speech? Hardly. A more accurate interpretation would be to say that most members of the overwhelmingly white Republican Party aren't bothered by defamation of minorities, i.e., people unlike them."
10/2/2018, Pacific Standard, IN 1850, MODERATES IN CONGRESS STRESSED COMITY-AND BROUGHT ON THE CIVIL WAR, Oliver Lee Bateman
"That 'Great Debate,' which raged from January of 1850 until the various parts of the Compromise of 1850 were passed separately that September, is the subject of historian Stephen E. Maizlish's new book, A Strife of Tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the Ideological Foundations of the American Civil War. Maizlish, who was himself a participant in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California-Berkeley in the early 1960s and is now a professor at the University of Texas-Arlington, spent years reading all the House and Senate speeches related to the Compromise of 1850 that were published in the Congressional Globe, as well as a good deal of the surrounding correspondence between congressmen and their friends, constituents, and spouses."
10/1/2018, The Vindicator, Today in History, Associated Press
"1964: The Free Speech Movement begins at the University of California, Berkeley."
9/28/2018, The Orion, Erwin Chemerinsky talks campus free speech at Chico State, Justin Jackson
"'Every generation thinks it's the first to discover the issue of free speech on college campuses,' WChemerinsky said, 'but the reality is that the controversies about this are about as old as colleges and universities.'
¶
The image he brought up, what he believes most people see when they think of free speech issues on campus, the free speech movement that happened in Berkeley in the mid-1960s. He also showed how times have changed since then. Instead of going against the administration for free speech on college campuses, the current issue is outsiders wanting to come to campus and speak."
9/27/2018, UC Berkeley News, Chancellor Christ: Our authentic and ever-changing story, Carol Christ
"For our university, the defining events of the past year revolved around free speech. We began the autumn with two free speech 'events'--a speech by the conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, and a 'free speech week' planned by the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. It was both a legal obligation and a reputational necessity that the university do everything it could to enable the speeches to take place. Shapiro's did; Yiannopoulos tried unsuccessfully to provoke the university into cancelling his event in pursuit of his desired narrative-cum-headline: Berkeley, home of the free speech movement, denies free speech. We called his bluff, the charade collapsed and his student hosts cancelled the event. Together, our words and deeds succeeded in supporting a story both simple and true: Berkeley's commitment to freedom of expression is unwavering."
9/25/2018, UC Davis News, Guest Chancellor to Address 'Free Speech on Campus', Dateline Staff
[UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman in a lecture last year:] "'But, on top of that, as a result of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, an additional zone of free speech was insisted upon correctly: Outside of the professional environment, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement established the proposition that the public spaces in campus should be free for the expression of even unprofessional, uncivil, profane and even hateful points of view.'"
9/25/2018, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley campus must continue to protect free speech, Alexandra Barr
"UC Berkeley students have the honor to walk the Sproul Plaza steps as did Mario Savio, the voice of the Free Speech Movement. Savio is often pointed to when the media criticizes our campus for being hypocritical. Yet it is also important to remember that Savio clarified free speech as a means of responsible discourse. Savio emphasized that the best use of our free speech is that which is thoughtful and holds significance. Savio used his words to inspire and to create change. Savio did not use his words to degrade individuals or to instigate conflict. Channeling the Savio within all of us will encourage speech with intent rather than senseless rhetoric. While we must do everything to protect free speech, we must also recognize that it is incumbent upon us as citizens to practice this right responsibly."
9/25/2018, Independent Australia, Dan Tehan wants students to pay for 'free' speech, Con Karavias
"Beyond this, such charges are a major attack on civil liberties. The right to political organisation and expression should be a universal one. It is one that generations of student activists have fought for, dating back to the monumental Free Speech Movement at Berkeley University. In imposing onerous costs on demonstrators the Liberals would tilt the scales even further in favour of the wealthy when it comes to political expression."
9/17/2018, The Washington Times, Jeff Sessions: Colleges, universities that stifle free speech are 'bullies', Jeff Mordock
"In his speech Monday, Mr. Sessions said Berkley's is largely known as being the home of the 1960s free speech movement.
¶
The Berkeley case is one of four in which the Justice Department has filed a statement of interest claiming a university has blocked student's First Amendment right to free speech."
9/17/2018, The Conversation, In 1968, computers got personal: How the 'mother of all demos' changed the world, Margaret O'Mara
"The Vietnam-era counterculture already had made mainframe computers into ominous symbols of a soul-crushing Establishment. Four years before, the student protesters of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement had pinned signs to their chests that bore a riff on the prim warning that appeared on every IBM punch card: 'I am a UC student. Please don't bend, fold, spindle or mutilate me.'"
[referenced source: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/FSM_fold_bend.html]
9/12/2018, Bay Area Reporter, Out candidates vie for Berkeley City Council, Alex Madison
"'I want to save the legacy of the free speech movement and People's Park,' [Aidan] Hill said."
9/10/2018, BuzzFeed News, Opinion | Dear College Students: Don't Let Trolls Own Free Speech, Jamie Kirchick
"But throughout American history, it has more often than not been people on the left whose free speech rights have been abrogated. From World War I pacifists and anarchists to McCarthyism to the 1960s Free Speech Movement and the Reagan- and Bush-era fights over controversial art exhibitions, progressives and radicals have repeatedly been forced to invoke their First Amendment rights against societal efforts to shut them up or lock them away. Every movement for social justice in this country--from abolitionism to civil rights, women's liberation to gay liberation--has depended upon the freedom of speech and association guaranteed by the First Amendment to advance its cause. Considering the censorious proclivities of the president and his supporters, it is all the more important that those who oppose him be consistent in defending the principle that freedom of speech is sacrosanct, for all of us."
9/2/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, Malcolm Zaretsky,
"He was a resident of Berkeley since 1961, where he was active in political action, including civil rights and opposition to the war in Vietnam. He was closely involved in the Free Speech Movement when he was a graduate student, and worked on voter registration in Mississippi in the 'Freedom Summer' in 1964. Until poor health prevented it, he was active traveling, hiking, back-packing, skiing, bicycling. And he always enjoyed spending time in a coffee shop with friends, talking about politics, over a cappuccino."
9/2/2018, Quilette, Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation?, Matthew Lesh
"Historically, campus censorship was enacted by zealous university administrators. Students were radicals who pushed the boundaries of acceptability, like during the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. Today, however, students work in tandem with administrators to make their campus 'safe' from threatening ideas."
8/27/2018, Berkeleyside, Barbara Garson's 7 years in Berkeley: From Cuba to 'MacBird', Tom Dalzell
"When she and Marvin arrived in Berkeley, they had seen Operation Abolition, a short film produced by the House Committee on Un-American Activities documenting demonstration and rioting during the San Francisco hearings in May 1960. The film was produced in an attempt to discredit the protesters at the HUAC hearings. Operation Abolition was shown around the country during 1960 and 1961. It was clumsy propaganda at best and it did more to build the young movement than to demonize it as Communist-inspired. Berkeley became a beacon and a magnet, the place to inspire and the place to go for young people feeling the awakening of the political forces that would shape the '60s. It was a draw for Garson, and it was a draw for others."
8/26/2018, KPIX-TV, A Tidal Wave Of Student Protests Swept Over The Bay Area In the 1960s [video],
"That video of those students getting hosed down the steps and dragged out into Civic Center Plaza is just as incredible now as it was then, but in 1960, no one could have anticipated that what was happening at San Francisco City Hall was just the beginning of something much larger.
¶
'Maybe television was responsible,' says [Mark] Buell. 'I don't know, but it riled up everybody.'
¶
Watching that HUAC protest on television, an incoming wave of students that would make history.
¶
'Because of HUAC, I came to Berkeley,' laughs Dr. Bettina Aptheker, who would become a central figure in Free Speech and anti-war protests of the 1960s. 'I watched the protests there and I told my parents: 'I'm going to Berkeley!' It was explosive, all these political things were happening, the Civil Rights Movement, and [the school administration] suddenly said 'you can't organize and you can't picket and you can't hand out leaflets and you can't have rallies.' That's what started the free speech movement.'"
8/22/2018, CNN, The toppling of a Confederate statue shows students' strength, Nicole Hemmer
"Historically, universities have been (and some remain) institutions that favor order over other values. At the University of California Berkeley in 1964, for instance, student civil rights activism led university officials to strictly enforce the campus ban on political activity.
¶
That the campus had a ban on political activity was a sign that the university was conflict-averse. The crackdown led to the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, and over the course of the 1960s, campus protests spread, linking civil rights and anti-war activism with much-needed reforms at universities, which at the time were quite conservative institutions. They resisted integration by both black students and women, while emphasizing a strictly hierarchal structure in which students had no real voice."
8/18/2018, Quirky Berkeley, Barbara Garson--The Berkeley Years, Tom Dalzell
"After it all, Garson had good things and bad things to say about the FSM.
¶
The good: 'The spirit of solidarity was great. Ten thousand supporters on Sproul Plaza would decide tactical questions in an ego-less, cooperative way. Republicans, religious groups, sororities, fraternity boys -- everyone stayed together. The DuBois Club was very reliable, you could count on them.'
¶
The bad: 'The FSM started when powerful California businessmen pressured the University to limit our free speech on campus because we are using it to help minorities and working people off campus. But the exhausting year of fighting for our own rights diverted us from the causes we started organizing about. After the FSM many of us segued into the anti-Vietnam war movement. We didn't know enough about economics and didn't focus on how American working people were getting more desperate.'
¶
The bad, more: When asked about sexism in the FSM, Garson admits that she didn't even think about it then. She remembers being embarrassed by a few women who wanted to do laundry or feed the male leaders, but she thinks that this also embarrassed the male leaders like Jack Weinberg and Mario Savio.
¶
And: The treatment of women within the FSM itself was not bad, but the press was bad. Newspapers, which could not shed the idea that the movement had to be leader-based, tended to male identification of active and visible women -- Art Golderberg's sister or Herbert Aptheker's daughter or so-and-so's wife or girlfriend."
8/18/2018, Quirky Berkeley, Barbara Garson's Free Speech Movement Letters, Tom Dalzell
"Now that they've allowed things to take this course, some of the more militant people, Jack, Mario etc. seek adventurist ways to get the action going again, however, they reject the suggestions of the good hard work it takes to really involve the rank and file at the current stage. Remember, there are hundreds of students who were willing to get arrested on this and literally thousands who have asked to help. (On the other hand interest would be diminishing over time even if the process was not being speeded by decisions of the executive committee.) I have very little influence with them because I am working too hard. I guess I made a bad mistake. Anyone who sells newsletters on the corner, who types, who makes chain phone calls, is written off as a peon."
8/17/2018, Paste, SWMRS Are Back and "Berkeley's On Fire", Anna Haas
"This track is the music you'd hope to get from SWMRS--a song that expresses their oft-shared frustrations with the political/social climate. 'Too many motherfuckers confusing this freedom speech with swastikas,' Cole rages, and Max jumps into the forefront for a moment to call out Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos' planned speech at Berkeley last year was canceled when '150 masked agitators' showed up to an otherwise-peaceful protest to disrupt the event. The song harkens back further to Berkeley's history: The Free Speech Movement was led by students on campus in 1964 protesting a ban on on-campus political activities, and demanding their right to free speech and academic freedom. Even more of California seeps into the song with the surf-rock guitar solo."
8/13/2018, The National Review, Fantasyland, Alexander Nazaryan
"The riots remain in planning stages, I am happy to report. But they wouldn't have been the first Berkeley riots in the age of Trump. The first took place about a week after Trump's inauguration, when former Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos was slated to give one of his witless 'talks' on campus. Leftist activists saved him the trouble by rampaging through campus and town, punishing for his alleged transgressions an outlet of Starbucks, which had recently committed to hiring thousands of refugees. It was an ugly scene that earned denunciations from both Fox News commentators and original members of the Free Speech Movement."
8/8/2018, The Daily Californian, 'Radical and reformist': The legacy of UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, Alexandra Reinecke
"Former ASUC president and National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement fellow Will Morrow, however, resents that conservatives have cast campus protests against conservative speakers as suppression of conservative speech rather than an expression of the protesters' own liberal speech -- to do so, Morrow believes, is to distort the values of the Free Speech Movement.
¶
'These speakers want to come to Berkeley to provoke outrage and incite chaos under the guise of 'defending free speech' by deliberately misrepresenting the legacy of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement,' Morrow said in an email."
7/30/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, Ron Dellums, former congressman and Oakland mayor, dies at age 82, Rachel Swan
"Lee and others saw Dellums as a staunch supporter of three social movements that converged in the Bay Area during the 1960s: the free speech movement, the Black Panther Party movement, and the antiwar movement. It was a period of rowdy protests on college campuses and bloody standoffs between demonstrators and police."
7/27/2018, National Public Radio, James Kirchick: Who Benefits From Unrestricted Free Speech?, James Kirchick and Guy Raz
"KIRCHICK: I think there is a fundamental difference. I graduated from Yale in 2006, and when I look back on the Halloween costume controversy and other controversies that are happening across campuses today, something snapped in the past couple years. There is a different notion of what freedom of speech means. If you look back at the last great student revolt in the United States, it was in the late 1960s, and you look at the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, what was that about? It was about protecting the rights of, you know, left-wing anti-Vietnam War student protesters having the right to speak. They wanted to resist power. And they wanted to resist the governments in cahoots with their universities clamping down on their freedom. What are students now calling for? They want to collude with power. They want to collude with the administration and the government to shut down people with whom they disagree. It's the complete and utter opposite of the spirit that the student protesters in the '60s were fighting for." [Ed note: the FSM had nothing to do with the Vietnam War. The background issue was Civil Rights.]
7/18/2018, The Australian, Campus concern as free speech at American universities is under threat, The Economist (reprint)
"University administrators, whose job it is to promote harmony and diversity on campus, often find the easiest way to do so is to placate the intolerant fifth.
¶
The two groups form an odd alliance. Contentious campus politics have been a constant feature of American life for more than 50 years, but during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, students at Berkeley demonstrated to win the right to determine who could say what.
¶
Now the opposite is true. Student activists are demanding that administrators interfere with teaching, asking for mandatory ethnic studies classes, the hiring of non-white or gay faculty and the ability to lodge complaints against professors for biased conduct in the classroom. This hands more power to administrators.
¶
College administrators at public universities are subject to the full demands of America's First Amendment, which allows, among other things, hate speech and flag burning. Federal courts have struck down every speech code enacted at a public university, and the Supreme Court has declared academic freedom a 'transcendent value' of 'special concern to the First Amendment'."
7/13/2018, Nonprofit Quarterly, Is It Civil Disobedience When the Cops Shut Down the Freeway for You?, Steve Dubb
"When might a social movement decide that civil disobedience is appropriate? 'Direct action,' Hayes and colleagues note, 'is often an escalation and a tactical response to a system that is not offering acceptable outcomes.' Or, as Berkeley free speech movement activist Mario Savio once more dramatically put it:
¶
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
¶
So, if you are trying to stop the machine, how should you do so? Building on the work of Dean Spade, Peter Gelderloos, and others, Hayes, Kaba, and Trinidad provide a valuable concise guide of key questions to ask yourself, which are paraphrased below. These include:
¶
Does your action legitimize harmful institutions?
Does it legitimize or expand a system you are trying to dismantle? (For example, what does it mean to cooperate with cops as part of organizing your action? If the goal is to shrink the power of policing, why are you thanking them for their presence rather than calling for their removal?")
Does it have elite support?
Is the action colluding with power or resisting it?
Is there a clear demand that will improve the lives of the most marginalized?
To summarize: If you are colluding with authority and lack a clear demand, then you're doing something other than direct action. It also, the authors emphasize, matters who benefits from the action and who is organizing it."
7/11/2018, The Federalist, Revisiting Battlestar Galactica: 'Lay Down Your Burdens' (Parts 1 and 2), Warren Henry
"The writers draw upon American history in portraying Tyrol as a union agitator. His speech bor-rows from Mario Savio's address to Berkeley's Free Speech Movement before its 1964 sit-in. In turn, the reference to putting bodies on the machine recalls both the protests of Luddite labor activists and Ghandi's supporters blocking railroad tracks."
7/11/2018, New York Times, Oakland in Their Bones, and in Their Films, Brooks Barnes
"Oakland has been such fertile cultural ground for a variety of reasons. Geographically isolated on the east side of San Francisco Bay, the region became a center for African-American liberation in the early 20th century, with people moving from the rural South as part of the Great Migration. The subsequent influx of Latino and Asian immigrants 'made the area an unusual confluence, a place that offered a collective safety -- a unique cultural opportunity to be free and imaginative,' said Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Bay Area-based arts activist and performer.
¶
Add as kindling the Free Speech Movement (born at the nearby University of California, Berkeley) and oppression by a police department notorious for abuse and misconduct. The Black Panther Party originated here for a reason."
7/4/2018, KPFA, Voices of Independence--The Free Speech Movement: Sounds & Songs of Demonstrations,
"We are pleased to present the Sounds and Songs of Demonstrations, a verite-like sound production of moments and events during Free Speech Demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and 1965."
7/3/2018, Socialist Worker, 1968: SDS AND THE REVOLT OF THE CAMPUSES, Geoff Bailley
"But the beginning of the fall semester in 1964 gave a new direction to SDS: the explosion of the Berkeley Free Speech movement showcased the simmering anger among a new generation of students and showed the potential power of an organized student movement. SDS returned its attention to organizing on campus just as the Vietnam War was about to expand."
7/3/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, UC Berkeley settles conservative students' free-speech lawsuit, Nanette Asimov
"Cliff Maloney Jr., president of the national Young Americans for Liberty organization, praised the settlement and the university.
¶
'As the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement and a public university, UC Berkeley has done the right thing in agreeing to respect the First Amendment in this matter,' Maloney said in a statement. 'I applaud the students for standing up for their constitutionally protected freedoms and advocating for a level playing field.'"
7/2/2018, The New Yorker, Fighting Words, Andrew Marantz
"In 2014, at a teach-in commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, Wendy Brown spoke against trigger warnings and in favor of exposing students to new ideas. 'When we demand, from the right or the left, that universities be cleansed of what's disturbing,' she said, 'we are complicit with the neoliberal destruction of the university.' Back then, Milo Yiannopoulos was still an obscure opinion journalist, and Donald Trump was still a reality-show magnate. 'I haven't radically shifted my position, but it's fair to say that I've shifted my emphasis,' Brown told me. 'I've become newly attuned to how free speech can be used as cover for larger political projects that have little to do with airing ideas.'
¶
Carol Christ told me that the events of the past academic year hadn't changed her faith in the First Amendment, but that they had made her wonder how an eighteenth-century text should be interpreted in the twenty-first century. 'Speech is fundamentally different in the digital context,' she said. 'I don't think the law, or the country, has even started to catch up with that yet.' The University of California had done everything within its legal power to let Yiannopoulos speak without allowing him to hijack Berkeley's campus. It was a qualified success that came at a steep price, in marred campus morale and in dollars-nearly three million, all told. 'These aren't easy problems,' Brown told me. 'But I don't think it's beyond us to say, on the one hand, that everyone has a right to express their views, and, on the other hand, that a political provocateur may not use a university campus as his personal playground, especially if it bankrupts the university. At some point, when some enormous amount of money has been spent, it has to be possible to say, O.K. Enough.'"
6/25/2018, GetReligion, New York Times shows how to do a religion-free report on campus First Amendment wars, Terry Mattingly
"The bottom line: Political conservatives are attacking academia. The radical defense of free speech has become a 'conservative' thing, since liberal crowds shouting down conservative speakers is the big issue. If conservative students attempted to shout down liberal professors, that would be a normal (in other words 'real') First Amendment?
¶
You can tell that religion is hiding in here somewhere, because the Times piece stresses that these particular free-speech efforts offer, in the eyes of academia, an 'overly paternalistic approach' and are mere 'ammunition in the culture wars.'"
6/14/2018, The New York Times, In Name of Free Speech, States Crack Down on Campus Protests, Jeremy W. Peters
"Wisconsin is not alone. Republican-led state legislatures in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina have imposed similar policies on public colleges and universities, and bills to establish campus speech guidelines are under consideration in at least seven other legislatures. These efforts, funded in part by big-money Republican donors, are part of a growing and well-organized campaign that has put academia squarely in the cross hairs of the American right.
¶
The spate of new policies shows how conservatives are successfully advancing one of their longstanding goals: to turn the tables in the debate over the First Amendment by casting the left as an enemy of open and free political expression on campuses. It was at schools like Berkeley, after all, that the free speech movement blossomed in the 1960s.
¶
The new efforts raise a question that has only grown more intractable since President Trump took office: When one person's beliefs sound like hate speech to another, how do you ensure a more civil political debate?
¶
What conservatives see as a necessary corrective to decades of political imbalance in higher education, liberals and some college administrators see as an overly paternalistic approach to a problem that is being used as ammunition in the culture wars."
6/14/2018, The Mercury, Four campus free speech problems solved, David Moshman
"Instead of trying to restrict free speech to tiny areas, I suggest college and university leaders — in the spirit of the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement — start with the presumption of intellectual freedom across the campus."
6/13/2018, The Stanford Daily, Stanford's history with free speech, Mini Racker
"By the 1960s, fueled by the free speech movement across the bay at Berkeley, major concerns about the Stanford administration suppressing speech began to emerge.
¶
'When I first arrived in 1966, the administration was trying to limit the activities of recognized student organizations,' said Lenny Siegel, former leader of Stanford's Students for a Democratic Society and current Mountain View Mayor.
¶
As far as Siegel remembers, the administration attempted to dictate which groups could have permits to hold rallies, as well as which could have a desk in the ASSU space. Generally speaking, however, publicly challenging such attempts was enough to thwart them."
Summer 2018, California Magazine, Houses in the Hills: Berkeley's Early Bohemian Architecture, Barry Bergman
"The blurring of lines between social and political resistance can be seen in the Free Speech Movement, says Sean Burns, who teaches a course at Berkeley on 'Social Movements, Urban History, and the Politics of Memory.' Beyond winning the right to organize around off-campus political causes, he says, 'perhaps the most significant legacy' of the FSM was far-reaching and foundational, 'the rethinking of what education should and could be.'"
6/2/2018, Berkeley Daily Planet, Save the Murals, Gar Smith
"In 1976 (the Bicentennial of the American Revolution) a talented team of volunteer artists painted over the side of what is now Amoeba Records on Berkeley's Haste Street. Osha Neumann, the Berkeley lawyer-activist-artist who conceived and executed the mural, believed that Berkeley deserved a memorial to its own revolution-beginning 1964 with the Free Speech Movement and continuing through the creation of People's Park.
¶
'A People's History of Telegraph Avenue' (popularly known as the "People's Park Mural") has survived, graffiti-free for 42 years but the mural now is badly in need of repainting. Without a proper restoration, it could soon be lost forever.
¶
A fund-raising campaign has been initiated to save the mural. Tax-deductible donations can be sent to this Indiegogo account
¶
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-the-people-s-park-mural/x/3220044#/ and checks can be mailed to: Green Cities Fund, Inc., 725 Washington St., Ste. 300, Oakland, CA 94607. (Memo line on the check: 'People's Park mural.')"
5/19/2018, Centre Daily Times, Obituary Larry David Spence,
"From Monterey, he decided to go back to school and both he and Maya attended UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement and anti-war demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. As a journalist interested in politics, he wrote about the political struggles on campus, impressing the Political Science Department Head who offered him admission to the Ph.D. Program."
5/16/2018, The Lilith Blog, Leslie Cagan's Half-Century of Activism, Eleanor J. Bader
"LC: I went to the State University of New York in Fredonia for my first year of college. I thought I wanted to leave New York City but it was too isolated for me upstate. The free speech movement in Berkeley was just then hitting the news--it was 1964 and 1965. I realized that I wanted to be in a metropolitan area where activism was happening so I transferred to New York University (NYU)."
5/3/2018, The Chronicle of Higher Education, After Spending Millions on Provocative Speakers, Here's How Berkeley Is Trying to Avoid a Repeat, Chris Quintana
"The commission also suggested that Berkeley, along with the Board of Regents of the University of California system, solicit state lawmakers to help fund efforts to protect free speech on the campus, given its status as the birthplace of the free-speech movement.
¶
'The Berkeley campus is a lightning rod for free-speech issues,' the report says, 'and therefore carries the burden of protecting the First Amendment for the State of California and for public universities across the nation.'
¶
In a public email, [Chancellor Carol] Christ said she supported the commission’s findings. It’s unclear, though, how many will be put into effect. 'I will work with my leadership team to determine what is feasible for us to carry forward over the course of the next weeks and months,' she wrote."
5/2/2018, UC News, How students helped end apartheid, One Bold Idea
"In March of 1985, Pritchett and other activists decided to start a sit-in. They hauled their sleeping bags to Sproul Hall and renamed the plaza 'Biko Plaza' in honor of slain South African activist Steve Biko.
¶
It wasn't just your average protest. Day after day, night after night, students were attracted to the Sproul steps. Soon there were thousands of attendees and hundreds camping out, a level of activity the campus hadn't seen since the '60s. It had only been a week. The sustained growth was promising.
¶
Police attempted to crack down, arresting 158 protestors. In response, 10,000 students boycotted classes, and celebrities, from Kurt Vonnegut to Alice Walker to the Free Speech Movement's Mario Savio, came to Berkeley to show their support. The protest had become a movement. Anti-apartheid hero Bishop Desmond Tutu visited the Greek Theatre on campus that spring:
¶
As God looks down on you today, he's saying, hey, hey, have you seen my children in Berkeley? Eh? Don't you think that they're something else?"
5/2/2018, Spiked, WHY THE LEFT HAS TURNED ITS BACK ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH, Brendan O'Neill
"To those of us who know that Western leftists were often at the forefront of struggles for greater political and cultural freedom in the 20th century -- whether they were agitating against McCarthyite censorship of communist ideas, or setting up the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the early 1960s, or arguing against the idea that 'video nasties' warped minds and therefore should be banned -- it feels tragic that many leftists now agitate for the blacklisting or destruction of 'offensive' ideas and culture.
¶
When they call for far-right marches or speakers to be banned, leftists repeat the censoriousness of McCarthyism. (Indeed, the House Un-American Activities started as a purge of fascism from America before moving on to communism.) When some on the left fret that lads' mags or 'sexist' songs like 'Blurred Lines' or old books that contain the word nigger will unleash readers' and viewers' base instincts and potentially destabilise society, they echo the stiff, Christian censorship radicals once opposed. When leftists brand as 'phobic' -- that is, irrational -- anyone who thinks a man cannot become a woman, they repeat the terrible thing that was once done to them: they brand those who hold views they find difficult or offensive as 'ill', unstable, a threat to society."
4/23/2018, UC Irvine News, UC's National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement selects executive director,
"The University of California -- birthplace of the Free Speech Movement -- launched the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement to support and advance research, education and advocacy on these challenging issues.
¶
In February, the center announced its first 10 fellows. These scholars, students and analysts from across the country are spending a year researching timely, vital First Amendment topics. Their work will include developing tools, analyzing data and deriving lessons from history. Each will reside for a week at one of the 10 UC campuses to engage with students, faculty, administrators and community members."
4/16/2018, Jyllands-Postens, TageKampen for ytringsfrihed begyndte med 32 timer på bagsædet af en politibil, Jørgen Ullerup and Heidi Plougsgaard
"Ifølge professor Robert Cohen fra New York University, der har skrevet flere bøger om 1960'ernes kamp for ytringsfrihed i et meget konservativt USA, er det vigtigt at forstå, at gnisten til oprøret kom fra borgerretsbevægelsen, men at bevægelsen for ytringsfrihed i de følgende år satte gang i en kædereaktion.
¶
"Da præsident Johnson eskalerede Vietnamkrigen og begyndte at tæppebombe Nordvietnam, var de samme studerende fra Free Speech-bevægelsen klar til at protestere mod krigen," fortæller han."
4/13/2018, Los Angeles Times, 5 protest movements that shook college campuses in California, Alex Wigglesworth
"In what some would later describe as a blueprint for subsequent campus demonstrations, protests erupted at UC Berkeley after student groups were told they could no longer use a plaza for "off campus" political action. On Oct. 1, 1964, a crowd of students gathered around a police car to prevent the arrest of an activist who had defied the policy.
¶
The movement culminated with a sit-in at the university's main administration building on Dec. 2 that saw hundreds of protesters arrested.
¶
In the end, the Free Speech Movement succeeded in overturning the campus ban on promoting off-campus movements. Many also credited the movement with introducing to college campuses civil disobedience tactics widely employed in connection with the civil rights movement."
4/9/2018, Berkeley Daily Planet, New: SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces, Gar Smith
"Back on January 25, a news crew from Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based global news organization, visited the Berkeley campus to film interviews for a program on the collision of political extremism and 'free speech.'
¶
The 30-minute Faultline documentary has just been released. (You can watch the complete broadcast below.) ¶
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNfTPG7nVrg&feature=youtu.be
¶
In addition to resurrecting film clips of Berkeley's historic Free Speech Movement, the film crew also interviewed three FSM vets--Anita Medal, Steve Lustig, and yours truly. The final result, as the title reveals, is less about philosophical debates over the First Amendment and more about the tactics of the Black Bloc anarchists that comprise the anti-fascist (Antifa) clique.
¶
One surprising take-away from the up-close-and-personal interviews with protagonists on both sides of the Great Trump Split, is how reasonable the Alt-Right reps sound when contrasted to members of Antifa."
4/6/2018, Rasmussen Reports, #Neveragain Movement: Settle On A Clear Demand, Ted Rall
"At almost all these events, speakers proclaimed themselves present at the continuation or initiation of a movement. But sustained movements must be organized. These were, like the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, political spasms. Perhaps not theater as farce -- but theater at most. At best, some presaged something later, bigger and effective."
4/5/2018, United Federation of Teachers, Noteworthy graduates: Frank Wilczek, Nobel laureate in physics, Suzanne Popadin
"In retrospect, Van Buren was an extraordinary place then, with students like inventor Ray Kurzweil, political activist Mario Savio and Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth within a few years of one another. Everyone helped each other and set a level of ambition that was quite unusual. We were strivers: We wanted to improve ourselves and the world."
4/4/2018, Los Angeles Times, The iGeneration, inclusivity, and free speech on college campuses, Jiin (Jenny) Huh
"Battles over campus free speech have been continuous throughout American history. The student free speech movement began at the University of California Berkeley in 1964. Faculty members stopped students from distributing flyers and spreading information about the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Student Jack Weinberg was arrested for distributing civil rights literature. In protest, other students at the site sat on the road, blocking the police car with Weinberg for 32 hours. The confrontation proved too much for the university, and the faculty voted to end all restrictions on political activity. One of the first student movements proved victorious." [Ed. note: it was the Administration not Faculty which stopped students from distributing flyers.]
3/30/2018, Common Dreams, Trump's War Cabinet and Coming American Despotism: Will We the People Rise Up?, Nozomi Hayase
"Solidarity of civil disobedience that united the destiny of black and white people appeared in the Bay Area in 1964. Mario Savio, a young student of the University of California at Berkeley, upon returning from his volunteer in Mississippi Freedom Summer saw the similar struggle on the campus in the administration's ban on students' political activities and their effort to regulate the content of speech. Inspired by the courage of black people fighting for first class citizenship, students who had been treated as raw materials that are to be made into products, began pushing the boundaries of free speech.
¶
With sit-ins, picket lines and weeks of demonstrations, white middle class youth exercised speech that had consequences to rebel against bureaucracy and the university's crackdown on students who were participating in the civil rights movement. In his impassioned speech, Savio liberated human emotions that have been oppressed by the dictatorship of reason. The iconic image of this freedom's orator atop the police car ignited radical politics, giving birth to the free speech movement (FSM) that put the city of Berkeley at the center of world's attention."
3/25/2018, The New York Times, Dr. Sherwood Parker Obituary,
"Inspired by his family of Russian immigrants and Holocaust survivors, Dr. Parker fought for human rights throughout his life. At the University of Chicago as an assistant professor, he was one of only two faculty members who supported then-student Bernie Sanders' successful attempt to desegregate student housing in 1962. Dr. Parker continued to defy segregation in the 1960s with the Freedom Riders. At Berkeley, he became a passionate participant in the Free Speech Movement. Dr. Parker counted Mario Savio as a personal friend."
3/23/2018, The Daily Californian, 'A political instrument': UC Berkeley chancellors of years past recount attempts to balance politics, reputation, Sophia Brown-Heidenreich
"The chancellors and presidents of UC Berkeley have always dealt with passionate protesters. It is they who ultimately face the the trial of decision-making when politics risk disrupting their institution's academic purpose.
¶
Whether in reaction to Mario Savio's demands, the ban on affirmative action or the fiery Milo Yiannopoulos protests last spring, chancellors continually find themselves caught between the rock of student opinion and the hard requirements of their job description." [Ed note: Savio was among the leaders of the FSM. The demands were hardly his, alone.]
3/22/2018, The Daily Californian, Key UC Berkeley highlights throughout the decades, Sunny Sichi
"1960s
¶
It's not a list about UC Berkeley without a mention of the Free Speech Movement. In 1964, students protested a ban on campus activities, which led to protests over the Vietnam War, the 'Free Huey' movement and protests in People's Park throughout the decade. This momentum continues into present day, making UC Berkeley one of the most politically notorious schools ever." ¶
https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/43/the-free-speech-movement/
3/22/2018, Berkeleyside, New app lets you walk back in time on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, Daphne White
"The tour introduces visitors to events such as the Free Speech Movement; the building of, and riots at, People's Park; the civil rights shop-ins at Lucky's Supermarket; a landmark related to the Japanese internment; milestones in the disability rights movement; as well as some iconic book stores and theaters. On every corner of Telegraph Avenue, it seems, history rubs shoulders with characters and businesses that are still very much alive today.
¶....¶
There are 11 stops on the walking tour, each one featuring an audio interview with a Berkeley resident who was an eyewitness at the event. It's a kind of living history project, one that can be enjoyed and re-experienced on city streets rather than at a historical park. Jack Radey talks about the Free Speech Movement; Osha Newman talks about People's Park; Doris Moskowitz talks about her father, Moe Moskowitz, who owned Moe's Books; and Steve Wasserman remembers foreign cinema and literary culture on Telegraph in the 1950s and 60s.
¶....¶
[Stuart] Baker added that a lot of Europeans come to Telegraph because they have heard about 'the mystique of Telegraph, and they want to see it for themselves. I hear French people all the time, standing in front of the mural by the Amoeba, trying to tell their kids: 'This was the start of the 60s. In Paris we had the Sorbonne, and in the US they had Berkeley.''"
3/19/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland students' walkout in keeping with Bay Area history of protest, Otis Taylor, Jr.
"We live in area where student activism causes change.
¶
The Free Speech Movement began with a yearlong protest at UC Berkeley led by Mario Savio after students were barred from fundraising and distributing political flyers on campus. The university eventually relented, but student-led civil disobedience quickly spread to college campuses throughout the country in the '60s, coalescing into protests of the Vietnam War.
¶
Tuition for UC and California State University students remained frozen from 2011 to 2016 because Gov. Jerry Brown listened to student protesters.
¶
Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met in 1962 and four years later formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. As their movement grew, the Panthers' foot soldiers concentrated on building free breakfast programs.
¶
The breakfast program spread to cities across the country and at its height fed 10,000 children grits, eggs and toast each morning before school. The student activists' hard work became the blueprint for today's federal school breakfast program.
¶
Student-led social change doesn't just happen on college campuses. It's also happening in high school hallways."
3/14/2018, The New York Times, California Today, Tim Arango and Julie Turkewitz
"The tour has 11 stops with titles like 'the Free Speech Movement' and 'Satanic Verses and Cody's Books,' and it is narrated by people who participated in the avenue's history. Among them is Osha Neumann, a lawyer and painter of the People's Mural, which depicts social movements of the 1960s. This includes Bloody Thursday, a 1969 clash between students and police officers over the park that led to the death of a man named James Rector."
3/13/2018, Berkeleyside, Opinion: The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley was a defense of civil rights activism, Mukund Rathi
"The FSM began in the context of a militant civil rights fight against Bay Area businesses that were discriminating against Black workers. The UC Berkeley administration, responding to pressure from the business community and politicians, ramped up already-severe restrictions on student political organizing. Civil rights activists organized a coalition of groups called the Free Speech Movement in response and led thousands of students in militant direct actions to force the administration to allow free speech on campus. Right-wing forces on campus -- including students, faculty, and administration -- consistently opposed the FSM's principles and tactics and sought to repress the movement."
3/12/2018, East Bay Times, New walking tour app highlights Telegraph Avenue's history in Berkeley, Marta Yamamoto
"The 11 stops and titles include: the Free Speech Movement; Street Artists; Computer Memory at Leopold's Records; Japanese American Internment and the First Congregational Church; Foreign Cinema and Literary Culture; and People's Park Mural and the Riots of 1969.
¶
One stop, 'Race, Discrimination and the Shop,' narrated by Anita Medal, tells the story of Lucky's supermarket, a target of civil rights demonstrations until 1965 because of its anti-black hiring practices.
¶
She describes being there as CORE shoppers filled their baskets to the top, took them to the checkout and then refused to pay. At the time, she felt this was rude and disruptive but when she learned that three Civil Rights workers in Mississippi had disappeared and were found dead, her feelings changed.
¶
'What I saw at Lucky's I questioned and was uncomfortable with. I didn't understand how dire it was,' she said. 'Then I realized what it takes to create change, that was the whole point of it, to educate people and make them aware of how much discrimination and prejudice existed just under our noses and not just in the South.'"
3/11/2018, The Daily Californian, Has the message of the Free Speech Movement been lost? An interview with FSM veteran Sam Farber, Mukund Rathi
"Sam Farber is a professor emeritus of political science at the City University of New York. He was a graduate student in the department of sociology at UC Berkeley from 1963 to 1969, where he obtained his doctorate. He was active in the Free Speech Movement and the UC Berkeley chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality.
¶
He, along with Joel Geier and Hal Draper, founded the Independent Socialist Club in 1964, which played a key role in organizing the Free Speech Movement."
3/10/2018, openDemocracy, In defense of free speech, Samir Gandesha
"Of course, once upon a time, it was the Left that led the battle for freedom of speech and expression, a tradition that can be traced all the way back to the origins of the Left itself in what Jonathan Israel calls the 'radical Enlightenment' and the writings of Condorcet, d'Holbach, Diderot and heterodox Jew, Baruch Spinoza.
¶
It was the radical Enlightenment that played an instrumental role in challenging an ancien regime grounded in tradition, faith and authority which culminated in the revolutionary tradition that inspired among others the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. Invoking this tradition of radical Enlightenment, the Free Speech Movement, led by Mario Savio, was born in the 1964-65 term on the campus of UC Berkeley. The long-standing FSM agitated for the lifting of restrictions on free speech and for academic freedom for students."
3/4/2018, San Francisco Chronicle, Torch has passed to new generation of activists, Willie Brown
"All successful movements have a moment when they gather momentum. The great push for civil rights acquired its force thanks to Rosa Parks and the buses of Montgomery. The Free Speech Movement helped create the climate for mass opposition to the Vietnam War.
¶
It's possible that the attack in Parkland, Fla., will be that defining moment for the movement against rampant gun violence in the United States.
¶
The courageous students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who lost 17 of their classmates and school staffers allegedly to a 19-year-old with an assault rifle, have set in motion a reaction that goes beyond politics."
3/3/2018, Truthdig, Alice Waters: Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook (Audio and Transcript), Robert Scheer
[Robert Scheer] "You, as I say, in terms of career you were at Berkeley and you got involved in the Free Speech Movement, the Civil Rights Movement. And then in this campaign, and the Vietnam Day Committee, and then my own campaign, which was basically against the war and also working on poverty, to eradicate poverty in Oakland, which we failed on."
2/24/2018, Quirky Berkeley, Frank Bardacke -- He Stood Tall, Tom Dalzell
"Bardacke remembers: ... 'This was the time that Lenny Glaser was giving his talks at Bancroft and Telegraph. As the students left Madam Nhu's speech, Lenny, the practiced outdoor orator, was standing on the ledge above the steps delivering his own speech, admonishing the students for applauding. Here's the part I remember. 'You failed today. You failed a test in politics. And when you fail in politics it isn't like failing in school. It matters. And you will pay. You will pay in the jungles of Vietnam, in the pampas of Argentina, in the mountains of Nicaragua. When you fail in politics, you pay in blood.' It was magnificent. He held the attention of so many students, that the street across from Harmon was blocked. After a while the cops came. Made their way slowly through the crowd in a cop car with the siren blaring. The arrested Lenny. Put him in the car. Immediately some one sat down in front of the car, and was followed by many others. Lenny was in the back seat, delighted. 'Oh you are in trouble now,' he told the cops. For a while it was stand off. Finally, the confused cops let Lenny go, and were permitted to drive off. It was dress rehearsal for Jack Weinberg. and the FSM.'"
2/24/2018, CNN, What it will take for Parkland students to win the battle ahead?, Julian Zelizer
"In 1964, University of California student Mario Savio delivered powerful words during a free speech movement. Protesting the university prohibition on political activity, Savio unleashed on the system. 'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious -- makes you so sick at heart -- that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!'
¶
It is time for students to put their bodies upon the gears of the broken machine that lets people get their hands so easily on weapons of mass destruction.
¶
The nation is at an important crossroads after Parkland and much of what happens next will depend on students. They must remain the heart of this campaign. Their words are the strongest antidote to the money and lobbyists of the NRA. The NRA's resistance will be immense, but it is not insurmountable.
¶
Young Americans have shown in other moments of history that their voice can matter. Indeed, it can change the course of the nation. Now we will see if America's young people can do so again with the crisis of guns that afflicts our nation."
2/23/2018, The Daily Californian, Free speech lawsuit against UC Berkeley is justified, Jack Foley
'The so-called 'Free Speech Movement' was never truly about free speech -- it was always about the causes of those involved. To be sure, the goals for which the Free Speechers fought were largely worthy and good."
2/22/2018, California Monthly, Berkeley to the Core: Memories of the Free Speech Movement, Courtney Cheng
"Gabriela [Taylor] sat in Sproul Hall with her peers for hours and was among the protesters who were arrested. She remembers being the last to be 'dragged down the hall to the booking room, by my collar,' where a reporter asked her, 'Since you are the last of 801 students arrested, what would you like to say?'
¶
'This is only the beginning. The fight for freedom will continue,' was Gabriela's immediate response. Her quote ran in newspapers all across the country-prompting her husband's wealthy grandmother to disinherit him when she caught wind of it. Her husband, Kit Sims Taylor '64, felt this blow 'wasn't a big deal. We couldn't care less. We lived simply and envisioned a bright future ahead.'"
2/14/2018, The Intercept, While the Media Panicked About Campus Leftists, the Far Right Surged, Natasha Lennard
"'ALT RIGHT' AND neo-Nazi organizers -- where there is significant overlap -- make no secret of the rhetorical Trojan horse they use to infiltrate campus discourse. When white supremacist groups like the white nationalists of the National Policy Institute, along with Identity Evropa, began targeting college campuses in the spring of 2016, they were explicit in their cooption of the liberal lexicon of 'safe spaces' and free speech protections.
¶
'Here it is, the birth of the free speech movement,' pronounced far-right group Red Ice in May 2016, at a small rally at the University of Berkeley, California. It was a potent combination: a cynical adoption of traditional liberal and leftist speech mixed with a genuine desire to be able spread ideologies of hate in public without interference. Liberal centrists swallowed it whole.
¶
Wittingly or not, it was a devilish sleight of hand: neo-fascists relying on American liberalism's unmatched fetishization of protected speech in order to claim that the real fascists are in fact the ones who would see them silenced."
2/5/2018, The Undefeated, State of the Black Athlete, Lonnae O'Neal and Marc J. Spears
"Outside his DOPE ERA clothing shop (During Oppression People Evolve, Everyone Rises Above) in North Oakland, Mistah F.A.B. (aka Stanley Cox) muses about whether the Warriors are, in fact, the most politically progressive team ever. He's a rap artist and community activist who once did a freestyle rap about the Warriors that foreclosed that option to anyone who has thought about trying it since. Now he recalls Smith and Carlos and cites the Clippers wearing their warm-up jerseys reversed to protest racist remarks by then-team owner Donald Sterling in 2014. But 'I can't even think of a team in contention for social relevance,' he says, 'in the way the Warriors are demonstrating now.'
¶
Some of that stems from Oakland itself. For more than half a century, Oakland and the Bay Area have been synonymous with the black consciousness movement, Angela Davis and the Black Panthers. They've welcomed the Free Speech Movement, anti-war protests and the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. The cities by the bay have been an incubator for gay rights, anti-fascism and Black Lives Matter."
1/20/2018, Linn County Leader, Dr. Peter Mandel Hall, 83,
"He obtained his BSW/MSW (1957/1959) in social work from University of California-Berkeley, participating in the Free Speech Movement, a precursor to the national anti-war movement. He earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1963."
1/19/2018, Time, Behind the Anti-War Protests That Swept America in 1968, Daniel S. Levy
"As America's military presence grew, so did the parallel battle for peace. It had been growing since the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Johnson's subsequent call for the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign. Civil rights groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Free Speech Movement had held teach-ins and marched in Washington and elsewhere. Young men publicly burned their draft cards. The New Left dubbed the United States 'Amerika,' and the underground press disseminated antiwar information through their own news services." [Ed note: UCB Teach-Ins were post-FSM, although many who had participated in the FSM were involved.]
1/18/2018, Times Higher Education, One year of Donald Trump: how are US universities faring?, John Morgan
"'Sometimes your brand is your curse,' says political scientist Henry Brady, dean of Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, noting that the university is 'the home of the Free Speech Movement'. Originating on the left during the 1960s civil rights era and continuing during protests against the Vietnam War, the movement pressured university administrators to lift the ban on on-campus political activity." [Ed note: the Berkeley FSM was resoved in December 1964 with a vote of the Faculty Senate. The FSM itself was dissolved in April 1965, and lasted seven months.]
1/18/2018, California Magazine, Is Free Speech Smart?, Krissy Eliot
"There appears to be a consensus among UC Berkeley law professors that despite his offensive views, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulous had a legal right to speak on campus last September. And the UC administration has taken a hard and fast stance when it comes to speech, saying that any suppression of it would go against the university's official mission-to be a center for higher learning and advancing that higher learning.
¶
'We would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous,' writes Chancellor Carol Christ in a letter to the campus community. 'Berkeley, as you know, is the home of the Free Speech Movement, where students on the right and students on the left united to fight for the right to advocate political views on campus. Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley community come together once again to protect this right. It is who we are.'"
1/18/2018, Berkeleyside, Remembering John Oliver Simon, distinguished poet, teacher, translator, J.D. Moyer
"While at Cal and after, Simon was active in the Free Speech Movement and in the famous struggle to liberate Berkeley's People's Park. Of this time, he wrote 'I was a newcomer to the Bay Area, having arrived in Berkeley in September 1964 in time to sit down in the crowd on Sproul Plaza surrounding the police car which was holding Jack Weinberg prisoner in the back seat in the first act of what would become the Free Speech Movement.'"
1/13/2018, The Telegraph, Power of pen, Manohla Dargis
"The Pentagon Papers -- officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force -- is an encyclopedia of outrageous decisions and acts, what Ellsberg once described as 'evidence of lying, by four presidents and their administrations over 23 years, to conceal plans and actions of mass murder.' Ellsberg didn't stop the war, but he did assert our right, and obligation, to challenge absolute power. That may be why the filmmakers -- the script is by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer -- slip in a bit from a speech that Mario Savio delivered two years before The Post opens and which memorably asserts: 'There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part!'"
1/9/2018, Alameda Sun, Paying Tribute to Two Great Alamedans, Jane Peal
As [Ashley] Jones tells it, the pivotal point came in 1964. "When I first saw Mario Savio standing on top of a cop car with a megaphone in Berkeley, that was it! It opened me up. I realized I'd been living too comfortably."
1/8/2018, UC News, UC celebrates 150 years of pioneering a better future, Carolyn McMillan
"That rich history is captured in a new digital timeline, created in honor of UC’s 150th anniversary. It shows how far the university has come since its earliest days, and details its role in pivotal moments like World War II, the Free Speech Movement and the birth of the biotech industry"
1/6/2018, Lincoln Journal Star, Local View: NU must defend political advocacy, Frank Edler
"More recently in 2014, the chancellor at Berkeley, Nicholas Dirks, sent an email message to the university community in which he attempted to combine the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement with a request for civility.
¶
In his message, Dirks stated that 'we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas.'
¶
In response, the Board of Directors of the Free Speech Movement Archives and the 50th Anniversary Organizing Committee sent a letter to Dirks stating that he seemed to have missed the point of the Free Speech Movement and reminded the chancellor: 'The struggle of the FSM was all about the right to political advocacy on campus.'"
1/3/2018, Socialist Worker, 1968: The year that changed everything, Alan Maass
"The first activities of a new campus left were often taken in solidarity with the civil rights struggle, and later against the Vietnam War. But these connected with a deeper sense of alienation and discontent--something Mario Savio, a leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, gave expression to in a 1964 speech:
¶
There's a time when the operations of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to indicate to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machines will be prevented from working at all.
¶
Savio crystallized a sentiment that existed in the newly expanding university systems of countries around the world. But as the 1960s continued, it was opposition to the expanding U.S. war on Vietnam that galvanized the student radicalization--especially in the U.S., but also in other countries."
12/31/2017, Huffington Post, Fifty Years After Renouncing History, The Counterculture Made History in 'The Post', 'Detroit', 'The Deuce' & 'The Vietnam War', G. Roger Denson
"Fast-forwarding to 2017, in The Post, Spielberg could be accused of co-opting the activism and words of several sources. For instance, in the scene in which a group of demonstrators are assembled outside a park, a male voice heard over a megaphone recites a famous speech, nicknamed the 'put your bodies upon the gears' speech delivered by the late activist Mario Savio, an early member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. In the film, the demonstration takes place in 1971, in Washington, DC. Savio, however, gave the speech at Berkeley University in December, 1964. It’s the kind of co-option that Marcuse and the students were fearful about, though it can be argued that Spielberg is essentially on the same side as Savio, and after the same ends."
Winter 2017, California Magazine, Roots Music: The Beginnings of Rolling Stone, Peter Richardson
"But if Rolling Stone was a creature of the San Francisco counterculture, its success can also be traced to its Berkeley roots. According to Hagan, Wenner's years at Cal had a profound effect on the magazine's origins and development. Early contributors and editors-including Greil Marcus, Charles Perry, and Jon Carroll-were Cal alumni, and their stances on politics, drugs, and music were staples in the magazine's unique editorial formula.
¶
'The Berkeley network was central to the development of Rolling Stone,' Hagan said.
¶
That network began to take shape after Wenner enrolled at Cal in 1963. An English major and political science minor, he was also an editor for SLATE, the student political party that helped launch the Free Speech Movement (FSM). In his spare time, Wenner worked at the NBC radio affiliate KNBR, where he eventually covered the Berkeley campus. He was reporting from the Greek Theatre in December 1964 when police hauled off FSM leader Mario Savio after he tried to respond to UC President Clark Kerr's address. An AP photograph shows Wenner in a trench coat, microphone in hand, only yards behind the apprehended Savio."
¶....¶
"Berkeley's influence on Marcus, who grew up on the peninsula, ran even deeper. An American Studies seminar taught by Michael Rogin and Larzer Ziff fired his imagination. Rogin was open, charismatic, and not much older than the students; Ziff was more rigorous but was equally inspiring. The class met in a library seminar room, which Marcus described as 'the most marvelous place imaginable.' He and his classmates completed their homework there, often staying past midnight to discuss American history, politics, and culture. Afterward, they used a rope to rappel down from the third floor of the closed library. It was 'an atmosphere of great intellectual intensity,' Marcus recalled. 'The questions were real, part of everyday life.'
¶
Marcus saw strong and direct links between that course and the Free Speech Movement. 'Everything we were doing in that seminar was playing out in public,' he said. After one class, he and his fellow students wandered down to Sproul Plaza, where they saw a police car surrounded by hundreds of students. Jack Weinberg, arrested for violating campus restrictions on political activism, sat handcuffed in the back seat. Beginning with Savio, speakers mounted the car and argued the merits of those policies. The entire experience, Marcus said, 'made knowledge concrete, real, open, and open-ended.' It also shaped his life and his work.
¶
'The Free Speech Movement had an enormous effect on everyone and in many ways,' Marcus said. 'We measured ourselves against it and its values. Rolling Stone wouldn't have happened without the Free Speech Movement. Everything that I had learned at Berkeley, that I had learned to care about, there was room for that at Rolling Stone.'"
12/27/2017, The Village Voice, How a Counterculture Memoir by Alice Waters Spoke to 2017, Teri Tsang Barrett
"Coming to My Senses follows Waters's path from her childhood in New Jersey and Michigan to Southern California to the epicenter of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the Sixties. Though Waters describes her thinking back then as 'romantic and simplistic' and found herself easily intimidated by threats of arrest from the police, the movement left its mark and awakened a revolutionary spirit within her, as she found herself moved by Mario Savio and the impact of nonviolent courses of action. She writes, 'When the dominant culture behaves immorally, the way the United States was about the war, civil rights, and freedom of public expression, you begin to feel betrayed.'"
12/26/2017, The Kaplan Herald, The Ugly Enterprise Of Defending Free Speech In 2017, Kaplan Contributor
"Campuses have a long history of playing focal point to freedom of expression debates of all kinds. In December 1964, students at the University of California, Berkeley, began protesting political speech restrictions on campus. The demonstrations continued for months, solidifying UC Berkeley's symbolic status as the nucleus of the free speech movement. In the years since, the campus's Sproul Plaza and Mario Savio Steps have been marched on, sat upon and otherwise occupied by an assortment of protests."
12/21/2017, Online Focus Aachen, Seite 3,
"Von den Beatniks über die Situationisten zu Beuys Begonnen hatte alles im September 1964 mit dem Free Speech Movement auf dem Campus der University of California in Berkeley. Dort wurden studentische Aktionen wie die erstmals praktizierten gewaltlosen Aktionsformen des Teach-in, Sit-in und Go-in von der Beat Generation um Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac und Lawrence Ferlinghetti mit seinem legendären City Lights Bookstore in San Francsico unterstützt. Sie kamen 1957 nach Paris, wo das Beat Hotel in der rue Gît-le-Coeur 9 zu ihrem Hauptquartier wurde. In Paris trafen sie den Happeningkünstler und Aktivisten Jean-Jacques Lebel, der ihre Texte ins Französische übersetzte und von dem auch der Haupttitel für die Ausstellung als Zitat übernommen wurde. In Europa war es zunächst die Independent Group um Lawrence Alloway, Richard Hamilton und Eduardo Paolozzi, die Mitte der 1950er-Jahre am Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London einen Ausstellungs- und Debattenraum für moderne Kunst fand, in dem KünstlerInnen, SchriftstellerInnen und WissenschaftlerInnen neue Konzepte zur interdisziplinären Recherche und Analyse der Gesellschaft entwickelten. Sie bildeten den Nukleus der englischen Pop Art. Ihr Pendant auf dem Kontinent waren die AktivistInnen, KünstlerInnen und Intellektuellen der Situationistischen Internationale, die seit 1957 an der praktischen Aufhebung der Trennung zwischen Kunst und Leben arbeiteten. In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland begannen Joseph Beuys, Bazon Brock und Wolf Vostell das traditionelle Kunstwerk durch ein performatives Programm, halb Theater, halb Teach-in zu ersetzen. Sie planten ihre Aktionen im Bewusstsein, dass Kunst die Realität nicht direkt, sondern nur auf dem Umweg über das Denken und die Wahrnehmung des Betrachters verändern und erweitern kann."
12/21/2017, New York Times, Review: In 'The Post,' Democracy Survives the Darkness, Manohla Dargis
"The Pentagon Papers -- officially titled 'Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force' -- is an encyclopedia of outrageous decisions and acts, what Mr. Ellsberg once described as 'evidence of lying, by four presidents and their administrations over twenty-three years, to conceal plans and actions of mass murder.' Mr. Ellsberg didn't stop the war, but he did assert our right, and obligation, to challenge absolute power. That may be why the filmmakers -- the script is by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer -- slip in a bit from a speech that Mario Savio delivered two years before 'The Post' opens and which memorably asserts: 'There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part!'"
12/16/2017, The Washington Examiner, UC Berkeley and free speech in 2017: A year in review, Andrea Fabián-Checkai
"These incidents have marred UC Berkeley's former reputation for being a bastion of free speech. The same campus that once stood witness to the birth of the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago is now under the microscope for restricting speech. The university claims 'free speech is who we are,' but it appears that the 'we' has become more selective."
12/13/2017, Mondoweiss, Trump nominee Kenneth Marcus has a career of trying to criminalize campus free speech Activism, Ariel Gold
"As Jews, we generally take great pride in the support we have shown for civil rights and free speech. The 1964 sit-in of thousands of students in UC Berkeley's Sproul Hall, which catapulted the free speech movement into the headlines, included a Hanukkah service*. We still talk about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel praying with his legs in 1965 as he marched with Dr. King in Selma. Even as recently as 1995, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) proudly announced its position in defense of the first Amendment, 'we cherish these protections, not only because they are the hallmark of true freedom, but because we also know that the vibrant political discussion they foster strengthens our nation.' We like to think of ourselves as long time champions for justice and equality. And so, we should be appalled at the nomination of Kenneth Marcus for Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education."
* https://www.thenation.com/article/free-speech-movement/
12/10/2017, The Washington Examiner, I go to UC Berkeley and I'm watching free speech slip away, Max Keating
"My own experience at Berkeley is not only fraught with examples of free speech suppression but utterly inconsistent with what I thought college in general, and Berkeley in particular, should be all about. Berkeley captured my interest during the college admissions process because a particular moment in the school's history resonated with me: the image of Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement speaking up courageously for First Amendment rights on campuses. The struggle and eventual success of this movement is, in my mind, everything college should be about. Students both on the right and left sacrificed for one another's right to be heard; they sacrificed for an enriched campus discourse, even if they completely disagreed with some of the messages they fought for."
12/10/2017, The Daily Californian, On their golden anniversary, finding Berkeley in 'The Graduate', Anna Ho
"But 'The Graduate' is also the story of Berkeley, of the city whose university Elaine attends and of the place where Benjamin, fueled by a moment of startling clarity, flings himself down Telegraph Avenue and past Moe's Books in pursuit of the bus she rides.
¶
That Berkeley -- which three years before rose to national prominence for the free speech protests -- was chosen as a setting simply re-reflects the dogged, determined effort on the part of the film to remain contemporary.
¶
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 1967 -- nearly a year before the film's release -- Nichols, reportedly underwhelmed by the stereotypical facade of sunny Californian settings, commented on his resolve to 'show the place as it really is.'
¶
That place, according to historian W. J. Rorabaugh, was undergoing a period of strident instability as political and cultural vanguards were supplanted by insurgency and the city itself struggled to define what it wanted to be.
¶
The conservative factions that had governed administrations from city hall to the state assembly were besieged and, in some instances, successfully succeeded by leftist powers of various radical persuasions. Around the university and the Bay Area, the Beat Generation boomed their disdain for conventional living. Activists like Jack Weinberg -- locked inside a police car for hours after his arrest while students surged forward to stand on its roof -- found their voices.
¶
So in many ways, Berkeley shared in Benjamin's struggles and bereftness, where the grating divide between generations and values yawned wide and gaping. 'You're not one of those agitators?' asks Benjamin's landlord in Berkeley, squinting at the young protagonist suspiciously when he attempts to rent a room. 'Those outside agitators? I hate that. I won't stand for it.'"
12/8/2017, Broadway World, Country Joe & The Fish Summer of Love Deluxe Box Set Out 1/26 Via Craft Recordings, Music News Desk
"Country Joe & the Fish came about as part political device, part necessity and part entertainment. Formed as a duo in 1965 by 'Country' Joe McDonald and guitarist Barry 'The Fish' Melton, the two became regulars on the Bay Area coffeehouse circuit, often performing with local jug band musicians. Both McDonald and Melton were heavily involved in anti-war protests and the Free Speech Movement, particularly McDonald, who published an underground journal, Rag Baby."
12/2/2017, World Socialist Web Site, IYSSE mounts campaign against university police censorship at University of California, Berkeley, Evan Blake
"The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at the University of California, Berkeley, is mounting a campaign against the university's efforts to establish police censorship over student groups. UC Berkeley's new policy, known as the Major Events Policy, subjects all student group meetings on campus to an eight-week process of police review and requires that clubs pay for any police presence required by the administration.¶
....¶
The Berkeley IYSSE officially launched its campaign against police censorship with a meeting on Thursday November 30, attended by 25 people including representatives of several student clubs. Joseph Santolan spoke for the IYSSE, detailing the anti-democratic impact of the new policy. He outlined the history of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 1960s and how students fought the university and police for the right to campaign on campus against the oppression of African Americans."
December 2017, The Atlantic, The Two Clashing Meanings of 'Free Speech', Teresa M. Bejan
"The danger intrinsic in parrhesia's offensiveness to the powers-that-be-be they monarchs like Alexander or the democratic majority-fascinated Michel Foucault, who made it the subject of a series of lectures at Berkeley (home of the original campus Free Speech Movement) in the 1980s. Foucault noticed that the practice of parrhesia necessarily entailed an asymmetry of power, hence a 'contract' between the audience (whether one or many), who pledged to tolerate any offense, and the speaker, who agreed to tell them the truth and risk the consequences.¶
....¶
Recognizing the ancient ideas at work in these modern arguments puts those of us committed to America's parrhesiastic tradition of speaking truth to power in a better position to defend it. It suggests that to defeat the modern proponents of isegoria-and remind the modern parrhesiastes what they are fighting for-one must go beyond the First Amendment to the other, orienting principle of American democracy behind it, namely equality. After all, the genius of the First Amendment lies in bringing isegoria and parrhesia together, by securing the equal right and liberty of citizens not simply to 'exercise their reason' but to speak their minds. It does so because the alternative is to allow the powers-that-happen-to-be to grant that liberty as a license to some individuals while denying it to others."
11/19/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, How we deal with hate speech, Erwin Chemerinsky
"What, though, can we say to students and faculty who are not convinced by all of this? I point to the dangers of censorship, such as during the McCarthy era when faculty were fired and students expelled just for being suspected of supporting communism. I simply don't trust campus officials to have the power to decide what speech should be allowed and what should be prohibited. The only way that our speech will be protected is to safeguard the speech that we detest."
11/18/2017, Times Higher Education, Free speech 'adopted' by hostile right to 'discredit universities', John Morgan
"'Free speech has been adopted by the alt-right as one of its strategies to construct a narrative about universities that is extremely useful for their political goals,' Professor Christ said of US developments in her speech to the conference, hosted by Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), marking its 60th anniversary.
¶
Mr Yiannopoulos' Free Speech Week 'was meant to really provoke the university into cancelling it' and thus to 'support the narrative that he's trying to create', Professor Christ said. She added: 'Well, we called his bluff and finally…Milo's free speech movement collapsed with its own weight.'
¶
Professor Christ said it was 'extraordinarily important for universities' to 'support free speech'. She added: 'Not supporting free speech plays into a narrative of the far-right to discredit universities. So it's just extraordinarily important that we not play that part in that narrative.'
¶
The 'best answer to hateful speech is more speech,' she said."
11/14/2017, East Bay Times, 'Civil Rights of the Homeless' to be topic of talk,
"Civil rights attorney Ann Fagan Ginger will discuss 'The Civil Rights of the Homeless' at The Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers meeting at 1:30 p.m. Nov. 22 at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.
¶
The talk will be followed by music and a holiday party.
¶
Ginger is a lawyer, teacher, writer, and political activist, and the founder and executive director emerita of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute and was legal counsel for students at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s.
¶
'She is an expert in human rights law and peace law under the regulations of the Unites Nations, and has argued an won before the U.S. Supreme Court,' according to an event announcement."
11/9/2017, Il Post, Ascesa e declino di "Rolling Stone",
"Wenner era originario di New York, ma si era trasferito a San Francisco per studiare all'università di Berkeley, che lasciò prima di laurearsi. Aveva fatto parte del Free Speech Movement, conoscendo da vicino la cultura hippy, e aveva seguito dall'inizio la nascita del rock. Si era convinto che band come i Beatles, i Rolling Stones e i Grateful Dead meritassero una stampa specializzata, con una sua dignità e soprattutto una sua professionalità, diversa da quella dietro ai molti giornali dilettanteschi della controcultura che aprivano e chiudevano con grande rapidità nella San Francisco di quegli anni. Wenner ebbe la fortuna di conoscere Ralph J. Gleason, il critico di jazz del San Francisco Chronicle, che nonostante avesse quasi trent'anni in più aveva una grande apertura mentale e gusti musicali molto eclettici. Wenner aveva attaccato bottone con lui durante un concerto un paio di anni prima, e i due erano diventati amici."
11/8/2017, The Conversation, The magazine that inspired Rolling Stone, Peter Richardson
"But Rolling Stone's identity can also be traced to two other sources: Berkeley's culture of dissent and Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker.
¶
The Berkeley influence was strong and direct. The magazine's early staff writers were steeped in Berkeley's ardent campus activism, and their views on politics, drugs and music informed the magazine's coverage. Wenner wrote a music column for the student newspaper and covered the free speech movement for a local radio station. Even more significant for Wenner, perhaps, was the example of Gleason, who combined an impressive body of music criticism with public support for student activists. Wenner spent hours at Gleason's Berkeley home, soaking up his insights on music and journalism."
11/5/2017, The Daily Californian, At the hub of modern college activism, Cal student-athletes are afraid to speak out. Why?, Nicky Shapiro
"No such excuse exists, of course, at UC Berkeley, where, as your admissions tour guide was surely eager to tell you, the 1964-65 Free Speech Movement -- a widespread series of protests aimed at the administration's decision to ban on-campus political activities -- began. It's where the Third World Liberation Front organized a strike in 1969 leading to the creation of the campus's ethnic studies department, where thousands of students gathered over the course of the many anti-Vietnam War rallies held in Sproul Plaza. It's where just last month the eyes of America turned as the looming specter of the politically charged Free Speech Week hung over campus in the wake of the 2016 campus riots related to Yiannopoulos and Trump."
11/3/2017, FIRE, So to Speak podcast: Berkeley then and now, Nico Perrino
"On this episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, we revisit the events surrounding the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement to see if the university's storied past can teach us anything about today's debates." [Ed note: BIG Jack Weinberg interview. Minutes 13 to 45 are about FSM.]
11/2/2017, The Village Voice, Cool Story, Bro: A new book and two-part documentary litigate the legacy of Jann Wenner and "Rolling Stone" magazine, Lara Zarum
"Stories From the Edge, which touches only briefly on [Jann] Wenner's own background, tells a much different story than Sticky Fingers. Gibney and Foster make a meal of his involvement in the Berkeley student protests of 1964 -- a Berkeley student himself, Wenner was a stringer for NBC and can be seen in the background of an iconic photo of Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio being yanked off the steps of the university's Greek Theater. But, echoing Savio's famed 'bodies upon the gears' speech, Hagan writes that Wenner's 'true convictions lay with the 'apparatus' of NBC News' and reports that when police started to beat and arrest protesters at a sit-in at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel, Wenner ran away."
10/30/2017, Universitetsavisa, Universitet etablerer eget senter for ytringsfrihet, Tore Oksholen
"'Etter som campuser landet rundt har slitt med utfordringene som følger med ytringsfrihet og sivilt engasjement, har mange opplevd et nivå av aktivisme, kontroverser og tilbakeslag (backlash) vi ikke har sett hittil i denne generasjonen. Som resultat av dette har mange, fra studenter til universitetsledere, til juridiske spesialister til USAs president, stilt spørsmålstegn ved hvilken betydning og rolle ytringsfrihet skal ha på campusene våre. Disse spørsmålene har satt i gang en nasjonal debatt om intensjon, omfang og anvendelse av First Amendment, og utfordret etablerte oppfatninger av ytringsfrihet som oppsto i kjølvannet av den såkalte 'Free Speech Movement' fra Berkeley,' sier Napolitano.
¶
Her viser hun til en skjellsettende studentaksjonen fra skoleåret 1964-65, hvor studenter gjennom sivil ulydighetsaksjoner fikk fjernet forbudet mot politiske aktiviteter på campus, og slik sikret akademisk ytringsfrihet for studenter og akademisk frihet for vitenskapelig ansatte." [Ed note: Norwegian language]
10/28/2017, Reader Supported News, Academic Freedom in the Age of Trump, Bill Moyers
"[Joan Wallach] Scott: Yes, and there's actually a wonderful quote from Stanley Fish, who is sometimes very polemical and with whom I don't always agree. He writes, 'Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right.' Freedom of speech is not about that. Freedom of speech is about expressing your opinion, however bad or good, however right or wrong, and being able to defend it and argue it and be argued with about it in public forums. But that's not what academic freedom is about. That's not what the classroom is about. I would have a hard time banning even Richard Spencer [founder of the white nationalist movement] from speaking on a university campus, however hateful and dangerous I find his ideas."
10/27/2017, Truthdig, Erwin Chemerinsky: What Students Don't Understand About Free Speech, Robert Scheer and Erwin Chemerinsky
[Erwin Chemerinsky] "I don't want to overgeneralize, but we saw in our students, I see already on this campus, is this is the first generation from a young age to be taught that bullying is wrong. They've internalized the message. It's laudable; they want to create an inclusive learning environment for all students. They have remarkable trust in campus authorities to punish the speech that they don't like, but allow the speech that they do like. And for them, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests, were as long ago as World War I was for you or me."
10/27/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, UC center to put focus on free speech, Nanette Asimov
"'We need to research, educate, listen to and understand each other,' [Erwin] Chemerinsky said in a statement. 'It is hard to imagine social progress that wasn't dependent on freedom of speech.'"
10/26/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Faces of Bay Area resistance, Jonah Raskin
"Born in 1942 in Hamburg, [photographer Ilka] Hartmann grew up and came of age when the country was divided between East and West and a wall ran through Berlin. As a young woman, she studied theology and wanted to become a minister in the Lutheran Church. But then she came to New York in 1964, saw a picture in the New York Times of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and moved to California. From then on she attended dozens of demonstrations and rallies, many of them in San Francisco, always with her camera and sometimes with her son, Ole."
10/26/2017, Los Angeles Times, UC, roiled by 1st Amendment controversies, to launch national free speech center, Teresa Watanabe
"The University of California, where the free speech movement started and students now argue over how far unrestricted expression should go, announced plans Thursday to launch a national center to study 1st Amendment issues and step up education about them.
¶
'There have been more serious issues about the 1st Amendment on campuses today than perhaps at any time since the free speech movement,' UC President Janet Napolitano said in an interview. 'The students themselves are raising questions about free speech and does it apply to homophobic speech, does it apply to racist speech? We have to consider the student concerns but return to basic principles about what free speech means and how do we better educate students about the extent of the 1st Amendment.'"
10/25/2017, Vox, Hate speech is protected free speech, even on college campuses, Erwin Chemerinsky
"But I know that Berkeley, especially because of its history with the free speech movement of the 1960s, is a unique place for expression. This is why it is so important that the campus did all it could to ensure freedom of speech. It is also why this campus has the chance to be a model for other schools in upholding the principle that all ideas and views can be expressed at colleges and universities."
10/25/2017, KQED Arts, Even Walker Evans Can't Capture the Complete Essence of America, Sarah Hotchkiss
"This focus on things - often already antiquated things -- weirdly disconnects Evans' photography from the time in which which it was made. His career spanned the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the free speech movement, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the women's liberation movement and the gay liberation movement. Yet of those pivotal social and political moments in American history, only the Great Depression is pictured within Walker Evans."
10/23/2017, The Inquirer, Controversial speakers spark debate about college administrations and free speech, Trevor Cheitlin
"UC Berkeley has been a battleground for this debate since the mid-1960s, when the Free Speech Movement led to the campus softening its strict regulations on on-campus political discourse, and causing a fundamental shift in how political discourse was conducted on campuses throughout the United States.
¶
'The Free Speech Movement of the 1960s was crucial in advancing the speech rights of students across the country,' wrote Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky in an editorial for the Daily Californian."
10/23/2017, Rare, Joe Biden says liberals who want to suppress free speech have "very short memories", Grayson Quay
"'You should be able to listen to another point of view, as virulent as it may be,' Biden said, when asked what could be done to 'encourage people to be more accepting of opposing viewpoints.'
¶
The event, part of a speaker series organized by the University's Center for Political Communication and centered on the theme 'As We Stand, Divided,' aimed to 'explore the many divides that exist in the United States,' according to the CPC's website.
¶
The former VP reminded the crowd that he 'got in trouble' for denouncing the left-wing protests that forced Milo Yiannopoulos from the lectern at U.C. Berkeley in January and then reached even further back, alluding to the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s: 'When I was coming up through college and graduate school, free speech was the big issue, but it was the opposite. It was liberals who were shouted down when they spoke.'
¶
Then he dropped his bombshell: '[L]iberals have very short memories. I mean that sincerely.'"
10/20/2017, RealClear Politics, Janet Napolitano: We Must Educate Students Restricting Free Speech What First Amendment Means, Ian Schwartz./Jeremy Peters
"JANET NAPOLITANO, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SYSTEM: Yeah, I think it is. And I think we have to do a much better job of educating our young people about what the First Amendment protects, what it means, and how -- once you start restricting speech, you are on a slippery slope. And so we are educators and that should be part of our mission. Because you're absolutely right, we see an increasing number of young people believe that, you know, we should restrict people like, you know, Richard Spencer, or Milo Yiannopoulos, or Ben Shapiro, from speaking at campuses. And we must remind them that in the past it was speakers favoring, say, the civil rights movement, who were sought to be restricted. So, again, education is key."
10/19/2017, UCLA Newsroom, Even among experts, consensus on campus free speech remains elusive, Mike Fricano
"[Safiya] Noble added powerful details to the origins of the Free Speech movement at Berkeley in the '60s. 'The free speech movement was not just about giving more voice to people in an abstract flattened plain way. It was in fact about raising the visibility of civil rights, of black liberation, of feminism, of anti-war Vietnam movements, of pacifists or making a space and a place for people to speak back to the kinds of values that we wanted in our society because we didn't want to see the kind of violence that stems from white supremacy. The kind of violence that stems from patriarchy. They very things we're talking about right now today in the media.'"
10/17/2017, New York Times, The Moral Case for Draft Resistance, Michael Stewart Foley
"A loose coalition of 'Resistance' organizers planned the national draft card turn-in. They were inspired by the civil rights movement, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (during which one of its leaders, Mario Savio, described having to 'put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, and upon the levers' in order to stop the operation of an odious 'machine') and the precedent of resisters such as Muhammad Ali. By risking indictment, they thought that they could put the Johnson administration -- and the war itself -- on trial in court proceedings all over the country."
10/15/2017, Daily Californian, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of sociology, peacemaker during Free Speech Movement, dies at 87, Adrianna Buenviaje
"After earned a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1958, [Neil Joseph] Smelser began his career that same year as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley, where he stayed until his retirement in 1994. He became a full professor in 1962, and during the Free Speech Movement of the mid-1960s, Smelser served as a liaison between students and campus administration -- for which he was appointed special assistant for student political activity in 1965.
¶
'He was a very impressive leader,' said UC Berkeley professor of sociology Claude Fischer on working with Smelser. 'I was taken with his ability to work together with people to find common ground and work over conflicts or disagreement - the constant diplomat.'"
10/13/2017, The Guardian, How Alice Waters changed the landscape of food, Elissa Altman
"As Savio famously implored the rioting students of Berkeley in 1964, Alice has 'put her body upon the gears and upon the wheels' of an odious machine. And if she has not entirely stopped it, she has certainly slowed and altered its course. In every city in America and far beyond, farmers' markets abound; organics are widely available; small organic vegetable gardens thrive from inner cities to suburban front lawns to the White House; the Edible Schoolyard Project, founded by Alice and the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1995 as a way 'to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape that is wholly integrated into the school's curriculum, culture, and food program' now exists in 33 countries."
10/13/2017, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Free speech! Hold firm! We must affirm and protect the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution with everything we have, Bettina Aptheker
"Hold firm to the First and 14th. With warmth and strength." [Ed note: reprinted from UC Santa Cruz Newscenter]
10/12/2017, The Economist, Free speech at American universities is under threat,
"University administrators, whose job it is to promote harmony and diversity on campus, often find the easiest way to do so is to placate the intolerant fifth. The two groups form an odd alliance. Contentious campus politics have been a constant feature of American life for more than 50 years. But during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, students at Berkeley demonstrated to win the right to determine who could say what from administrators. Now the opposite is true. Student activists are demanding that administrators interfere with teaching, asking for mandatory ethnic-studies classes, the hiring of non-white or gay faculty and the ability to lodge complaints against professors for biased conduct in the classroom. This hands more power to administrators."
10/12/2017, The Daily Californian, Berkeley College Republicans president impeached by secretary amid power struggle, Chantelle Lee, Harini Shyamsundar and Ashley Wong
"'Essentially, he brought in a large group of people who, because they signed papers, claimed that they could vote in the election … and then declared the results that I was impeached,' Worden alleged. 'We will not allow the ego of one individual board member to distract the club (from) its overarching goals (of) supporting the Republican Party (and) supporting the Free Speech Movement.'" [Ed note: what Free Speech Movement is that?]
10/10/2017, UC Santa Cruz Newscenter, Free speech! Hold firm!, Bettina Aptheker
"I have carefully rehearsed this sequence of events, and placed them in the context of the legacy of the Free Speech Movement in order to demonstrate as clearly as possible that the alt-right hijacked the issue of free speech, about which they know nothing, and could care less, as a huge distraction. Their aim seemed to be to attack the university itself, embarrass progressives, and garner as much publicity as they could while essentially engaging in a provocative, hate-filled, racist bluff. As in Boston, when they tried a similar tactic in early summer, their non-events were dwarfed by the hundreds and thousands of people, of all hues, ethnicities, genders and political persuasions, who came out to affirm an anti-racist, pro-immigration, pro-gay free speech agenda.
¶
In my view this is how to deal with the alt-right and their ilk. Dwarf their events with non-violent mass movements of unprecedented size and inspired coalition.
¶
I believe we must affirm and protect the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution with everything we have. Under these amendments all the rights we have won, however contested they may be now, from the civil rights laws, to voting rights, to affirmative action, to gay rights, to reproductive rights and many more are under the aegis of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment."
10/10/2017, National Post, How Alice Waters launched her 'delicious revolution' and became a culinary icon, Laura Brehaut
"Waters dedicates the book to the memory of Mario Savio, a leading member of the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65. She delves into that era of Berkeley protest in the book, as well as her early involvement in politics. By opening her own restaurant, Waters writes, she thought she was turning her back on politics. But food became political.
¶
'I really went back into that place and remembered how important (Savio) was to me at that time,' she says. 'The mentors you have when you're young can really shape your thinking. And I was very lucky to be exposed to that world and particularly to the cooking mentors I learned from.'"
10/9/2017, The New Yorker, Flip-Flopping on Free Speech, Jill Lepore
"The Free Speech Movement is the taproot of a tree with many branches. In 1964, Mario Savio, a twenty-one-year-old Berkeley philosophy major, spent the summer registering black voters in Mississippi. When he got back to Berkeley that fall, he led a fight against a policy that prohibited political speech on campus, arguing that a public university should be as open for political debate and assembly as a public square. The same right was at stake in both Mississippi and Berkeley, Savio said: 'the right to participate as citizens in a democratic society.' After the police arrested nearly eight hundred protesters at a sit-in, the university acceded to the students' demands. The principle of allowing political speech was afterward extended to private universities. Without it, students wouldn't have been able to rally on campus for civil rights or against the war in Vietnam, or for or against anything else then or since." [Ed note: Jill Lepore posits 1964 Berkeley FSM as initial episode in a larger FSM. There were earlier FSMs.]
10/7/2017, The Washington Examiner, Backlash spreads against Black Lives Matter shutting down ACLU free speech event, Steven Nelson
"The disruption of the ACLU event in Virginia follows the February cancellation of a speech by then-Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California at Berkeley after violence and property damage by his opponents and the shouting down in March of political scientist Charles Murray at Middlebury College -- each incident attracting significant national debate, with older left-wing scholars such as Noam Chomsky and some members of Berkeley's pioneering 1960s Free Speech Movement arguing it's wrong to censor others."
10/5/2017, The Daily Californian, 'Engage the issue': UC Berkeley marks 53rd anniversary of Free Speech Movement in all-day event, Mary Kelly Ford
"The solutions to these problems, Reich said, include reaching out to those with dissenting opinions on social media, continuing to invest in protecting events such as the now-canceled 'Free Speech Week' and creating a right-to-privatize-information act in order to prevent personal ideas from being distorted.
¶
Lynne Hollander Savio, a member of UC Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement and the widow of Mario Savio, said the limitations of talking and arguing with 'real people' are gone due to social media.
¶
'Many groups no longer consider it necessary to speak responsibly,' Hollander Savio said. 'I agree with Reich. … We need to expand the laws that can keep the government or anyone from accessing our information.'"
10/5/2017, Real Clear Politics, Camille Paglia vs. Identity Politics: Return To Authentic 1960s Vision Where Consciousness Transcends Divisions Of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Jordan B Peterson
"But the universities themselves, are all of a sudden, in the United States, much more attentive to issues of political correctness, because of the riots at Berkeley, which was the capital of free speech. The free speech movement happened in the spring before I entered college in 1964, one of the great principles and inspirational stories of my life, Mario Savio's assertion of the supremacy of free thought and free speech. I think that perhaps we might just have turned a corner, but it is going to take a very, very long time for the universities to be reformed." [Ed note: the FSM happened in the fall of 1964.]
10/5/2017, ABC News Channel 7 San Francisco, Berkeley Center for New Media hosts free speech discussion at UC Berkeley, Laura Anthony
"Lynne Hollander Savio was also on the agenda. She is the widow of Mario Savio, a primary architect of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, which began in 1964.
¶
Savio expressed concern over recent protests at 'free speech' events at Berkeley that devolved into violence.
¶
'Despite the provocations, I think students should not rise to the bait,' said Hollander Savio. 'When you attack and try to limit the speech of anyone, even if its very valueless speech, then you run into a wall of opposition that unites everybody against you.'" [ed note: contains brief clip of Lynne speaking]
10/3/2017, The Sacramento Bee, Why UC Berkeley was right not to ban Milo, and other lessons from Free Speech Week, Erwin Chemerinsky
"The issues of free speech on campus today are very different than at earlier times. The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley more than 50 years ago is remembered as the quintessential example of freedom of speech on a campus. It involved students protesting and an administration trying to stop them. But now it is about outside speakers coming onto campus, like Shapiro and Yiannopoulos and Coulter, and outside agitators, like antifa, threatening violence. The campus is the place where this all is happening."
10/3/2017, East Bay Times, UC Berkeley all-day symposium to mark Free Speech Movement anniversary, Tom Lochner
"BERKELEY - Chancellor Carol Christ and Professor of Public Policy and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich are among the luminaries who will speak at 'Free Speech in the Age of Social Media,' an all-day symposium at UC Berkeley on Thursday marking the 53rd anniversary of the birth of the Free Speech Movement.
¶
'In the past year, the internet has turned its attention to Berkeley's campus debates, and our own community has taken up new media and modes of digital expression to extend and challenge the discussion of free speech,' reads an event description by sponsor Berkeley Center for New Media. 'This is a critical moment; both to the consideration of the intersection of speech, media and digital technologies on the Berkeley Campus and to the Nation as a whole.'"
9/29/2017, The Takeaway, Modern Lessons From a Veteran of the Free Speech Movement, Todd Zwillich
"This Sunday is the official Free Speech Day in California, to mark the anniversary of the protest that became the genesis of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964.
¶
Lynne Hollander Savio was part of the Free Speech Movement when she was a student at Cal. She’s also the widow of Mario Savio, one of the leaders of the movement, and she reflects on the state of free speech on colleges campuses today." [Ed note: 10-minute audio program]
9/28/2017, Wired, MILO, ANN COULTER, AND "FREE SPEECH WEEK" ADD UP TO THE RIGHT'S BEST TROLL YET, Emma Grey Ellis
"Berkeley (the school and the city) has been the archetypal hippy-dippy liberal paradise for half a century-and crucially, was home to the original, left-wing Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. All of that has made it the perfect symbol for both antifascist and 'alt-right' political movements, though those groups disagree on whether Berkeley is a bastion of enlightenment or Satan's preferred stomping ground. And now that these groups are taking their grievances offline and onto the mainstream streets of Berkeley, dismissing their activities as simply IRL stagings of Twitter fights trivializes what's really going on. It's a PR war-and one that right-wing provocateurs like Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter, who staged her own costly feint of appearing at Free Speech Week are winning. Handily."
9/26/2017, Daily Californian, Campus must be defended against hostile private interests, Berkeley Faculty Association Board
"Freedom of speech is one foundational principle of the public university. Academic freedom is another. Since 1964, when the UC Berkeley administration was successfully challenged by the Free Speech Movement to extend First Amendment protections to campus space, the university has had to balance the obligation to allow citizens' speech against the commitment to academic freedom. As a public entity, UC Berkeley must respect the airing of diverse viewpoints; as a higher learning institution, UC Berkeley must protect its autonomy from political interference and harassment. Increasingly, the threat to the campus' autonomy, on which academic freedom depends, derives not from government legislators-as in the era of the FSM, when former UC President Clark Kerr and former UC Berkeley chancellor Edward Strong were faced with adjudicating competing obligations to free speech and academic freedom. Rather, the threat increasingly derives from private interests hostile to the university's mission of research and teaching."
9/25/2017, Vice News, How NFL protests mirror Berkeley's 1960s Free Speech Movement,
"The battle over free speech in the NFL may be new. But it has uncanny echoes of a 1960s fight at UC-Berkeley waged by a coalition of students from across the political spectrum known as the Free Speech Movement. The F.S.M. started in the fall of 1964 after the Berkeley administration banned all political activity on campus with the goal of repealing the ban. But the energy that drove the movement came from deeper grievances."
9/25/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, And the point of all this was what exactly?, Nanette Asimov and Kurtis Alexander
"He [Michael Heaney] said Yiannopoulos has more in common with Abbie Hoffman, founder of the short-lived, 1960s-era street-theater group called the Yippies, than with King, Chavez, Parks -- or Mario Savio, whose name today is a symbol of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.
¶
The Sproul Hall steps where Yiannopoulos stood Sunday are named for Savio, who spoke eloquently from those steps against a ban on students' political activities imposed by the UC regents."
9/23/2017, Associated Press, Right-wing firebrand plans to hold rally at UC Berkeley,
"'We are going to be hosting an event come hell or high water tomorrow,' Yiannopoulos said in a live video on Facebook. He made his comments from a hotel room after cancelling a news conference on San Francisco's Treasure Island.
¶
'We will be expressing our constitutional rights to free speech, free expression, on Sproul Plaza, the home of the Free Speech Movement, tomorrow as planned, with or without student help, with or without the cooperation of UC Berkeley itself.'"
9/22/2017, Washington Examiner, Sadly, the students planning Free Speech Week at Berkeley are incompetent, Casey Given
"For this reason, I stood up for Milo after the February riot in a piece for the Washington Examiner, vowing to not donate until the home of the Free Speech Movement lives up to its reputation. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to free speech, standing up for deplorable opinions comes with the territory.
¶
Standing up for incompetence, however, is a different matter.
¶
For the past several weeks, the student group hosting Milo's event, Berkeley Patriot, has continually mishandled the paperwork and public relations required to successfully execute an event of the size they're aspiring to hold. First, they released an outlandish speaker list confirming speakers they apparently had not even contacted, including Charles Murray and 'Google memo' author James Damore. Then, they missed three deadlines from the university to secure the venues they desired."
9/22/2017, New York Times, Let Right-Wing Speakers Come to Berkeley? Faculty Is Divided, Thomas Fuller
"Watching this debate attentively but warily are the veterans of the Free Speech Movement, most of whom are now in their 70s.
¶
Barbara Garson, an author, called Free Speech Week a 'grotesque parody' of the movement she helped lead.
¶
Kathleen Piper, an artist, said she and other veterans of the movement disagreed with the positions of the right-wing speakers coming to campus. But she said there was a consensus among them that they should be allowed to speak.
¶
'I think a person needs to hear stuff that they don't agree with,' Ms. Piper said. 'They need the opportunity of discovering that they are not going to melt and go down the nearest drain as a puddle if somebody says something ugly to them. I don't think we should be protected from those experiences.'"
9/22/2017, Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed Free speech is a virtue. Spending millions to enable hatred isn't, Rigel Robinson
"The 1st Amendment protects the rights of everyone to be heard. But there is a distinction between 'could' and 'should,' between the legal right to do something and doing the right thing. That distinction wasn't lost on Mario Savio, as it seems to be on today's supposed champions of free speech."
9/22/2017, Berkeley Daily Planet, New: Is Berkeley Yiannopoulos Speech Event On or Off? Who Knows?, Jeff Shuttleworth
"UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said in an email that, 'The university is aware of numerous media reports that the Berkeley Patriot student organization has cancelled events scheduled for next week.'
¶
But Mogulof said, 'The campus has not heard directly from the students and must, for the time being, proceed with plans to provide for the safety and security of the campus community and any speakers who may still be planning to come to Berkeley.'"
9/21/2017, Vox, The far right's "Free Speech Week" at UC Berkeley, explained, German Lopez
"Free Speech Week has even attempted to draw parallels to Berkeley's Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, with Yiannopoulos slated to give the 'Mario Savio Award' -- named after a key figure in the '60s movement -- at the end of the week.
¶
This isn't completely baseless. Robert Cohen, a historian whose many books include The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, explained in the Nation: 'Savio would almost certainly have disagreed with the faculty and students who urged the administration to ban Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus, and been heartened by the chancellor's refusal to ban a speaker.'
¶
But as Cohen suggests, this is a very different Berkeley. The administration rejected calls to ban Yiannopoulos. And the fact that Free Speech Week is happening at all -- and that people are expected to be able to freely protest it -- exemplifies the kind of free speech that Savio supported."
9/20/2017, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley creates website devoted to free speech ahead of 'Free Speech Week', Hannah Piette
"UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs recently launched a website dedicated to free speech as part of Chancellor Carol Christ's promise that UC Berkeley will have a 'free speech year.'
¶
The site includes links to articles about free speech, campus policies on hosting speakers and protesting safely, a list of upcoming free speech events and a timeline of the Free Speech Movement. There is also a Q&A page, as well as a moderated public discussion forum."
9/19/2017, The Daily Californian, Wealthy donors puppeteer campus administration's decisions on free speech, Jolene Sweitzer
"The university's current position on free speech is ironic when we delve deeper into the true nature of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s and the political forces that opposed it. Amid the context of both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, the Free Speech Movement consisted of mass student mobilizations to gain the right to on-campus political activity opposed to segregation and the war. These acts of protest resulted in intense repression from the conservative administration and law enforcement, culminating in the largest mass arrest of students in U.S. history when close to 800 students were detained while occupying Sproul Hall in December of 1964. Predictably, the current UC Berkeley administration has discarded the true spirit of the Free Speech Movement to hide behind a commodified version, allowing them to sanitize the retelling of social movements for their own interests."
9/17/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Napolitano pledges to uphold free speech, Bob Egelko
"'That means we defend the rights of provocateurs to share their objectionable thoughts at our university campuses.... That does not mean we have to allow rhetoric that personally intimidates or harasses others.'
¶
She acknowledged that the line is difficult to define, but said UC officials should cut off any speaker who is 'personally going after a member of the audience.'"
9/15/2017, San Jose Mercury News, Berkeley-Con includes Bannon, Coulter, Milo -- but will they show?, Patrick May and Emily DeRuy
"The fourth day, if it takes place as advertised, is likely to generate the most controversy. Entitled 'Mario Savio is dead,' a reference to the one-time leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the Sixties. Supposedly confirmed speakers include Yiannopoulos, Bannon and Coulter addressing higher education and free speech."
9/15/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Rhetoric fails to match reality on UC Berkeley campus, Otis R. Taylor Jr.
"The Free Speech Movement of the 1960s was led by UC Berkeley students who protested the administration's ban on campus political activities.
¶
Berkeley is once again a battleground, but five decades later two things are glaringly different: This isn't a student movement, and it's not about free speech."
9/14/2017, Los Angeles Times, Q&A UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ: 'Free speech has itself become controversial', Teresa Watanabe
"And so they don't understand the difference between how we say it's right to act in a community, whether it's a classroom or a dormitory, and what a public speaker is allowed to say in a public square. So there is a kind of disagreement right now about free speech. I sometimes say ironically that in 1964 it was the students for free speech and the administration was against it; now you've got this weird reversal.
¶
What are other changes?
¶
Political polarization. We obviously have a situation in the United States of the left and right finding it harder and harder to talk to each other. And there's a willingness on both the far left and the far right to engage in violence. It's a moment that reminds me of the '60s where you had things like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weathermen. There are groups - now I'm just talking about the left but it's equally true on the right - who have just given up on the political process and feel their important weapon is platform denial, and a willingness to engage violently. And that's very new.
¶
The third thing in this very combustible mix is, universities are seen as the most important symbolic stage for this confrontation, and Berkeley is No. 1 among all of the symbolic stages in part because of its history with the free speech movement and in part because of its history as a very liberal campus."
9/14/2017, Fox News, Berkeley must defend Ben Shapiro's right to speak, Alan Dershowitz
"I vividly recall the famous 'free speech' movement at Berkeley several decades ago. The hard left demanded the right to express radical, often obnoxious, views on campus. Some on the hard right sought to ban these hard left expressions. Free speech prevailed.
¶
Now it is the hard right that is demanding the right to make provocative speeches on campus and it is elements of the hard left that are trying to censor them.
¶
But there is no symmetry in the means used to silence opponents. Today's hard left, led by Antifa and other radical and anarchistic gangs, do not shrink from the threat or use of violence to silence speakers with whom they disagree. These unlawful tactics have prevailed and several right wing speakers were forced to cancel their scheduled appearances on the Berkeley campus. This time free speech is losing.
¶
Protesters must not be allowed to block access to the speech, to threaten violence against the speaker or his audience, to shout down the speaker or to take any other action that prevents the speaker from completing his talk."
9/11/2017, The Daily Texan, Former UT presidents share turning points, Meara Isenberg
"[UT President Bill] Powers said there is no better way to improve than to take risks and learn from them.
¶
Powers said he has done this in his own life by going to Berkeley during the free speech movement, traveling the world and going to law school."
9/11/2017, The Daily Californian, Alice Waters meditates on beautiful, political, Sannidhi Shukla
"Waters sat in conversation with publisher Steve Wasserman, her lifelong friend and a fellow activist from the time of the Free Speech Movement. Given this connection and free speech's recent reincarnation as a national political buzzword, it's no surprise that a large portion of the evening was dedicated to discussing Waters' experience with the movement.
¶
Wasserman opened the conversation by asking Waters about the memoir's dedication to Mario Savio. Waters' voice glowed with reverence as she answered. Her first encounter with Savio, she said, came on her very first day at UC Berkeley as she was standing in the margins of a throng of students gathered on Sproul Plaza.
¶
'I just heard Mario speak, and there was something about his ideal big vision which said we could change the world,' Waters said.
¶
Unlike the majority of contemporary allusions to the Free Speech Movement, Waters' invocation of it made no attempt to depoliticize the movement to render it a lifeless rhetorical tool that can be recontextualized at will. She spoke proudly of her lived experience with the movement and of its role in awakening her to become a self-proclaimed counterculture cook -- a title she continues to occupy through her persistent advocacy for edible education and sustainable agriculture."
9/8/2017, Townhall, A Return to the Roots of the Free Speech Movement, Nicholas DeSimone
"As conservative speakers make plans to exercise their free speech at UC Berkeley in September, those present at the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement have sadly witnessed its change over time.
¶
Manhattan Institute's Senior Fellow Sol Stern was there during the original Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. During a recent exclusive interview with Stern, reminiscing of a time when opposing ideas were welcomed at Berkeley, Stern states, 'We [The New Left] believed we had the best ideas…we welcomed the challenges in debating our ideas with conservative professors on campus. You wouldn't have dreamed of excluding them.'"
9/7/2017, The Washington Post, Chef Alice Waters' memoir tells tales of her youth and loves, Jocelyn Gecker
"Waters attended the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1960s at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus uprisings against the Vietnam War. The counterculture spirit electrified her, she writes, and instilled her with idealism and the feeling she could change the world. Her book is dedicated to the 'memory of Mario Savio' the movement's late leader."
9/6/2017, Berkeleyside, Alice Waters on free speech, acid and the making of a counterculture cook, Tor Haugan
"It wasn't long until Waters joined the Free Speech Movement, which gained considerable traction under the leadership of activist Mario Savio. (Waters' new book is dedicated to his memory - and the Free Speech Movement Café was funded by a gift in honor of Savio.)
¶
'(Savio) always seemed to see the big picture,' she said. 'It wasn't just about stopping the war in Vietnam. He was speaking about coming together and sharing values. … It was very, very important that we stood together and created this world together."
9/4/2017, Senior Woman Web, What Berkeley Needs is a Non-Violent Containment Squad, Jo Freeman
"As an alumnus of the 1964 Free Speech Movement and a veteran of the civil rights movement, I was appalled to read about the recent violent confrontations in Berkeley.
¶
Those reports took me back to the 1960s when I was doing voter registration for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and marching against segregation in Birmingham and Mississippi.
¶
Then we were the equivalent of the 'fascists' that Antifa and the black bloc are beating up in Berkeley. They called us Communists, not fascists, but like Antifa, they believed we were invaders who held them and their Southern values in contempt. The local whites whose towns we marched in burned us with their hate stares, blistered our ears with their curses, threw bottles and firecrackers at us, drove cars into our march lines, and sometimes used fists and bats. Guns were visible. Occasionally someone was shot.
¶
Sometimes law enforcement stood between us and our detractors, their faces and rifles always pointed at us, and sometimes they took a vacation, leaving us to the will of the crowd.
¶
Sound familiar?
¶
What we learn from these comparisons is that when a group or a person significantly dissents from deeply held community-wide views it will be attacked when it publicly challenges those views, and the attackers will feel justified without any concern for 'free speech' as a more important value.
¶
That is dangerous. As UC Berkeley's Chancellor Carol Christ put it 'Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it.'"
8/29/2017, FrontPage Mag, THE LEFT TURNS ON ANTIFA, Daniel Greenfield
"Political scientist Jo Freeman, part of the radical student movement that forced UC Berkeley to permit political speech five decades ago, said she was dismayed at the effort that went into silencing opposition. She drew similarities between those who threatened her and other freedom marchers in the South in the 1960s, and those who bully the far right now.
¶
'It is not uncommon for societies to produce a hate squad,' Freeman said. 'People who want to suppress the right to speak -- they are everywhere.'"
8/27/2017, Associated Press, Birthplace of free speech movement braces for possible fight, Paul Elias
"Student activism was born during the 1960s free-speech movement at Berkeley, when thousands of students at the university mobilized to demand that the school drop its ban on political activism." [Ed note: student activism was born the day after students were invented.]
8/24/2017, San Jose Mercury News, UC Berkeley tries to reclaim its free speech legacy, Emily DeRuy
"That's not how the school approached the free-speech issue as recently as last year and it's certainly not how the school addressed it in the 1960s. In 1964, Dean of Students Katherine Towle prohibited students from taking positions on off-campus political issues because the university was hoping to minimize student involvement in political demonstrations off campus.
¶
But the announcement backfired spectacularly. Faculty and students, led by a young Mario Savio, protested for months and ultimately won the right to speak openly. In response, most other colleges in the U.S. loosened regulations around political activity by students."
8/17/2017, CNBC, Royal Caribbean CEO: College taught me the right way to protest, Jessica Dickler
"His undergraduate experience outside the classroom was affected by the California sun and sea and the free speech movement in the 1960s.
¶
Of the student activism on campus at the time, [Richard] Fain says he learned an important lesson about how to work together to accomplish great things. 'I really saw the value of working with other people.' he said. 'If people really do work toward a common goal, nothing stops them.'"
8/16/2017, EdSource, A summer rich in history for students who looked, listened and questioned, John Fensterwald
"For Adrianne Aron, an insecure girl from St. Louis who broke off from her parents when they wouldn't pay for her to go to college -- 'they said girls could get a husband as easily by staying home' -- her activism began when she heard Mario Savio, a charismatic leader of the Free Speech Movement, at UC Berkeley. 'I was terrified,' she told a trio of students, recalling her early days at Berkeley. 'I was afraid to open my mouth. I sat and admired students with the ability to ask intelligent questions. They had something I didn't have: self-confidence, for they came from families with love and support.'
¶
But she said Savio 'was really speaking to the marginalized. He was a leader with the ability and desire to speak meaningfully, to connect us to a movement.' She participated in the student strike in 1962 and the anti-Vietnam war movement, and went to Cuba with other young Americans to cut sugar cane for Fidel Castro in defiance of the U.S. boycott. She became a psychologist who worked with survivors of torture in Central America.
¶
Her words resonated with Alina Aceves, who'll be a senior at James Logan High this year. 'She was sheltered; she was a follower. Her eyes opened up; I connected with that.'"
8/15/2017, Los Angeles Times, UC Berkeley chancellor unveils 'Free Speech Year' as right-wing speakers plan campus events, Teresa Watanabe
"The free speech issue drew the biggest spotlight in the new chancellor's daylong media interviews and welcoming remarks to 9,500 new students. Christ, dressed in blue ceremonial robes, told the new arrivals that Berkeley's free speech movement was launched by liberals and conservatives working together to win the right to advocate political views on campus.
¶
'Particularly now, it is critical for the Berkeley community to protect this right; it is who we are,' she said. 'That protection involves not just defending your right to speak, or the right of those you agree with, but also defending the right to speak by those you disagree with, even of those whose views you find abhorrent.'
¶
She drew loud applause when she asserted that the best response to hate speech is 'more speech' rather than trying to shut down others, and when she said that shielding students from uncomfortable views would not serve them well."
8/15/2017, Berkeleyside, New UC Berkeley Chancellor takes reins at turbulent time, Natalie Orenstein
"In July, Berkeleyside sat down with the new chancellor, the first woman to hold the position. The Victorian literature scholar was still settling into her new office in California Hall, so shelves were empty and walls were bare - save for the photographs of the Free Speech Movement that came with the place. Christ, who served as UC Berkeley's executive vice chancellor and provost both before and after her stint at Smith, didn't travel far to take up her new post, and she had quickly gotten down to business."
8/14/2017, The Daily Californian, Alumnus welcomes new UC Berkeley students with stern warning, Shounak Bagchi
"What makes your time at UC Berkeley more difficult than that of prior generations is that the campus's reputation of being the gold standard for free speech is under attack. It is up to you preserve this great tradition that started when Mario Savio and others in the Free Speech Movement fought to ensure that your campus be an open avenue to passionately discuss issues without violence, legal repercussion or censorship.
¶
Don't ever forget the profound impact of this movement. The bravery of these men and women was instrumental in creating the blueprint for helping future generations combat racial injustices, empower the disenfranchised and speak truth to power."
8/14/2017, New York Times, The 'Free Speech' Hypocrisy of Right-Wing Media, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
"Progressives deserve the same speech protection as conservatives. The American Civil Liberties Union and the PEN organization have gone out of their way to defend the rights of provocative speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter to speak on campuses, but have been virtually silent on cases involving leftist or progressive faculty members who face suspension for provocative comments."
8/9/2017, The Washington Post, The real issue in the campus speech debate: The university is under assault, Nicholas B. Dirks
"We have serious work ahead to ensure that college campuses not only understand the full set of legal issues around free speech but also embrace the need for robust representation and debate across the political spectrum. Those on the left who have sought to close down offensive or dissenting views have provided an easy target for the right. By rejecting the procedural commitment to free speech, they have also undermined the substantive value of free speech, which will come back to haunt them as a precedent to censor expressions of their own views. Those on the right who have used invitations to controversial speakers to create headlines rather than foster intellectual exchange have in turn used the thinnest of procedural reeds to undermine the real substance of free speech as well."
8/8/2017, CNSNews, Why the Left Defends Islamists: They Share a Common Enemy - The West, Bill Donohue
"In other words, the Free Speech Movement activists hated liberalism, properly understood: they had no use for free speech-their sponsorship of it was nothing but a useful tool to advance their radical politics." [Ed note: that would be the FSM support of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.]
8/4/2017, New York Times, Behind Berkeley's Semester of Hate, Andrew Beale and Sonner Kehrt
"Mr. Lawrence is graduating this summer, nearly a year early, a decision reinforced by how Berkeley has dealt with the turmoil. 'I don't want to be on a campus where I'm looking over my shoulder all the time, but the people I'm constantly looking over my shoulder for can stand on the steps of Sproul' -- where the Free Speech Movement was born, in 1964 -- 'and give a press conference.'
¶
'Everyone just kind of wants to keep their head down, and the administration is really hypocritical about what's going on, for all their talk about wellness and campus climate. A pretty big part of me feeling safe on my campus, it doesn't seem crazy to say, is that there not be any Nazis here.'
¶
'People need to understand this whole thing, this whole conflict isn't about free speech.'"
8/3/2017, Ulyces, Comment les hippies ont inventé la Silicon Valley, Mathilde Obert
"Mercredi 2 décembre 1964, baie de San Francisco. Posté à l'aplomb des grandes colonnes de Sproul Hall, sur le campus californien de Berkeley, Mario Savio prend le micro. Trois ans avant la venue du pasteur Martin Luther King, cet homme de 22 ans qui rêvait de devenir prêtre harangue 4 000 étudiants. Il a les cheveux en bataille mais des idées claires. Coupable de lui refuser toute activité politique en lien avec les mouvement des Droits civiques, la faculté, éructe-t-il, 'se résume à un groupe d'employés'. Les sourcils froncés, le militant du Free Speech Movement se lance dans une longue diatribe : 'Nous ne sommes que de la matière première qui refuse cette condition. […] Il arrive un moment où l'activité de la machine est si détestable, vous répugne tant, que vous ne pouvez pas y participer. Et vous devez mettre vos corps sur les engrenages et les rouages pour la faire cesser.'
¶
Les secousses du Free Speech Movement engendrent la vague hippie qui déferle sur le pays. Elle rassemble, sous une même esthétique psychédélique, différentes critiques de la société de consommation et de l'autorité. Surtout, son opposition à la guerre du Vietnam ne souffre aucune réserve. 'Le slogan 'Peace and Love' n'était pas encore prononcé avec ironie', rappelle Danny Goldberg, auteur d'un ouvrage sur l'année 1967 et l'idée hippie, In Search of The Lost Chord."
7/31/2017, Conatus News, The Dawkins Debacle: Free Speech, Islam, and Berkeley, Tom Adamson
"To realise what a lamentable travesty this is, remember that Berkeley was famous for its pro-free speech movement in the 1960's. The student body of the University of California was instrumental in breaking the shackles of cold war conformity. Mario Savio, a leading figure of the movement, gave his famous speech on the Berkeley campus. It warrants quotation here:
¶
'We're human beings! … There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious - makes you so sick at heart - that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.'
¶
The fundamental tenet that Savio and his compatriots espoused was freedom: freedom to criticise the government, freedom to discuss controversial political ideologies, freedom to think outside established norms. It is distressing as a free speech advocate for KPFA to take essentially the same stance as the establishment did 50 years ago. Henry Norr, a former board member of the station, wrote in an email that Dawkins was 'an outspoken Islamophobe.' This may not be surprising to anyone familiar with the state of public debate on university campuses in the US and abroad, but it is an insidious indictment on the institutions that seem so happy to play the role of censor."
7/25/2017, NOS Nieuwsurr, Fifty years after the Summer of Love: "Our ideals have been destroyed",
Dutch television program interviews includes FSM items in SF Summer of Love exhibit, FSM clips, substantial Lynne Hollander Savio interview.
7/9/2017, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Flower power's hothouse, Philip Martin
"In 1964, a student protest -- what would become known as the 'Free Speech Movement' -- sprang up at the University of California at Berkeley. Students insisted the administration lift a ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech. A series of demonstrations that saw students arrested and jailed eventually led to a new chancellor acceding to student demands. In 1965, Jerry Rubin and others established the Vietnam Day Committee -- a cornerstone of the nascent anti-war movement -- in Berkeley. The same year, the owner of Berkeley's Steppenwolf bar started an alternative newspaper called the Berkeley Barb."
7/4/2017, Daily Californian, A History of UC Berkeley's Chancellors, Christine Lee
"The Free Speech Movement took place under [Edward W.] Strong's chancellorship. Thousands of students gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest the ban on campus political activities. Nearly 800 students were arrested for occupying Sproul Hall on Dec. 2, 1964, the largest mass arrest on a national university campus at the time.¶
After months of protests as a part of the Free Speech Movement, Strong resigned amid controversy over his handling of free speech activities on campus."
June 2017, Wired UK, Who built Silicon Valley? Blame the hippies, James Temperton
"From the Black Panthers to the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, 60s political movements are also an influence on modern Californian design."
6/1/2017, Splice Today, Cheap Rebellion: Kathy Griffin and the Wonder Woman Troll, Mark Judge
"There was a time when rebellion meant hard work. Rebellion was the blood and sweat of the civil rights movement. It was the long, grueling arguments during Free Speech Movement at Berkeley."
5/31/2017, The Davis Vanguard, Why Free Speech Protects the Weak Even When the Powerful Benefit At Times, David M. Greenwald
"If you understand the subtext of the ACLU – I think that is precisely what the piece is getting at. But their target audience is not conservatives already convinced that college campuses are the problem, but rather liberal ones who unfortunately seem to need to be convinced that free speech protects them rather than exposes vulnerable populations.¶
....¶
This is a key message that I try to get across in my lectures. I tell it through a recitation of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and the shooting at Kent State. It was not long ago that college campuses were clamping down on the free speech of the left – the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, rather than what they are doing now in fighting the Milos of the world.
¶
The test of civil liberties is during the trying times. The point I make in my lectures is that any tyrannical government will allow you the 'freedom' to sing their praises. The test is whether they will permit dissent."
5/30/2017, The Forward, Israeli Police Broke My Arm, But They Can't Stop Me From Resisting -- Or Speaking Out, Sarah Brammer-Shlay
"Mario Salvio -- leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement -- famously said, 'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop!'
¶
That was what we attempted to do last week: put our bodies upon the gears, wheels, levers and entire apparatus of the occupation Machine, which has been functioning at top speeds for 50 years. Our sit-in aimed to stop the Israeli police from entering the Muslim Quarter and closing Palestinian businesses, therefore forcing the March of the Flags to be rerouted and enter through another gate."
5/24/2017, CNN, Highlights from 'California: Designing Freedom',
Free Speech Movement Punch Card, 1964--'The origin of the picture is unknown. it's an artifact of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) which is one of the earliest civil rights movements that originated at the University of California, Berkeley. The movement used punch cards, an artifact of early computing, to make the point that the use of computers is turning people into data and turning universities into machines. They were using the materials of technology to make an argument against technology.'" [ed note: the photo is by Howard Harawitz. The FSM was not arguing against technology, but against the University of California. In another context the FSM complained that punchcards were to be treated better than students. Members of the FSM made great use of technological tools, including various forms of printing, public address systems, audio recording, and photography. FSM arrestee Lee Felsenstein went on to design the first portable computer, the Osborne 1.]
5/24/2017, California Magazine, Dan Siegel on Free Speech and People's Park 48 Years Later, Michael Taylor
"What, if anything, did this have to do with free speech and the Free Speech Movement?
¶
It had to do with the issue of student self-determination, with expressive behavior, not political speech. We wanted to express ourselves by creating a park, for a practical purpose. The student movement in the 1960s was a political movement that had a strong cultural basis to it. In the Bay Area, it was joined to the youth movement that stressed sex, drugs and rock and roll, the kind of hippie culture that flourished in the Bay Area. This was a precursor to today's issues of urban farming and community gardens. People looked at it in that way. Free speech in a broader sense means the right of the community to make decisions on how land is to be used going forward."
5/21/2017, Philippine News, Berkeley Fil-Ams defend free speech, Cherie M. Querol Moreno
"22-year-old media studies junior Robin Cid Calleja, who was raised in Las Piñas in Manila, sees the same picture.
¶
'Sproul continues to be a bustling plaza where students can engage in social, cultural, and political activities. It continues to be the heart of student activities, where various student groups -- including racial minorities, like Filipino students who make up barely 2% of the student population -- can have their identities represented and where political minorities on campus, such as the Berkeley College Republicans, can express their ideas and opinions. I think that shows that the Free Speech Movement's legacy lives on,' he said.
¶
For Calleja, those lamenting the death of free speech in Berkeley are unaware of the spirit of the movement.
¶
'They need to understand that while free speech protects people from state- or university-sanctioned censorship or retaliation, it does not protect them from being ridiculed by their peers. Peaceful protests and harsh criticisms from liberal students are not indications that the Free Speech Movement is dead. Rather, these are (acts of) free speech at work,' Calleja said."
5/19/2017, Long Beach Press Telegram, In work and life, he stood for free speech, Rich Archbold
"Jim Smith never forgot the day he got arrested as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, 53 years ago.
¶
Smith, who died at 72 on Mother's Day, wasn't alone. Almost 800 others were arrested in 1964 at a sit-in in Sproul Hall. Students were protesting university restrictions on campus political activities and their free speech. It was the start of the historic Free Speech Movement led by Mario Savo.
¶
I met Smith years later when I was managing editor of the Press-Telegram, and he was a manager in our circulation department.
¶
He would talk about his experience and how proud he was that he got involved. He called it his 'awakening' on social and political issues.
¶
He was 'a dyed-in-the-wool liberal,' according to his wife, Wendy. He was against the war in Vietnam, the war in Iraq and anything that he thought would inhibit free speech. He was for women's rights and tolerance for all people."
5/18/2017, North Coast Journal, How our lives shape the way we see the Lawson killing, Thadeus Greenson
"I was born and raised in Oakland, the child of solidly upper-middle class parents with a devotion to social justice. My father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and helped start the free speech movement in Berkeley, and my mother moved across the country to learn to care for people with mental illness and fight for women's right to educational and professional advancement. For years, beginning at the age of 6, I was the only white kid -- or one of only a couple -- on my West Oakland baseball teams. I fell in love with -- and eventually married -- a woman who is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and a second-generation Mexican American. I followed her to Mexico, where we lived for a year in an idyllic town that counted me among its few white residents."
5/17/2017, truthout, The Home of Free Speech™: A Critical Perspective on UC Berkeley's Coalition With the Far-Right, Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda and Beezer de Martelly
"In order to dismantle this romanticized version of events, we take a deeper, more critical examination of this supposed "Home of Free Speech™" and argue that the very framework of free speech rights developed during the FSM -- a time nostalgically remembered by the American public as the apex of leftist countercultural student movements -- was, in fact, a mechanism to build coalition between liberals and conservatives. We trace these developments through one character in particular, John Searle, who played a key role in bridging this particular campus divide through the promotion of a sanitized, depoliticized free speech framework in the early sixties. Finally, we demonstrate how this legacy bears on the contemporary resurgence of free speech as a tool to advance conservative white nationalist, anti-immigrant agendas."
5/16/2017, Rolling Stone, Hear Rancid Honor Berkeley Activism on Electrifying 'Telegraph Avenue', Jon Blistein
"Like the video for their first Trouble Maker offering, 'Ghost of a Chance,' Rancid tear through 'Telegraph Avenue' in a simple basement setting. Singer/guitarist Tim Armstrong opens the song with recollections of his teenage years hanging out and playing music on the titular street, which runs from Downtown Oakland to the edge of the University of California, Berkeley campus. In the second and third verses, Armstrong sings about the Free Speech Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests that gripped the school and city in the Sixties, referencing activist Mario Savio and then-California Governor Ronald Reagan."
5/15/2017, UC Berkeley News, Alum Dick Beahrs recalls MLK's visit to Berkeley 50 years ago, Melanie Hurley
"Dick Beahrs: The Free Speech Movement had occurred and that shook me up. I came from a conservative home in Palo Alto. And one of the things I was taken aback by was that public figures wouldn't come to Berkeley to speak. They absolutely would not do it. So I took that upon myself as an objective. I got Robert Kennedy to come, and I got King to come."
5/13/2017, KQED.org, 'Road to the Summer of Love' a Snapshot of Sweet '60s Madness, Richie Unterberger
"Although more modest in scale than the de Young's current Summer of Love extravaganza, the California Historical Society's current exhibition On the Road to the Summer of Love, running through Sept. 10, offers important context through photos, memorabilia, and audiovisuals. (And at $5, the price is right.) Rooms on the Beats and the Free Speech Movement trace the Bay Area's proudly rebellious bohemianism back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. The folk revival (check the pictures of a pre-rock Janis Joplin and short-haired Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen), the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the experimental music of the San Francisco Tape Music Center all get their due as vital forces in the city's simmering volcano.¶
...¶
The Free Speech section features not just the expected shot of Joan Baez, but also a couple shots of folkie Barbara Dane, who was probably even further to the left of Baez." [Ed note: the photos of Barbara Dane by Erik Weber were made after the end of the Free Speech Movement, during the anti-war movement.]
5/12/2017, The Hill, Universities are battlegrounds, Berkeley faculty forgot how to fight, Alemayehu G. Mariam
"In 1964, Mario Savio, Jack Weinberg and others defiantly mobilized Berkeley students in the cause of campus activism, free speech and academic freedom. They were joined by a thousand strong faculty, making Berkeley a national symbol of campus free speech and protest. By contrast, the stony silence of Berkeley's faculty majority in 2017 is deafening."
5/12/2017, Rutland Herald, Some claim free speech is fading at nation's colleges, Collin Binkley
"The events at Berkeley and Middlebury have drawn scorn from observers across the political spectrum, including some founders of the free speech movement that took root at Berkeley in the 1960s. Jack Weinberg, who was arrested on campus in 1964 for violating school codes on activism and sparked a wave of protests to change them, said he found 'the whole thing despicable.'
¶
'When you suppress ideas, you also increase interest in those ideas,' Weinberg said. 'It's understandable that people want to stop it, but it doesn't work.'"
5/12/2017, Los Angeles Times, A reminder: Anti-communist hysteria almost destroyed the University of California, Michael Hiltzik
"At Berkeley, the loyalty oath experience continued to resonate through the 1960s and the birth of the free speech movement, which militated against Vietnam- and civil rights-era restrictions on political speech on the campus. And the issues continue to resonate today -- not least as a reminder that the loyalty oath affair was fueled at least partially by UCLA's speaking invitation to Laski.
¶
Free-speech challenges still erupt at Berkeley and other UC campuses, but wholesale disqualifications for one's political beliefs or even political statements haven't been tried since. That doesn't mean they won't recur -- political attacks on university faculty members are common, generally as right-wing attacks on supposed liberal leanings of university professors." [ed note: the FSM was over before anti-Vietnam organizing began.]
5/10/2017, cleveland.com, Suppression 301 - silencing opposing voices on campus, Ted Diadiun
"The late Mario Savio likely would have loathed the ideas of all three. I'm thinking, though, that he would have been more distressed at the way the protest culture he helped spawn has tried to silence those ideas, rather than to defeat them with better ideas."
5/6/2017, The Intelligencer, Berkeley Birthed Right, Patrick Buchanan
"In 1964, neither Nixon nor Reagan appeared to have a bright future. But after Berkeley, both captured the presidency twice. And both benefited mightily from denouncing rioting students, even as liberalism suffered from its perceived association with them."
5/6/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Free speech is a joke when laughing is a crime, Caille Millner
"While Baby Boomers are lecturing them about 'tolerance' for hateful speech and misrepresenting the history of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, young people are thinking about the Occupy protesters who were pepper-sprayed by police at UC Davis.
¶
They're thinking about the hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters tossed in jail for demonstrating against police brutality.
¶
Now, they'll be thinking of Desiree Fairooz.
¶
If 'free speech' applies only to some Americans, it's hardly free."
5/6/2017, California Magazine, Ann Coulter at Berkeley: Untangling the Truth, Krissy Eliot
"It's been about a week since Ann Coulter tried but failed to speak on the Berkeley campus, and the outrage continues unabated. Outrage that once again a conservative was silenced on a liberal campus. Outrage that the university cancelled her appearance and refused to provide appropriate protection for her. Once again, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is depicted as a place where free speech--at least for conservatives--went home to die. But what actually happened between the university, Coulter and the three student groups that wanted to host her? Here's our attempt to set the record straight on several misconceptions about the Coulter incident.
¶
Misconception 1: UC Berkeley cancelled the Ann Coulter event.
¶
Among the most popular rumors is one of Berkeley cancelling Coulter's event--a claim reported by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other mainstream publications, with Chancellor Nicholas Dirks even referring to the event as 'now-cancelled' in an op-ed the day before the event.
¶
But in actuality, the university never agreed to host Ann Coulter in the first place."
5/5/2017, hoodline, On The Road To The Summer Of Love Opens May 12th With Event-Filled Weekend In San Francisco,
"Visitors to the exhibition are taken down an amazing road, beginning in the late 1950s with the Beatniks in North Beach and ending in late 1967 with the Diggers' Death of the Hippie ceremony. The exhibition explores iconic moments-such as Jack Weinberg in a police car at UC Berkeley at the birth of the Free Speech Movement-as well as less well-known, but none-the-less formative, events."
5/2/2017, The Socialist Worker, Organizing for an alt-right delete at Berkeley, Sarah Wheels
"As Mukund Rathi, a law student at UC Berkeley and member of the ISO [International Socialist Org], explained at the demonstration:
¶
'The Berkeley Free Speech Movement arose out of the struggles of civil rights activists and socialists against segregation and anti-Black racism in California. These activists, many of them students, were engaging in militant demonstrations and sit-ins to win equal rights for Black people...
¶
It is absurd for the far-right provocateurs, white supremacists and the College Republicans to claim this legacy...
¶
The greatest threat to free speech, on college campuses and elsewhere, comes from these right-wing forces. They will use violence against those who wish to speak and assemble freely. And this should not surprise us--we can't possibly believe that white supremacists and neo Nazis have anything but violent hostility towards their opponents.'"
5/2/2017, PR Newswire, California Historical Society Hits the Road to the Summer of Love with New Exhibition that Tells the Story of the Countercultural Movement in San Francisco through Photographs, The California Historical Society
"Visitors to the exhibition are taken down an amazing road, beginning in the late 1950s with the Beatniks in North Beach and ending in late 1967 with the Diggers' Death of the Hippie ceremony. The exhibition explores iconic moments-such as Jack Weinberg in a police car at UC Berkeley at the birth of the Free Speech Movement-as well as less well-known, but none-the-less formative, events.
Listening stations with audio clips provide a unique way to be a part of these moments in history. They include a reading of the famed poem "Howl" by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1959; poems from all of the poets at the famed Six Gallery reading that introduced 'Howl,'; Mario Savio's legendary speech at the Free Speech Movement sit-in at UC Berkeley in December 1964; and the Grateful Dead on stage at the 1967 Human Be-In. Musician Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane and actor Peter Coyote, once a member of the artist-anarchist collective The Diggers, reflect on the era as well. "
5/2/2017, History News Network, Free Speech Is Not Dying in Berkeley, Andrea S. Johnson
"The FSM was not an isolated product of Berkeley liberalism. It was partially a product of students who grew up hearing about and had sometimes themselves participated in the nonviolent civil rights movement of the South. A freshman on campus in the Fall of 1964 would have been in elementary school during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and just about to begin their senior year of high school when the March on Washington occurred. A junior or senior on campus might have been to Mississippi to organize voter education programs the summer before. The FSM's relatively peaceful reaction to heavy-handed restrictions on their traditional free speech zone were the result of nearly a decade of non-violent direct action modeled by the civil rights movement. This of course is easily lost if all one has are the campus protest photographs; most of the participants are white, and the pictures are of events on campus, meaning that the modern viewer can easily miss the broader connections to nonviolent protest which was key to Cold War social change. Those who value the FSM now, may not value nonviolence as a form of protest in the same way."
5/1/2017, Washington Examiner, Joan Baez protested for free speech at Berkeley in 1964 - now she's standing up for Ann Coulter, Emily Jashinsky
"Legendary folk musician Joan Baez, a veteran of the original free speech movement, is standing up for conservative author Ann Coulter.
¶
After a dramatic series of events unfolded last week culminating in the cancellation of Coulter's scheduled lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Baez, often associated with her work in the Civil Rights movement, posted a statement condemning the censorship
¶
'Let the Ann Coulters of the world have their say,' the 76-year-old musician wrote. 'Trying to stop Ann Coulter or Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking or any group from marching will not stop the advance of fascism, but rather might strengthen it.'
¶
In her statement, Baez referred to censorship as 'one of the 14 characteristics of fascism' and argued it is not a 'pathway to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"
5/1/2017, The Daily, Counter-Coulter?, Gabriel Epstein
"It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with what's being said. It doesn't particularly matter if you're offended by it, either. What matters is that the principle of free speech remains uncompromised, and that everyone is allowed to say their piece. It doesn't mean that you have to listen to the people you disagree with (though you should). It means that it simply isn't acceptable to respond to them with anything other than speech. That means no violence, no threats, and no censorship.
¶
Berkeley was a center of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s and it should be one now more than ever. The country is highly polarized, and it's imperative that all lines of communication remain open, even if what's being said is inflammatory. Words never killed anyone, but silence very well could.
¶
The university should allow Coulter to speak, it should provide any security necessary to ensure that her rights are protected, and it should live up to its commitments all those years ago to safeguard the rights of students. All universities should be places where all ideas are subjected to the same scrutiny, not isolated and homogeneous oases.
¶
Arthur Goldberg, one of the organizers of the Free Speech Movement, once asked 'How can I go to class and learn of our country's democratic processes when I'm not allowed to practice them on campus?' For both students' and the nation's success, speech must be met with speech. Otherwise we let the Coulters and Yiannopouloses of the world martyr themselves without ever having their ideology challenged.
¶
America is a constant conversation, one that universities should be active and unbiased participants in. That means, above all, that the freedom of speech must be protected."
4/28/2017, Vanity Fair, Milo Yiannopoulos Is Starting A New, Ugly, For-Profit Troll Circus, Tina Nguyen
"Milo Inc.'s first event will be a return to the town that erupted in riots when he was invited to speak earlier this year. In fact, Yiannopoulos said that he is planning a 'week-long celebration of free speech' near U.C. Berkeley, where a speech by his fellow campus agitator, Ann Coulter, was recently canceled after threats of violence. It will culminate in his bestowing something called the Mario Savio Award for Free Speech. (The son of Savio, one of the leaders of Berkeley's Free Speech movement during the mid-1960s, called the award 'some kind of sick joke'.)"
4/28/2017, The National Review, Berkeley Didn't Birth 'Free Speech,' but It Seems Intent to Bury It, Jonah Goldberg
"Anyone not loyal to a certain ideology must be resisted, rejected, and renounced.
¶
Demosthenes, the Athenian rhetorician and champion of liberty, pointed out around 355 B.C. that residents of Athens were free to praise Sparta's regime, but Spartans were banned from praising Athens.
¶
In 1689, the British passed a law guaranteeing freedom of speech in Parliament. A century later, French revolutionaries incorporated into law the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which established free speech as a universal right. Two years later, the Americans ratified the First Amendment, which guarantees that the state shall not infringe on the right to free speech. Roughly a century and half later, in 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says, 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. . . . '
¶
I mention all of this because every time I read or hear about the pathetic state of affairs at the University of California, Berkeley -- where conservative speakers and rabble-rousers alike are banned from speaking lest they be assaulted by a mob -- journalists and other commentators insist on pointing out the irony that this is all happening 'where the Free Speech Movement was born.'
¶
Yes, I know there was a thing called the Free Speech Movement. And, yes, its members and leaders talked a good deal about free speech.
¶
But the movement for free speech is thousands of years old and runs like a deep river across the landscape of Western Civilization."
4/26/2017, U.S. News & World Report, A Free Speech Tug of War: Original members of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement support Ann Coulter's right to speak., Lauren Camera
"Across the board, leaders of the Free Speech Movement denounce the violence that's occurred, and blame the current atmosphere on a hyper-partisan political climate -- one in which people tune out ideas they don't share, talk over each other instead of to each other, and, notably, one that runs counter to the ideals upon which the Free Speech Movement was created.
¶
Indeed, the original movement in the 1960s included thousands of students from all political and philosophical leanings.
¶
'You had in a room people representing 20 to 30 different groups, from far left to far right and everything in between,' says [Jackie] Goldberg. 'Pro-Goldwater forces and anti-Goldwater forces, you had the Jewish and Christian organizations, all the religious groups, even dormitories.'
¶
Goldberg and others joke that the incredible breadth of ideologies often meant meetings ran upwards of 15 hours.
¶
Another pillar of the movement was its commitment to nonviolence.
'We were at no time violent,' says [Anita] Medal. 'Even when they sent 400 motorcycle police on campus to threaten us, even during our arrests in December of '64, even when we were kicked in the head by police, stomped on, dragged down the stairs. We were nonviolent.'"
4/26/2017, The New York Times, Berkeley Is Under Attack From Both Sides, Nicholas Dirks
"BERKELEY, Calif. - The University of California, Berkeley, and the community around it have been symbols of free speech for more than 50 years. We still celebrate the legacy of Mario Savio and others who fought in the 1960s to ensure that the First Amendment be honored on campus."
4/26/2017, The Los Angeles Times, Editorial Let Ann Coulter speak, The Times Editorial Board
"No one who has observed recent violence in Berkeley would dismiss the university's safety concerns. But it's important that a campus that was the birthplace of the free speech movement not succumb to what lawyers call the 'heckler's veto' -- the idea that a fear of disruptive or violent protest justifies canceling a speech by a controversial figure or shunting it to a time or place where it will have a significantly smaller audience."
4/26/2017, The Guardian, Ann Coulter cancels speech (again) - but battle for Berkeley's political soul rages on, Julia Carrie Wong and Sam Levin
"Robert Cohen, a history professor at New York University who has written several books about the free speech movement, said that he saw the current contretemps as a 'free speech hustle'.
¶
'The free speech tradition that people made sacrifices to win is really in tatters,' Cohen said. He blamed the devolution on the 'short-sighted' reactions of the left and the 'opportunistic and cynical game that these rightwingers are playing'.
¶
When the university voted to allow political speech on campus in 1964, he said, they also insisted that the administration be allowed to regulate the 'time, space and manner' of such activity so as not to interfere with the normal functioning of the university.
¶
'If I want to have a rally, I can't do it in your English class,' Cohen said. 'If having an evening talk by a rightwing bigot is going to do $100,000 in property damage and disrupt the university, they have always had the right to say, no, do it during the daytime.'" [Ed Note: Daniel Savio is also quoted.]
4/26/2017, History News Network, Berkeley Has NOT Violated Ann Coulter's Free Speech Rights, Robert Cohen
"No, this is not a real free speech movement at Berkeley today, and that is because there has been no free speech violation by the UC administration. What the Coulter affair really amounts to is a 'time, place, and manner' quibble. The settlement of the 1964 Free Speech Movement, as embodied in the December 8 resolutions, included a provision authorizing the university to impose reasonable regulations on the 'time, place, and manner of political activity' on campus so that such activity does not interfere with 'the normal functions of the university.' The administration has used this 'time place and manner' authority in the face of the threats it received, acting on the belief that the time and place for the Coulter talk that would not end in violence and disrupt the normal functions of the university was in early May at a more secure location."
4/24/2017, Newsweek, Ann Coulter Doesn't Scare These Student Protest Leaders From Berkeley, Julia Glum
"'The primary danger is coming from the kind of ideas that Yiannopoulos and Coulter are spreading, but the other danger is a small group of people wearing bandanas coming out and breaking windows,' [Jack] Radey tells Newsweek. 'What they are doing is potentially making it impossible for nonviolent demonstrations to take place. They are giving the right-wing and neofascist types all the copy they need.'
¶
Anita Medal, who also participated in the Free Speech Movement, says she and her friends fought for Berkeley to be a forum for discussion during the civil rights movement. If the school thinks it needs additional security for Coulter's event, then the organizers should foot the bill-not scrap the speech entirely, she said.
¶
As for the protesters, 74-year-old Medal suggests teach-ins, lectures or Q-and-A sessions. She remains focused on peaceful, respectful debate, just like she did while facing off with the police at Berkeley five decades ago.
¶
'The ground was rumbling and we were terrified and we did nothing, even when we were arrested and they were beating us with sticks and kicking our heads in and dragging us down stairs,' Medal adds. 'We didn't get violent.'"
4/24/2017, Euronews, The American left's free speech reversal, Peter Van Voorhis
"In the 1960s, activists at the University of California, Berkeley started the American free speech movement, where millions of students across the country fought for free speech rights, largely in opposition to American intervention in Vietnam.
¶
In the United States of America, our rights to free speech are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and more. It has been an important part of our political tradition since our founding, and is one of our most important rights as citizens.
¶
While the vast majority of Americans support robust free speech protections, today's college students have committed themselves to shutting down all speech they disagree with, in the name of 'tolerance.'"
4/23/2017, The Inquisitr, Ann Coulter's Free Speech Ban Could Cost University of California, Berkeley, Pieter Howes
"A representative for Berkeley College Republicans, Harmeet Dhillon, wrote to Berkeley's interim Vice Chancellor, Stephen Sutton, to threaten a lawsuit if Coulter is not allowed to speak as planned on April 27. Dhillon declared the college's decision as a violation of their constitutional right to free speech.
¶
"It is a sad day indeed when the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, is morphing before our eyes into the cemetery of free speech on college campuses."
¶
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) took place during 1964 to 1965 on the Berkeley campus. It was led by students Mario Savio, Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, among others."
4/23/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeley betrays its free speech legacy, Willie Brown
"The battle over free speech in Berkeley has flipped the two sides in the old generation gap."
4/21/2017, The New York Times, Berkeley Is Being Tested on 2 Fronts: Free Speech and Safety, Thomas Fuller and Stephanie Saul
"Veterans of the Free Speech Movement of the '60s, a seminal moment in the university's history, are disheartened that Berkeley is now associated with violence and blocking speech instead of promoting it.
¶
'I don't think Ann Coulter has anything useful to say, but it was unconstitutional for the university to bar her from speaking,' said Lynne Hollander Savio, who took part in the movement and is the widow of Mario Savio, its leading spokesman.
¶
Ms. Savio sees a clear generational divide. Free speech, she said, was more of an absolute for her husband, who is commemorated outside Sproul Hall at the heart of the campus by the officially designated Mario Savio Steps.
¶
'Mario took a principled position -- it was free speech for all,' she said. 'I think free speech has slipped as a value.'"
4/21/2017, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Defending Free Speech in Berkeley Against Violence, Raymond Barglow
"The way to confront and resist right-wing speech is not by violently attacking those who voice it, but by advocating on behalf of free speech, social justice, and non-violence. As FSM veteran Paul Coopersmith writes, 'We must not be remiss in confronting those on the far right, whose visions of how things ought to be lie so beyond the pale. But neither should we stoop to their level.' We can win over many Trump supporters with a progressive agenda that includes good jobs, good schools, restoration of the nation's decaying infrastructure, and medical care for all."
4/21/2017, Los Angeles Times, Opinion: Berkeley has become the place where political extremists come to throw punches, Mariel Garza
"There will be another clash because the provocateurs on the right know that if you want to start a public fight with the reactionaries on the left, you come to Berkeley to do it -- the campus or the city, it doesn't matter as they are one and the same in the eyes of the world. This is the way it has been forever, or at least in the half a century since the violent free speech movement of the 1960s birthed the liberal, supposedly tolerant haven Berkeley is now." [Editor's note: The 1964 FSM was a short-lived, non-violent movement. What violence they experienced issued from hecklers and police. The combatants in Berkeley are not the descendants of the Free Speech Movement. They serve some other ideal.]
4/21/2017, Chicago Tribune, Column: Ann Coulter and the un-free speech movement at Berkeley, Steve Chapman
"Berkeley is an exceptional institution whose history includes the 1964-1965 protests that gained fame as the Free Speech Movement. Long known as a hotbed of left-wing activism, it has lately gained attention as a place where right-wingers venture at their peril."
4/20/2017, The Washington Post, Berkeley gave birth to the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. Now, conservatives are demanding it include them, John Woodrow Cox
"On a December evening in 1964, 1,000 students marched into the Berkley's Sproul Hall and sat down. The protesters were inspired by the Free Speech Movement, a group demanding, among other things, that the university stop restricting political activity on campus.
¶
The students slept, sang, studied and talked until after 3 a.m., when the chancellor showed up and demanded that they leave, according to news accounts. A few did, but most stayed. Then things turned violent.
¶
'An Army of law officers broke up a massive sit-in occupation,' reported the Associated Press, which described 'limply defiant' protesters being dragged down the stairs on their backs and shoved into police vans. 'Cries of police brutality rose from demonstration supporters watching outside.'
¶
But university President Clark Kerr had lost his patience with the activists, declaring in a statement that the Free Speech Movement had 'become an instrument of anarchy.'
¶
By morning, police had arrested 796 students.
¶
The school would later relent to the pressure, loosening its rules against political activity on campus and making Sproul Hall a place for open discussion."
04/20/2017, Politico, How Berkeley became a hotbed of violence in the Trump era, David Siders
"But the history of conflict in Berkeley is also fraught with political peril. Amid sit-ins at the campus during the Free Speech Movement, Ronald Reagan defeated then-Gov. Pat Brown in part by harnessing middle-class anger over protests at what Reagan called a 'hotbed of communism and homosexuality.'
¶
Decades later, some longtime observers of Berkeley's protest culture fear escalating violence could now undercut the left's cause.
¶
'They have this incredible ideology which somehow conflates smashing windows with bringing down the state,' said Lynne Hollander Savio, the widow of Mario Savio, one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement. 'The protests in the early '60s were never like this, and even the anti-Vietnam War marches, where you had more physical interaction, were not, I don't think, as mindless … There's something very creepy about these people, the black-masked people.'"
4/20/2017, MercatorNet, The war on intellectual freedom, Denyse O'Leary
"Fifty years is a long time. In 1964 University of California students were barred from distributing flyers about major issues of the day, including the civil rights struggle. The resulting protests kicked off the Free Speech movement, whose anniversary was duly commemorated by National Public Radio in 2014:"
4/20/2017, Los Angeles Times, UC Berkeley reverses decision to cancel Ann Coulter visit, Veronica Rocha and Jeff Landa
"The UC Berkeley campus is known as the home of the Free Speech Movement. That's one reason conservative activists have used it as a setting for several recent rallies."
4/17/2017, The Los Angeles Times, How Berkeley Became Epicenter of Violent Trump Clashes, Paige St. John and Shelby Grad
"Berkeley is also a potent symbol because of its role as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in 1964:
¶
Before fall 1964, students' politicking had been limited to a small sidewalk strip thought to be off-campus and immune from university restrictions. Students such as Mario Savio returned from searing experiences as civil rights workers in the South and sought to expand campaigns in California, upsetting some state legislators.
¶
After learning that the property was owned by UC, school authorities moved to shut down the area and ban the tables and pamphleting there. Activists challenged the rules by resuming their activities. Three months of confrontations, demonstrations and negotiations followed and became international news. Eventually, the restrictions were lifted with some limitations -- a victory that paved the way for later protests supporting women's' rights and environmentalism and opposing the Vietnam War."
4/14/2017, The Inquisitr, THE SUMMER OF LOVE: NOT EXACTLY HIPPIE PARADISE, Kaanii Powell Cleaver
"Such was the story revealed by rock journalist and respected author, Ben Fong Torres, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the now-legendary San Francisco Summer of Love. In the Cal Alumni Association publication, California, Torres noted how an eclectic mix of more than 20,000 relatively apolitical Haight Ashbury hippies and Berkeley Free Speech Movement veterans from across the bay collided in a 'two-headed' scene culminated in the Summer of Love."
4/14/2017, Berkeleyside, Berkeley braces for more protests, Frances Dinkelspiel
"The Liberty Revival Alliance, formed by Rich Black, selected to hold a rally in Berkeley because he and others believe the city is not tolerant of differing perspectives, as evidenced by the fact that black bloc and Antifa protesters forced the cancellation of Milo Yiannapolous' speech at Cal on Feb. 1. Coming and talking here is a way to uphold free speech, a fundamental American right, they say. They also play up what they see as the irony that the Free Speech Movement happened in Berkeley.
¶
But some on the far left who oppose the alt-right believe free speech only goes so far. Espousing racist and homophobic ideas encourages violence and should be stopped, they say."
4/12/2017, Los Angeles Review of Books, Music in the Air: A Tribute to Music Critic Ralph J. Gleason, Jon Friedman
"In the foreword, Jann Wenner writes, ¶
I was a student at UC Berkeley when I started reading Ralph Gleason's column 'On the Town' in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was the only place I knew to find a certain social, cultural, and political mix that was coming to define my world. He understood rock and roll and became a singular voice that stood out among other music and jazz writers. He got the Beatles and Bob Dylan and what was making them so special to a generation. The Free Speech Movement, the first of numerous student uprisings in the sixties, had overwhelmed the Berkeley campus. He was the only journalist in the Bay Area who gave the FSM a fair shake."
4/9/2017, The Daily Californian, Looking into UC Berkeley's history of activism, Lillian Holmes
"UC Berkeley has a long history of student activism, from the Free Speech Movement to the campaign for divestment from apartheid South Africa. The Free Speech Movement, when students organized for the right to campaign for political causes on campus, is now lauded by the student guides on campus tours. Less mentioned is the period of protest against the Vietnam War."
4/6/2017, The Nation, Teach-Ins Helped Galvanize Student Activism in the 1960s. They Can Do So Again Today, Marshall Sahlins
"The counter-culture was musical, sartorial, pharmacological, sexual, and scatological-but it was not yet fully political. Thinking that by changing the self they could change the world, the anti-establishment rebels remained committed in this respect to the individualism of the established cultural order. There were a few anti-authority student movements, primarily the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ((SNCC), the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley (FSM). In the months and years following the first teach-ins, mounting student anxieties about military conscription gave an impetus to draft-card burnings and other student political action, but not so much as in the early days of the Johnson escalation, when the university resistance, at the instigation of the left-liberal faculty, broke out en masse. It was the teach-ins that largely politicized the counter-cultural generation and effectively nationalized the anti-war protest."
4/3/2017, SocialistWorker.org, The ISO and the soul of international socialism, Alan Maass and Todd Chretien
"In the U.S., socialists of the IS tradition played an unheralded role building support in the North for the civil rights movement. During the 1960s, the Independent Socialist Club was formed literally in the midst of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement by leaders of that struggle, which served as a launching pad for the anti-Vietnam War movement." [Ed note: see: http://www.fsm-a.org/FSM%20Documents/Independent%20Socialist%20Club/Webpages/gallery-01.html]
4/1/2017, Jacobin, Free Speech as Battleground, Christian Parenti & James Davis
"The extension of free speech to universities was famously championed by the UC Berkeley Free Speech movement, which emerged to defend left-wing students who wanted to distribute radical literature and make radical speeches on campus. Winning that fight came at the price of students being beaten and jailed." [Ed note: Actually, the FSM was formed by a left-right coalition to win right to speak and distribute literature of any political nature.]
3/31/2017, Newsweek, CALIFORNIA AGAINST TRUMP: BERKELEY PASSES IMPEACHMENT RESOLUTION, JOINING OTHER GOLDEN STATE CITIES, Tim Marcin
"Berkeley has a rich history of political activism-the town's university calls itself the home of the free speech movement-and that self-image is part of what motivated the city council to take action.
¶
'We were one of the first cities to standup against apartheid--that's a movement that took off and spread and that's very important,' Councilmember Sophie Hahn told KPIX 5."
3/31/2017, Berkeleyside, Ken Stein's Berkeley Buttons, Tom Dalzell
"The Free Speech Movement rocked the campus, California, the United States,and the world in 1964." [Ed note: good photo of FSM button]
3/30/2017, Quartz, As American universities fight over free speech, the UK is seeking a law to end "safe spaces", Amy X. Wang
"No small irony rings through the fact that the last half-century has seen college students go from protesting hate speech in the 1960s Free Speech Movement to, however unconsciously, now propagating it themselves by shouting down controversial individuals who come to campus."
3/29/2017, Capital & Main, California Dreaming: Lynnae and David Evans, Native and Immigrant, Sasha Abramsky
"[Lynnae Evans:] I was at Berkeley in 1964. When the Free Speech Movement occurred, there were pickets placed around all of the classes. We were told we shouldn't cross those lines. I called my father, who was a Republican, and I said, 'You'll never guess what's going on at Berkeley, but there's a Free Speech Movement and we're being encouraged not to go to class.' He said, 'You need to go to class.' I called my grandfather, and he said: 'You never cross a picket line, you find out what the issues are and you support them.' My grandfather had supported the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] and the Teamsters' union and he always felt he couldn't vote for FDR because FDR was too conservative. He voted for the socialist candidate." [Ed note: The strike happened just after the 800 were arrested and led to the faculty voting to stand with the students and the strking of free speech restrictions. The strike lines would not have prevented Linnae Evans from attending class. She clearly had a choice.]
3/28/2017, Splice Today, Wellesley College Profs Pretend to Champion Free Speech, Chris Beck
"Campus politics have flipped since the Free Speech Movement protests during the 1964-65 academic year at the University of California, Berkeley. Students then aimed at forcing the university administration to acknowledge their right to free speech and academic freedom. Now that the regressive left has come to dominate politics on the American campus, academic freedom is limited and free speech often repressed when it involves conservative views."
3/21/2017, Time Magazine, Women Aren't Free Until Speech Is, Camille Paglia
"The Free Speech Movement, led by a fiery Italian-American, Mario Savio, erupted at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, the year I entered college. It was a cardinal moment for my generation. The anti-establishment stance of the Free Speech Movement represented the authentic populist revolution of the 1960s, which resisted encroachments of authority by a repressive elite. How is it possible that today's academic Left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and over-regulation of student life? American colleges have abandoned their educational mission and become government colonies, ruled by officious bureaucrats enforcing federal dictates. This despotic imperialism has no place in a modern democracy. An enlightened feminism, animated by a courageous code of personal responsibility, can only be built upon a wary alliance of strong women and strong men."
Spring 2017, California., Our House: Chaos and Creation in the Berkeley Student Cooperative, By Alastair Boone and Sarah Elizabeth Adler
"The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley was partly a reaction against in loco parentis, and although this framework has largely disappeared from higher education, it is still a useful way to understand the unique responsibilities that the BSC, a landlord in name but a steward in spirit, owes its members. It can also help explain some of the tensions that arise when these members bristle at the policies of their parent organization."
3/17/2017, Jacobin, Between Students and Workers, Joe Allen
"The ISC emerged out of a split in the right wing of the Socialist Party. The political inspiration for the ISC was Hal Draper, a veteran revolutionary socialist and author of the popular pamphlet 'The Mind of Clark Kerr."'It was an examination of the president of the University of California system and his ideas for the modern university. It became the bible of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley."
3/10/2017, The New York Jewish Week, A History of Ideas: The Reason for the Liberal Attitudes on Campus, Shmuly Yanklowitz
"In our contemporary understanding of what a university atmosphere can foment, activists on campuses have often been catalysts for seismic societal change. In February 1960, college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, began a campaign of lunch counter sit-ins with the goal to promote desegregation in community facilities. In doing so, they acted on the precepts of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: 'The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.' It was these humble but brave actions that provided the spark that eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.This, in turn, spurred other college protests. When authorities at the University of California at Berkeley prevented students from distributing civil rights leaflets on campus in 1964, students responded with the Free Speech movement. This movement moved universities out of the grip of Cold War politics and ushered in a decade of student protest involving opposition to the Vietnam War and other issues such as minority rights, anti-Apartheid action, and more inclusivity for vulnerable populations outside the mainstream."
3/10/2017, Study Breaks, The Lost Art of Agreeing to Disagree, Timothy K. DesJarlais,
"In 1964, University of California Berkeley students fiercely protested against restrictive campus rules prohibiting non-approved political groups from operating on campus.
¶
These restrictive policies spawned the famous Free Speech Movement, engraving UC Berkley's legacy as the battleground for free-speech rights. The students led the fight and faced persecution from school administration were remembered as heroes." [Actually the rules also restricted approved student groups from political advocacy.]
3/9/2017, KALX, 'Free Speech for Me, Free Speech for Thee', Reis Thebault
"On Feb. 1, UC Berkeley police canceled a scheduled speech by Breitbart editor and alt-right supporter Milo Yiannopolous because of protests. School officials say the violence was caused by black-clad rioters unaffiliated with the university. But hundreds of students and staff signed petitions and called for the event's cancellation. Reporter Reis Thebault looks at the questions this incident raises about free speech on campus." [Ed note: Thebault interviews FSM arrestee Anita Medal]
3/7/2017, Inside Higher Ed, Bodies on the Gears at Middlebury, John Patrick Leary
"But what if black or Latino Middlebury students don't want to have a conversation about their human dignity? What if they prefer to assert it? If they did so, they'd be participating in a long tradition of campus free-speech defense that many critics overlook. They'd only be doing what Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, famously advised in 1964: putting their 'bodies on the gears' of an apparatus they call unjust.
'There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious -- makes you so sick at heart -- that you can't take part,' Savio said. 'And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.'"
3/6/2017, Bloomberg, Attention, Student Protesters: Use Your Words, Megan McArdle
"That's basically the logic of the editorials that the Berkeley student newspaper published in defense of the rioters. 'A peaceful protest was not going to cancel that event,' wrote student Juan Prieto, 'just like numerous letters from faculty, staff, Free Speech Movement veterans and even donors did not cancel the event. Only the destruction of glass and shooting of fireworks did that. The so-called 'violence' against private property that the media seems so concerned with stopped white supremacy from organizing itself against my community.'" [Ed note: Prieto is wrong. The Free Speech Movement Archives Board, ie veterans, are on public record supporting the right of Yiannopoulos to speak and be heard.]
2/28/2017, The New York Times, The Isolation of College Libertarians, Tom Ciccotta
"Political intolerance is hardly confined to one side of the aisle. If conservatives represented the majority of students on campus, I am sure they would be silencing liberals. Universities must push back against the narrowing of ideology generally to guarantee an open intellectual space for all students.
¶
At a time of increased political tension in the country, it is also important for colleges to push students to learn how to grapple with different views. It was Mario Savio, the socialist leader of Berkeley's free speech movement in the 1960s, who argued that the university should be an intellectual realm where the 'hard light of free inquiry' can be brought upon any and all ideas -- be they liberal or conservative."
2/26/2017, Santa Barbara Independent, How Free Is Free Speech?, Fred Hofmann
"In a class on the First Amendment, Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Irvine Law School. and an ACLU liberal in the best tradition, is addressing this declining understanding in academia of what free speech means. He notes that the views of students on this subject evolve during the course as they are exposed to the history of speech and repression. They learn that the same arguments currently being used to rationalize suppression of speech have been used for centuries, often to repress movements on the left. They learn that whenever a group has asserted itself as an arbiter of permissible speech, it has abused that power.
¶
The Free Speech Movement that emerged on the Berkeley campus in 1964 rejected the notion that college administrators had the right to restrict political advocacy. The irony now is that it is administrators who are resisting calls by students and faculty to restrict speech. Recent UC presidents are to be lauded for a full- throated defense of all types of advocacy, whether by a Farrakhan or a Yiannopolous. Preserving the free marketplace of ideas is an existential priority for academia. Sadly, survival of that free marketplace may require that students and faculty consider taking Remedial Voltaire."
2/25/2017, The Australian, Cancer of political correctness corrodes society's very fabric, Peter Baldwin
"In former times leftists, with the admittedly important exception of apologists for communist totalitarianism, used to champion free speech and campaign against censorship. The seminal moment in the emergence of the American New Left was the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the early sixties.
¶
What an awful contrast to the events at this same institution a few weeks ago where masked, black-clad thugs attacked a scheduled event with Molotov cocktails, fireworks and metal poles, bashing attendees in some cases to the point of unconsciousness as police stood by passively.
¶
These thugs style themselves as anti-fascists while employing classic fascist tactics from 1930s Europe. Scenes like this: peaceful, lawful assemblies being violently attacked, are an increasingly frequent occurrence all over the Western world, including here in Melbourne, and the perpetrators are overwhelmingly from the Left.
¶
So if political correctness is not just about being nice and polite, what is it?
¶
I think it is best described as an attempt to impose a comprehensive set of constraints on what can be said or debated, publicly or even privately, whenever such speech conflicts with the current version of the ever-changing identity politics ideology. It is the compliance and enforcement arm of this ideology.
¶
John Stuart Mill's dictum that 'he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that' is out the window. Instead of responding to disagreeable views with counter-arguments, the characteristic PC response is to say 'I am offended by what you said, and you should not be allowed to say it and furthermore the fact you even say such things marks you as a bad person'."
2/23/2017, Inside Higher Ed, Yiannopoulos and the Moral Crisis of Campus Conservatism, Robert Cohen
"So Yiannopoulos's Republican campus hosts are at miscast as the Free Speech Movement's political descendants. If there is any free speech dispute from Berkeley in the 1960s that the Yiannopoulos affair resembles (and even here the resemblance is limited) it is the obscenity controversy that erupted in spring 1965, a semester after the Free Speech Movement. That controversy concerned the right to use the obscene word 'Fuck' in public campus discourse. Some Free Speech Movement veterans supported this right, and others (like Savio) objected to the punishment of obscenity protesters on due process grounds. But most movement veterans and much of the Berkeley student body refused to rally to this cause because they felt that this use of obscenity was irresponsible and distracted from more serious issues facing the civil rights and antiwar movements.
¶
That's why journalists who labeled this obscenity affair 'the Filthy Speech Movement' erred, as it was impossible to build a mass movement at Berkeley in defense of obscene speech, impossible to re-assemble the old Free Speech Movement coalition for such a cause. Most of the Berkeley student body in 1965 was too wedded to the ideal of responsible political discourse to wave the 'Fuck' banner. In this sense they were more genuinely conservative than today's Berkeley College Republicans who not only wink at Yiannopoulos's obscenity, but also at its use to defame minority students."
2/23/2017, Indybay, Berkeley Chased Milo Out of Town, Shining National Spotlight on "Alt-Right" Hero,
"White nationalist Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley on the first day of Black history month in a building named after MLK. The event on February 1 was cancelled after a large protest erupted outside the Student Union where he was set to speak. Previously, a speaking event at UC Davis was shut down by anti-fascist protesters. Yiannopoulos and his supporters claimed that the protests and cancellations were counter to the values of Free Speech. The so-called Alt-Right have tried to identify their movement as an extension, or modern incarnation, of the Free Speech movement. Milo's supporters have invoked Mario Savio's name to support their interpretation of the Free Speech Movement." [Ed note: Recently Milo revealed that his guiding principle was not free speech but what the market will bear.]
2/22/2017, San Francisco Weekly, A Retrospective of One's Own, for Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jonathan Curiel
"Besides the exhibit at YBCA exhibit, which is also screening Leeson's films in March and featuring her in a March 15 talk with Eleanor Coppola, Leeson's work is currently on view at her longtime San Francisco gallery, Anglim Gilbert, and in New York at Bridget Donahue Gallery. She'll be at New York's MoMA with Tania Bruguera on Feb. 27 for a screening of Tania Libre. Leeson's schedule is as packed as it ever was. Being recognized at YBCA, she says, is special.
'It's a glorious ending to those three decades of real pain and invisibility, and there was nothing I could even do about it,' she says. 'Coming out of the free-speech movement, and the silencing, I just feel so grateful to Lucia, who took the chance to do this show, to all the people who supported me all those years. It's great. People say, 'Why didn't it happen earlier?'
I don't know. But it happened. And maybe it will happen for the next generation -- that's also important -- who don't have to be silenced in a way that my generation was.'"
2/21/2017, The Point News, Campus Intolerance: The Berkeley Protests, Angela Cruz
"But ultimately what occurred at U.C. Berkeley is symbolic of the way in which free speech has been under siege on college campuses despite the fact that U.C. Berkeley was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in 1964, when over 3,000 students rallied for their full constitutional rights on campus."
2/21/2017, Sonoma State Star, Sonoma State rooted in free speech: Remembering activist and professor Mario Savio, Konrad Schoffer
"'[Savio] was a student activist and protester at Berkeley. There was a time when students were not allowed any canvassing or any tables on campus, he thought it was a violation of the first amendment,' said Jonah Raskin, Sonoma State professor emeritus and longtime friend of Savio.
¶
'He and a few other students protested and won the right to able to be active in politics. He also went to the South to register voters, that was a pivotal time in his life.'"
2/17/2017, The Telegraph, The student Left's culture of intolerance is creating a new generation of conservatives, Charlie Peters
"Students were once in favour of free speech. In the mid-1960s, students of the University of California, Berkeley undertook a mass-movement for free speech. Under the leadership of Leftist heroes like Jack Weinberg, Bettina Aptheker and Jackie Goldberg, students demanded that the university administration retracted their on-campus ban of political activities. They demanded their freedom of speech. Mario Savio delivered what is generally recognised as the iconic speech of the University of California, Berkeley's (UCB) free speech movement. Here is the speech's most powerful section:
¶
'There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it - that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!'
¶
Savio's speech helped push the movement towards success. Berkeley students won their full rights. Students, now liberated from the 'machine' of university censorship, were able to create the anti-Vietnam student movement, another famous campus protest.
¶
Nowadays, the student Left are unwilling to honour Savio's legacy. On the 2nd of February, violent protests at Berkeley shut down a talk by popular conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos. Instead of maintaining a liberal and free atmosphere for speech and argument, Berkeley students have become the gears, wheels and levers of the machine that Savio wanted to stop."
2/17/2017, Berkeley Daily Planet, Bring back Yiannopoulos to Berkeley? Yes, but this time..., Becky O'Malley
"I stand with my peers from the Free Speech Movement: I believe that we need to hear all ideas, no matter how hateful, so that we can combat them the best way, with Justice Brandeis' classic antidote to speech we dislike, more speech."
2/17/2017, American Thinker, The Left Silences Debate, Ben Voth
"As California continues upon a path of ideological ricochet that in many quarters seeks complete separation from the nation, the prospects for freedom of speech have declined to incomprehensible limits. America's college campuses -- especially those in California -- are not simply victims of this trend, they are also important agitators for this breach of our most important civil rights. The free speech movement that began at Berkeley has come full circle. Violence against free speech is now argued by the university to be a moral end. Ironically, it was 50 years ago, that a great debater spoke on that campus urging for greater free speech in order to overcome the nation's scourge of racism. James Farmer Jr. was a prelude to the free speech movement of 1964."
2/12/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, UC Berkeley police shift to safety over force at protests, Nanette Asimov
"Jack Radey, a military historian in Oregon, is nearly 70 and remembers being dragged by two officers down the steps of Sproul Hall as a 17-year-old UC Berkeley student in the Free Speech Movement of 1964.
¶
Today, as he reflects on the black bloc anarchists who turned what might have been a peaceful student protest against Yiannopoulos into a fiery, destructive encounter, Radey doesn't see how officers could have dealt with the demonstration any better.
¶
'This black bloc business is really bad news,' he said of the anarchists who have showed up at protests in the Bay Area and across the country, presenting challenges to police trying to de-escalate their responses.
¶
'To identify the police as the enemy in all these cases is a mistake,' Radey said. 'Sometimes they're just trying to actually uphold the law.'"
2/10/2017, The Sacramento Bee, California college campuses should renew commitment to free speech, Kevin Kiley
"In the wake of the riots at Berkeley, California has an opportunity to take a leading role in restoring the primacy of free speech in higher education. To that end, I have introduced a resolution in the state Assembly for California's public universities to adopt the University of Chicago Statement on Free Expression.
¶
Adoption of the statement would reflect a bipartisan consensus. UC President Janet Napolitano, formerly in President Barack Obama's Cabinet, has called for 'more speech' at universities after raising concerns that freedom of speech has given way to freedom from speech. Obama himself has warned that on college campuses 'the unwillingness to hear other points of view can be as unhealthy on the left as on the right.'
¶
Freedom of speech is at the foundation of our democracy, and universities, of all places, should be lively environments where First Amendment freedoms flourish. Berkeley was the birthplace of the free speech movement in the 1960s, whose principles are now enshrined in the University of Chicago Statement on Free Expression."
2/10/2017, The Daily Californian, UC police's approach to handling protests evolved over recent years, Chantelle Lee
"UC Berkeley is deeply rooted in a history of student protests. The Free Speech Movement in 1964, sparked by the administration's ban of on-campus political activities, was the first high-profile campus protest. Nearly 800 students were arrested for occupying Sproul Hall on Dec. 2, resulting in the largest mass arrest on an American university campus at the time."
2/10/2017, Bloomberg, What the Anti-Trump Movement Can Learn From the 1960s, Sam Tanenhaus
"But it was the more practical approach that yielded results.
¶
An example came in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964-1965, a pivotal episode in the decade’s protest politics. When administrators would not allow students to hand out leaflets and fliers on a busy campus plaza, conservative students joined with leftist ones in the call for free speech.
¶
But then the stand-off became confrontational, and 'the right-wingers could not go along,' wrote the sociologist Nathan Glazer, who was teaching at Berkeley at the time. 'They stood aside from further escalations,' Glazer noted, such as when protesters surrounded a police car and staged a sit-in that sealed off a campus building." [Ed note: Goldwater supporters were among those arrested in December, 1964.]
2/9/2017, The Daily Californian, Pole appears on, disappears from Free Speech monument on Sproul Plaza, Harini Shyamsundar
"According to campus real estate spokesperson Christine Shaff, campus administration authorized neither the erection of the pole nor its removal.
¶
Shaff confirmed, however, that the pole was not an official monument. The official Free Speech Movement memorial, which was designed by artist Mark Brest van Kempen and constructed in 1991, is the 6-inch column of land and airspace on Sproul Plaza encircled within a granite ring, upon which the pole was originally erected. The 6-inch plot of soil and the airspace extending above it are defined as not belonging to any singular nation -- and as such, no laws can be acknowledged within the small space."
2/8/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Allow Yiannopoulus to speak, Paul Coopersmith
"As one of the 796 people to have been arrested in the early morning of Dec. 4, 1964, at the height of the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement, I agree with members of the FSM Archive Board of Directors, that however bigoted and objectionable Milo Yiannopoulos and 'Breitbart News' may be, he should have been allowed to speak on campus.
¶
To prevent him from doing so was not only antithetical to those American values that we hold so dear, but, perhaps more to the point, only serves to energize and provide a bigger platform to the very people and organizations whom so many of us -- progressives, independents, Democrats and yes, Republicans -- find so reprehensible.
¶
We must not be remiss in confronting those on the far right, whose visions of how things ought to be lie so beyond the pale. But neither should we stoop to their level. We need to counter their offensive words and acts with truth, the strength of our convictions, and, when necessary, a willingness to put our bodies on the line, and say, 'Enough.'"
2/8/2017, History News Network, Donald Trump's Appalling Hypocrisy about Free Speech, Robert Cohen
"Appalling as Trump's hypocrisy on free speech is, his Berkeley tweet and Savio masquerade demonstrate that when the Left advocates the banning of a speaker or disrupts a campus speech it not only tramples the legacy of the Free Speech Movement, but surrenders the moral high ground so completely that it puts itself in a position to be lectured on free speech by its nemesis in the oval office."
2/7/2017, The Nation, What Might Mario Savio Have Said About the Milo Protest at Berkeley?, Robert Cohen
"What Mario Savio did in his FSM victory speech in 1964 was in its own way reminiscent of what Martin Luther King Jr. did in his March on Washington speech a year earlier. Both were seeing beyond their time, with King sharing his dream of an America freed from the shackles of racism and Savio envisioning a campus as it was being reborn, liberated from its history of binding restrictions on political expression."
2/6/2017, San Francisco Examiner, Collective internet gave Berkeley protests a real-time trial and execution, Seung Y. Lee
"By the time I ducked out of Sproul Plaza after 8 p.m., Reddit's top article was about the Berkeley protests with more than 10,000 comments. Before I could have my journalistic say, the internet collectively decided the Berkeley student mob -- overcome with emotion and left-wing hysteria -- destroyed their own campus and killed the Free Speech Movement on its birthplace as Yiannopoulos became the martyr."
2/6/2017, NYU News, "The Death of Free Speech on Campus?" NYU Historian Cohen Takes "Then and Now" Look in Feb. 15 Lecture, NYU News
"This lecture, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session, will explore the state of free speech on campus as the media and critics report and distort it, as students experience it, and how it looks from a historical perspective. It will also consider ways that colleges and universities can enhance freedom of speech.
¶
[Robert] Cohen is a professor of history and social studies in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Cohen, who has an affiliated appointment in NYU's Department of History, has authored or edited several works on the history of free speech on campus, including: Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s; The Essential Mario Savio: Speeches and Writings That Changed America; The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s (co-edited with Reginald E. Zelnik); When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929-1941; Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s (co-edited with David Snyder); and Howard Zinn and the Spelman College Student Movement, 1963 (in press)."
2/6/2017, Los Angeles Times, Opinion UC Berkeley should be ashamed after Milo Yiannopoulos' canceled speech, Janet Weaver
"History is not an arc. It's a pendulum. The political ideology of those kept silent has changed, but the evil of oppression has once again become the same.
¶
I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement. I was proud to be a member of a community that insisted all voices be heard. I held my head high as I argued with my conservative father about the principles that made our country great."
2/4/2017, The National Review, The 'Reasonabilists' of Berkeley, Jonah Goldberg
"Anyway, where was I? Oh right: the Reasonabilists. I bring them up because I have been in a twitchy, quick-tempered, fugue state of dyspepsia and crankery for the last couple days ('Days?' -- The Couch) about the riot at Berkeley. I don't mean the violence or the fact that this couldn't have gone better for Milo, a click-baiting huckster and alt-right apologist.
¶
I don't even mean the fact that the authorities only arrested one person. Though that does vex me considerably. If you think free speech is assault but assault is free speech, you're a moron of world-historical proportions. And if you think rioting is some charming rite of passage, you deserve to have your campus destroyed."
2/3/2017, The Guardian, How do you solve a problem like Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley?, David Kaye
"Savio's perspective drew from the reality of a university administration that treated students to a narrow version of education, forbidding on-campus political activity. Cal students objected, and it was from this desire for political expression on campus that the Free Speech Movement was born. Throughout the fall of 1964, Cal convulsed with peaceful protest, grinding the university 'machine' to a halt. Savio famously addressed thousands from atop a police car on Sproul, calling for peaceful protest -- 'That doesn't mean that you have to break anything!' [Ed note: these words are from December 2, not Oct. 1]-- and civil disobedience.
¶
The students' perspective, which Savio articulated so well, was that the university should encourage free speech and free thought, that debate and dispute should be part of higher education. Rather than arrest students for protesting, as the university was doing, it should provide wide-open space for political debate, allowing students to develop the tools to be engaged citizens."
2/3/2017, The American Conservative, The Leadership and Decency Gap at UC-Berkeley, Sean Kennedy
"The unrest that roiled campus is not new. In the early 1960s, Berkeley launched the Free Speech Movement to throw off the shackles of stifling university bureaucrats. A motley crew of leftists, anarchists, and, yes, arch-conservative Barry Goldwater supporters banded together to stand up for the rights of students to protest, speak out, and actively participate in their campus discourse.
¶
The famous leader of that movement, Mario Savio, who is almost beatified in Berkeley lore, referred to the university officials and their government allies as a "machine" that required active resistance, saying: 'There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus-and you've got to make it stop!'
¶
But his so-called successors often forget how Savio continued, 'That doesn't mean-I know it will be interpreted to mean … that doesn't mean that you have to break anything.' He explicitly opposed violence as a means of resistance.
¶
That sentiment, and the movement's ties to Goldwater, is lost on the agitators and enforcers of groupthink that predominate on campus. Instead, they are hell-bent on shutting down dissent."
2/2/2017, The Wrap, UC Berkeley Professor, Free Speech Leader Slams Trump's Funding Threat as 'Ridiculous, Crazy', Meriah Doty
"'I don't think there's any way you can cut federal funds to the university because a few students acted up. That's crazy,' [John] Searle told TheWrap on Thursday."
2/2/2017, The New York Times, A Free Speech Battle at the Birthplace of a Movement at Berkeley, Thomas Fuller
"In a letter to The Daily Californian, Berkeley's student newspaper, Mr. [Jack] Radey and other members of the Free Speech Movement Archive board of directors, a grouping of some of the movement's activists, said Mr. Yiannopoulos was 'a bigot who comes to campus spouting vitriol so as to attract attention to himself.'
¶
But they said free speech was paramount.
¶
'Berkeley's free speech tradition, won through struggle - suspension, arrest, fines, jail time -- by Free Speech Movement activists is far more important than Yiannopoulos, and it is that tradition's endurance that concerns us,' they wrote."
2/2/2017, The Daily Mail, 'Not a bad way of showing them that violence will not win': Milo Yiannopoulis boasts about his rising book sales after violent protests cancel his talk at Berkeley, Hannah Parry and Abigail Miller
"Yiannopoulos rejects accusations he is racist or white supremacist, saying his boyfriend is black and his humor is taken too literally in today's politically correct culture.
¶
A group of veterans from Berkeley's 1960s Free Speech Movement praised administrators for allowing the event.
¶
'Even the worst kind of bigot, including Yiannopoulos, must be allowed to speak on campus,' they wrote in In an op-ed published by Berkeley's The Daily Californian."
2/2/2017, Spiked, The Free Speech Movement in flames, Tom Slater
"This is a symbolic moment. The sight of students and radicals rioting out of fear of letting people listen and decide for themselves represents the unravelling of Enlightenment values in the academy. While Trump voters are often smeared as a prejudiced blob, this is what real, unthinking intolerance looks like. And it's a betrayal not only of the high-minded, liberal ideals on which the academy is founded, but also of the once radical left. The students of '64 knew that freedom was paramount. That's why, as FSMer Bettina Aptheker told me in 2014, they fought for free speech alongside right-wing students, some of them supporters of Barry Goldwater, the Trump of his day: 'The only requirement was that they believed in freedom of speech.'
¶
That when faced with a president so authoritarian young radicals can only respond in kind is a grim reminder of where self-willed censorship leads: to stupidity and blind rage. The casual presentation of right-wing wind-up merchants like Milo as the first act of a new fascism, and these students' inability to do anything other than wail when confronted with ideas they dislike, speaks to a new endarkenment. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, if you refuse to let your views be challenged they become like prejudices that you are incapable of defending or articulating. When you reject free speech you lose the opportunity to defeat ideas you dislike and propound your own. You trade changing the world for throwing things at it. That's what we saw playing out at Berkeley last night."
2/2/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, UC Berkeley cancels right-wing provocateur's talk amid violent protest, Michael Bodley and Nanette Asimov
"Hours after the event was canceled, the College Republicans issued a statement declaring the Free Speech Movement dead. 'It is tragic that the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is also its final resting place,' the statement said."
2/2/2017, California Golden Blogs, Anarchists, NOT Cal students, responsible for violence in UC Berkeley protests, Avinash Kunnath
"Violence is not what Cal stands for. Violence is not what the Golden Bears should be known for. Our Cal family stands for peaceful expression and the Free Speech Movement. That is a right that was expressed early on this Wednesday night before it was hijacked by agitators who do not represent the viewpoints of our university's student body and our alumni base at large."
2/1/2017, UC Berkeley News, Yiannopoulos event canceled, Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
"Officials added that they regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as home of the Free Speech Movement. In an earlier message to the Berkeley campus community, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks made clear that while Yiannopoulos' views, tactics and rhetoric are profoundly contrary to those of the campus, UC Berkeley is bound by the Constitution, the law, the university's values and its Principles of Community that include the enabling of free expression across the full spectrum of opinion and perspective."
2/1/2017, The Sacramento Bee, Don't let Milo Yiannopoulos taint message of free speech, Editors
"'We deeply regret that the violence unleashed by this group undermined the First Amendment rights of the speaker as well as those who came to lawfully assemble and protest his presence,' Dirks wrote.
¶
Yet, in this cowardly new world of alternative facts, the narrative that UC Berkeley is full of intolerant leftists who shut down speech they don't like with rocks and commercial-grade fireworks has taken off. Yiannopoulos got what he wanted. And Trump, who has no problem with false narratives, went a step further by threatening to withhold federal funding from the UC system if 'innocent people with a different point of view' aren't allowed to speak.
¶
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a UC Regent, called Trump's tweet 'asinine.' Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, called it an empty threat that's an abuse of power by a man who is 'president, not a dictator.'
¶
Far be it from us to dissuade condemnations or peaceful protests against Trump or Yiannopoulos. But there is a larger game afoot here. Don't play into it."
2/1/2017, The Daily Californian, Milo Yiannopoulos event canceled as violent protests erupt at UC Berkeley, The Daily Californian News Staff
"'It's sad that these people consider themselves the intellectual descendants of Mario Savio,' [Berkeley College Republicans treasurer David] Craig said. 'The founder of the Free Speech Movement would be rolling in his grave to know that people in his name are shutting down speech they don't agree with and attacking people.'"
1/31/2017, UC Berkeley News, Free speech? Hate speech? Or both?, Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
"In an op-ed in the Daily Cal, a dozen Free Speech Movement veterans -- including Lynne Hollander Savio, Mario's widow -- labeled Yiannopoulos 'a bigot,' but urged students opposed to his views to express their opposition 'nonviolently, in ways that do not prevent such speakers from making or completing their remarks.'
¶
'His modus operandi,' they wrote, 'is to bait students of color, transgender students and anyone to the left of Donald Trump in the hopes of sparking a speaking ban or physical altercation so he can pose as a free speech martyr. His campus events are one long publicity stunt designed to present himself as a kind of hip, far right, youth folk hero -- sort of Hitler Youth with cool sunglasses.'"
1/31/2017, The Daily Californian, Berkeley students should organize protest against Milo Yiannopoulos, Mukund Rathi
"As FSM participant Joel Geier describes:
¶
'This connection to the civil rights movement is necessary to understanding the Free Speech Movement. It wasn't just about the right of unrestricted free speech. It was about the university response to the political pressures from the capitalist establishment of California, which was trying to crack down and stop the mobilization of campus activists taking on the racist hiring practices of California corporations. It was an attempt to shut down the civil rights movement on campus that was engaging in off-campus activity that was 'illegal' by holding sit-ins against the 'legal' right of the employers not to hire Blacks.'"
1/31/2017, Breitbart, 'Anti-Fascists' Plan to 'Shut Down' MILO's Event at UC Berkeley, Charlie Nash
"Following a demand by dozens of UC Berkeley professors to have MILO banned from the campus based on his political views, a group of Berkeley Free Speech Movement veterans defended the Breitbart senior editor, criticizing those professors and students who sought to use fascist tactics in an attempt to block his speech.
¶
'Under the terms of [the free speech] resolution, even the worst kind of bigot, including Yiannopoulos, must be allowed to speak on campus. So the UC administration was acting in accord with those principles when it refused to ban Yiannopoulos,' the group of veterans declared. 'We were thus disappointed that so many Berkeley faculty signed an open letter supporting such a ban and criticizing the UC administration for refusing to ban Yiannopoulos.'"
1/30/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, Right-wing agitator to stir pot as UC Berkeley allows lecture, Nanette Asimov
"Veterans of the 1960s-era Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley published an opinion piece in the Daily Californian calling Yiannopoulos a vitriol-spouting bigot who has every right to speak on campus.
¶
'Berkeley's free speech tradition, won through struggle -- suspension, arrest, fines, jail time -- by Free Speech Movement activists is far more important than Yiannopoulos,' Robert Cohen, author of 'The Essential Mario Savio: Speeches and Writings that Changed America,' wrote Jan. 17 in the student paper.
¶
He cited the Berkeley faculty's Academic Senate resolution on free speech from 1964: 'The content of speech or advocacy should not be restricted by the university.'
¶
'The best way to battle (Yiannopoulos') bigoted discourse is to critique and refute it,' Cohen wrote. That way, critics can 'avoid casting him in the role of free speech martyr and prove that the best cure for ignorant and hateful speech is speech that unmasks its illogic, cruelty and stupidity.'"
January 2017, Spiked, The Analysed Self, Tim Black
"'We all read Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man, which was drenched in Freudian thought. And Norman O Brown was at Berkeley and Santa Cruz at this point, too… Everything was political in those days', he says, chuckling. 'It was in Marcuse, in Brown, in the Frankfurt School in general, which I was intellectually very close to. At Berkeley, remember, the head of the sociology department was Leo Lowenthal, a friend and colleague of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. There was a great linking together of psychoanalytic ideas and political ideas, and this was happening against the background of the anti-war movement, People's Park, the Free Speech Movement. It was an incredibly exciting time to be a 17, 18-year-old.'"
1/26/2017, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley chancellor affirms Milo Yiannopoulos' right to speak on campus, Cassandra Vogel
"Despite numerous cancellations of talks by Milo Yiannopoulos at other UC campuses and widespread opposition at UC Berkeley, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks has affirmed Yiannopoulos' right to speak on campus at a Wednesday event organized by the Berkeley College Republicans.
¶
In a letter released Thursday, Dirks stressed that while UC Berkeley does not endorse Yiannopoulos' controversial views or tactics, the campus would continue to uphold the values of the Free Speech Movement by sanctioning Yiannopoulos' presence and protecting his freedom of expression.
¶
'Our student groups enjoy the right to invite whomever they wish to speak on campus, but we urge them to consider whether exercising that right in a manner that might unleash harmful attacks on fellow students and other members of the community is consistent with their own and with our community's values,' Dirks said in the letter."
1/26/2017, The College Fix, Liberal professor slams campus echo chambers, academic ideologues, and the 'intolerant left', Peter Van Voorhis
"There is a certain irony here, as the New Left began with the Free Speech movement, which opposed the common notion that the university function in loco parentis and was responsible for keeping students safe from radical ideas. There is nothing wrong with students seeking places among the like-minded--this is the purpose of fraternities and clubs. In addition, there are institutions that in my mind are appropriate, for example a Veterans center, which is certain respects can be seen as a 'safe space.' There are inherent problems, however, which should lead to such spaces being minimized. There is truth to the argument that although students need to feel physically safe, one ought not feel intellectually safe, and there is a danger that creating these spaces does inhibit the student's understanding of the 'real world.'"
1/26/2017, Rare, Why violent anti-Trump protesters will never accomplish anything, Casey Given
"The Trump opposition should look to the Free Speech Movement (FSM) for inspiration. As one of the few successful student movements in the 1960s, FSM successfully overturned the draconian speech policies of my alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, almost all political speech was banned on campus - an incredibly strict policy for a generation that loved to speak its mind.
¶
To oppose the anti-liberal rules, FSM students engaged in civil disobedience, deliberately breaking the rules by tabling, handing out leaflets, and occupying administrative buildings. These acts were illegal but, instead of engaging in violence or fighting with the police, the Berkeley radicals accepted whatever punishment from the police came their way.
¶
Herein lies their brilliance. Because of their non-violent resistance, FSM was able to generate public sympathy because the video footage being broadcast across the nation was not of anarchy anarchists smashing windows and rioting, but rather of innocent looking youths being dragged into paddy wagons.
¶
In fact, one tactic that the FSM protesters brilliantly mastered was going limp, forcing police officers to physically drag them without putting up a fight. As a result of the striking footage, many sympathetic citizens and politicians began to condemn the administration.
¶
As California Assemblyman Willy Brown said in a speech at the time, '[T]he people in the state of California need to know that there's something seriously wrong with this university when 801 people are dragged bodily down stairs from the administration building of this university and arrested.'"
1/24/2017, Lodi News-Sentinel, Those who suppress free speech will end up victims, Steve Hansen
"The fact that many millennials don't understand the value of a free-speech society is most concerning. When asked, too many college students see no point in debating different points of view from a singular position taught to them in class. Those who have a need for suppression, however, only demonstrate their fears of fallibility for one side of an argument.
¶
More than 50 years ago, The college Free Speech Movement began with Mario Savio on the UC Berkeley campus. Yet it's ironic that today's school "speech codes" are designed to do just the opposite and amazingly, are accompanied by little student opposition.
¶
But reality will always win in the end and leave those who believe in oppression of free speech as victims, themselves."
1/23/2017, The Islands' Sounder, Mary Davenport Benarroch, Tim Ransom
"Mary graduated from Santa Barbara High School and then from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966, where she was one of the 800 students arrested in the 1964 sit-in of the Free Speech Movement. While getting a master's degree in English at San Francisco State, she joined demonstrations against the Vietnam War."
1/20/2017, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Letter to the Daily Californian re: Milo Yiannopoulos free speech controversy, Board of Directors, Free Speech Movement Archives
"We were thus disappointed that so many Berkeley faculty signed an open letter supporting such a ban and criticizing the UC administration for refusing to ban Yiannopoulos. The best way to battle his bigoted discourse is to critique and refute it."
1/20/2017, The Australian Financial Review, Donald Trump owes victory to self-styled social justice warriors, Philipp Oehmke
"Bettina Aptheker was one of the leaders of the free speech movement at the time, some 52 years ago. On the morning of Octobter 2, 1964, she climbed on top of a police car in front of UC Berkeley's Sproul Hall and gave a speech. Aptheker was 20 at the time. In her speech, she quoted former slave Frederick Douglass, who said: 'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.'
¶
It was one of the events that launched a movement -- initially in the West, and then worldwide - for social transformation, for women's rights, civil rights, then for gay rights and later for transgender rights, a movement that is directly connected to today's students at Oberlin College."
1/19/2017, The New York Times, California Today: Campuses Brace for Breitbart Provocateur, Mike McPhate
"So it was that his scheduled speech at U.C. Davis last week devolved into a tense standoff between protesters and the police. It was called off before it could begin over security concerns.
¶
Later, Mr. Yiannopoulos addressed a group of supporters on the campus quad. He denounced a university culture of so-called safe spaces that he said shielded students from diverse viewpoints.
¶
'They cannot shut you up because you have the wrong political opinions,' he said.
¶
More skirmishes are expected to play out in coming appearances at the other California campuses, including a crucible of the 1960s free speech movement, U.C. Berkeley.
¶
Mr. Yiannopoulos was invited by the Berkeley College Republicans, a student group that portrayed the event, on Feb. 1, as a way to jolt the liberal campus with a different perspective.
¶
More than 100 faculty members called for blocking the event in a letter to Chancellor Nicholas Dirks. It cited a speech Mr. Yiannopoulos delivered at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he belittled a transgender student by name.
¶
'We support robust debate,' the letter said, 'but we cannot abide by harassment, slander, defamation, and hate speech.'"
1/17/2017, The Daily Californian, Free Speech Movement veterans and historians comment on Milo Yiannopoulos free speech controversy, By Robert Cohen & FSM Archives Board
"Berkeley's free speech tradition, won through struggle -- suspension, arrest, fines, jail time -- by Free Speech Movement activists is far more important than Yiannopoulos, and it is that tradition's endurance that concerns us. 'The content of speech or advocacy should not be restricted by the university': That's what the pivotal Dec. 8 resolution says, as adopted by the Berkeley faculty's Academic Senate when it finally backed the FSM's free speech demand in 1964. Under the terms of that resolution, even the worst kind of bigot, including Yiannopoulos, must be allowed to speak on campus. So the UC administration was acting in accord with those principles when it refused to ban Yiannopoulos."
1/17/2017, Breitbart, Berkeley Free Speech Movement Veterans Defend MILO's Right to Speak, Charlie Nash
"A group of Berkeley Free Speech Movement veterans have written an open letter defending Breitbart Senior Editor MILO's right to speak while criticizing professors who have sought to have him banned from campuses around the state.
¶
Despite proclaiming a great distaste for the self-proclaimed Dangerous Faggot and describing him as a 'bigot' and 'Hitler Youth with cool sunglasses,' the group brought up their struggle and fight during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, expressing disappointment that professors at the Berkeley campus would ever want to censor a speaker based on their views."
1/17/2017, BeyondChron, RICHMOND SHOWS HOW PROGRESSIVES CAN WIN, Randy Shaw
"But RPA (Richmond Progressive Alliance) is different. It has a nucleus of seasoned activists who understand that progressive groups must reflect progressive values. For example, Mike Parker who moved to Richmond in 2008 after activist experience from the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in 1964 to decades on the shop floor of Detroit. Parker knew from his long experience that winning elections did not mean that the racial dynamics of the RPA volunteer base did not have to change. The group then openly addressed the problem."
1/15/2017, The Boston Globe, Has pot lost its cool?, David Scharfenberg
"Years later, in a classified missive, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would urge his field offices to arrest 'members of the New Left' on marijuana and other drug charges.
¶
Marijuana -- so disdained by officialdom -- had become a major symbol of protest. Legalization was not a standalone issue as it is now, said Lee, in a recent interview. It was intimately tied to antiwar protest, gay liberation, and the fight against censorship.
¶
'When a young person took his first puff of psychoactive smoke, he also drew in the psychoactive culture as a whole, the entire matrix of law and association surrounding the drug, its induction and transaction,' said Michael Rossman of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. 'One inhaled a certain way of dressing, talking, acting, certain attitudes. One became a youth criminal against the state.'"
1/12/2017, Breitbart, UC Berkeley Administration Won't Budge On Security Fees For MILO Event, Lucas Nolan
"When asked for comment, Troy Worden of Berkeley College Republicans stated, 'The University of California, Berkeley makes a mockery of the the ideals of the Free Speech Movement by responding to the Berkeley College Republicans in so self-righteous and self-serving a letter. They belittle our efforts to work with them to provide the security they demand for our event, and then bewail the extra hours they have to put in to systematically snuff out our right to free speech. Let this much be clear: the university is imposing a comically large financial burden on our club for security that we did not request in the first place.'"
1/11/2017, The Dallas News, Students want universities to act as parents, but they won't like the results, Mark Yudof
"But now there is a nascent, however subconscious or inadvertent, effort to reinstate in loco parentis. The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement was met with heckling and disruption at the University of California, Berkeley.¶
....¶
But universities are not homes, administrators are not parents. University students are not children. Students should not be protected from ideas and communications that they find disturbing. Robust speech, protected by the First Amendment, often may offend or chill or disrupt the conventional wisdom. That is good. Universities should work to protect students from sexual and physical assaults and other harms. They should not be safe havens from disturbing ideas and discourses. It is one thing to condemn and quite another to censor or punish."
1/11/2017, ACLU of Northern California, Dissent is Patriotic. It's also a Powerful Antidote to Propaganda - #ACLUTimeMachine, Bethany Woolman
"Historians credit HUAC's 'Operation Abolition' with backfiring spectacularly. Young people across the country were shown the film at school, saw right through it, and decided they should make their way to Berkeley - after all, that's where all the action was. Four years later, the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement began.
¶
Let's remember this moment in history as a lesson in the power of free speech and free thought. And let's remember it as proof that if we remain vigilant, lies can wither in the face of truth.
¶
In the wake of an election season marked by fake news, open distaste for journalism, and a president-elect who lied about his own self-documented views during a nationally televised debate, let's not shy away from reflecting on our government's willingness to engage in cynical propaganda."
1/7/2017, San Francisco Chronicle, When Washington's Red-baiting congressional committee came to SF, Gary Kamiya
"On May 13, 1960, 300 protesters, most of them students from UC Berkeley, gathered at San Francisco City Hall to protest hearings that HUAC had decided to hold here. Many of the protesters gathered outside the hearing room on the second floor were clean-cut youths, and their most confrontational action was singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and staging a sit-down protest. None of them could have imagined that their peaceful sit-in would end with San Francisco police blasting them with fire hoses and clubbing them - or that their protest would be one of the seminal events of what would come to be called the '60s.¶
....¶
An activist UC student organization called SLATE, formed in 1958, urged students to picket the three-day HUAC hearings, in part because the committee had subpoenaed [UC student Douglas] Wachter. On the morning of May 12, scores of students filed into City Hall and lined up to enter the hearing chamber.¶
....¶
[HUAC staff director Richard] Arens then called Wachter. The 18-year-old Berkeley High School graduate, wearing a gray suit and red tie, was a member of SLATE who had picketed with the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality and marched against capital punishment. His parents were longtime members of the Communist Party; he was part of the party's youth group. Wachter refused to answer Arens' questions, citing his First and Fifth amendment rights.¶
After the lunch break, more students arrived from a rally at Union Square, where Assemblyman Phil Burton had told them, 'People should be tried in a legal court of law on the basis of their actions. … No legislative committee has the right to tell a man what he thinks and what he doesn't!'"
1/6/2017, Breitbart, Berkeley's 'New Free Speech Movement' Embraces Milo's Visit, Adelle Nazarian
"October 1, 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, which was born out of a protest in front of the school's Sproul Hall. That year, the College Fix reported, UC Berkeley's College Republicans 'illustrated how the university has actually turned its back on the First Amendment,' discarding its ideals and replacing it with a stifling culture of political correctness and intolerance."
1/3/2017, The Los Angeles Times, These are the classes you get when you give college students control, Teresa Watanabe
"The courses in DeCal - short for Democratic Education at Cal - aren't graded, so there is little stress. But they count for one or two credits. And they have their roots in Berkeley's landmark free speech movement from five decades ago, when students pressed for and won greater academic rights." [Ed note: the first program was called Free University of Berkeley (1965-72?)]
12/29/2016, San Francisco Chronicle, Tape Music Festival surrounds audience with sound, Jesse Hamlin
"He's [Matt Ingalls is] also going to project an unexpected excerpt from [Pauline] Oliveros' 1965 'Rock Symphony,' a collage of pop music (the Beatles and Rolling Stones) and the voice of Mario Savio of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, tweaked with time-delay and other effects."
12/24/2016, Expresso, Camille Paglia: "I'm a very dangerous woman", Alexandra Carita
"Exactly. I am in favor of the values of the 1960 revolution, which began with the cry for freedom of expression at the University of Berkeley, California, then headed by the Italian Mario Savio."
12/18/2016, The Davis Enterprise, Bob Dunning: Principles matter most when they're uncomfortable, Bob Dunning
"And to think, when I was an undergraduate in Aggieland we looked in awe at our brothers and sisters in Berkeley who founded the Free Speech Movement, even if we had no idea what it was they were being prevented from saying.
¶
I wonder what Mario Savio would have to say about not allowing Yiannopolous to speak at one of Cal's sister campuses.
¶
Yiannopolous' lecture is free, but already it's been declared 'sold out.' I'm not sure how you can sell out something that doesn't cost anything in the first place, but I think it means all the tickets are gone.
¶
Which seems to indicate that at least someone on campus wants to hear what Yiannopoulos has to say.
¶
Interim Chancellor Ralph Hexter, proving once again that the word 'interim' should be removed from his title, addressed the controversy head on when he said, 'As a public university, we remain true to our obligation to uphold everyone's First Amendment freedoms. This commitment includes fostering an environment that avoids censorship and allows space for differing points of view. Therefore, we will not ask the Davis College Republicans to cancel their event.'"
12/15/2016, The Republic, Letter: Obamacare ruling came with questionable tactics, Sherry Grimes
"Mr. Vanderbur said, 'You have freedom of speech and you may express yourself within the confines of civility and law.' There is nothing in the First Amendment about civility. In 2014 on the 50th anniversary of the free speech movement, University of California Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks stated that the right to free speech 'requires that people treat each other with civility.' He had to backtrack on that when scholars became concerned that 'civility would be used as an excuse to repress legitimate political debate.'"
12/12/2016, The Bold Italic, An Elegy for Caffe Med, One of the Last Outposts of 1960s Counterculture, Cirrus Wood
"It's where Allen Ginsberg loitered with Jack Kerouac while the Black Panthers had their meetings upstairs. It's where the architects of the free-speech movement argued over coffee. It's where the Telegraph Avenue streetkids in the photographs of Richard Misrach hung out. It was one of the great good places."
12/8/2016, San Francisco Chronicle, William Mandel, KPFA broadcaster, political activist, dies, Carl Nolte
"Mr. Mandel was a committed activist. He walked picket lines, wrote and broadcast his views, and was an active supporter of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. In his late 40s, he was the oldest member of the Free Speech Movement's steering committee. [actually, Executive Committee]"
12/7/2016, The Lumberjack, Editorial: Collegiate voices finding activism, Lumberjack Editorial Board
"The Lumberjack believes that when students here on campus assemble and protest, it must be done so with a clear message and solidarity. Too often the theme of a protest is muddied by differing messages and a lack of continuity among its participants. We don't want to give the opposition the chance to reduce a strong show of activism to a petty list of complaints or simply nullify it as irrelevant.
¶
The 1964 Berkeley Free Speech movement students formed the United Front and protested to express political views on campus even before protesting on campus was permissible. Although 773 students were arrested for occupying the administration building, the movement resulted in the right to use the University campus for political activity and debate."
12/4/2016, San Francisco Chronicle, Chronicle Covers: Free Speech Movement's arresting origins, Tim O'Rourke
"Their voices were heard.
¶
The Chronicle's front page from Dec. 4, 1964, covers the arrests of around 800 free-speech protesters on the UC Berkeley campus.
¶
'The University of California went through a day of crisis yesterday with mass arrests, faculty protests and massive student demonstrations,' the story read.
¶
'In all, 801 demonstrators were removed from Sproul Hall on the Berkeley campus -- many of them by force -- and taken to jail,' read The Chronicle report by Michael Harris and Don Wegars. 'By late last night several hundred had been released on bail.'"
12/3/2016, Manning Live, Today in History, Robert Joseph Baker
"1964 - Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property."
11/27/2016, The Daily Bruin, Lecturer shares experience as civil rights activist with students, Daniel Maraccini
"Von Blum remained politically active after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by participating in anti-Vietnam demonstrations and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley.
¶
When Von Blum was teaching at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s, he was involved in protests that helped create ethnic studies departments at UC campuses. Once these departments were created, he moved to UCLA to teach classes on the African-American arts and culture he had become interested in during his time in the South."
11/21/2016, Olean Times Herald, Home Again: Guess I'm one of the 'old people', Deb Wuethrich
"In 1964, he [Jack Weinberg] was sitting at a table on campus when a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed him about the movement, which was a struggle by students over the right to engage in political speech on campus. Weinburg said he was annoyed with the reporter for insinuating that the Communists or some other 'sinister' group must direct the students behind the scenes.
¶
What he actually said was, 'We have a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30.' He wanted the reporter to know that no one was pulling the group's strings. Weinburg, who remained an activist and has worked in such areas as Greenpeace, said he does not believe it is even the most important thing he's ever said or done, but he's known for it now. The phrase was repeated throughout the press and became a sort of mantra for a generation. Today, we would say it 'went viral,' and it would have been tweeted and retweeted and spread elsewhere on social media."
11/20/2016, The Arts Desk, Sunday Book: The New Yorker Book of the 60s, Liz Thomson
"As citizens in the US and elsewhere once again take to the streets in large numbers, reports in this book remind us of the importance of people power with articles such as Calvin Trillin's on the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and Joseph Wechsberg on the Prague Spring, which of course did not end so well -- at least not until 1989. There are reflections on feminism and abortion, the Second Vatican Council, the Six-Day War and Paris 1968."
11/18/2016, The Daily Californian, Daily Cal launches digital archive, Michelle Pitcher
"'During Sproul Showdown Students Ready for Arrest'
¶
These are a few of the headlines published in The Daily Californian's pages in 1964, the year of the Free Speech Movement. You can now view every newspaper printed that year in our newly launched digital archive: newsprint.dailycal.org.
¶
We plan to digitize every Daily Cal issue, from the newspaper's conception in 1871 to the present day. Every week, students are scanning page after page from microfilm reels at the campus library -- a monotonous yet marvelous march through Berkeley's past."
11/18/2016, The Berkeley Daily Planet, New: Hundreds gather for Berkeley "Together We Rise" event, Steven Finacom
"[Berkeley Mayor-Elect Jesse Arreguin:] 'Berkeley is a little city with a big voice, and we will continue to use it. We are a city of progressive ideals and values that resonate across different cultures. We celebrate diversity and individuality. There is a place for everyone here.
¶
From the free speech movement in the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement today, Berkeley has been at the epicenter of social reform. And under my Mayorship, this legacy will continue. No one is going to keep us from that path.
¶
On the contrary, this is our time to rededicate ourselves to peace, justice, equity, inclusiveness and kindness.'"
11/13/2016, The Daily Californian, Berkeley's historic Caffe Mediterraneum changing ownership, Semira Sherief
"After 60 years of service to the Berkeley community, Caffe Mediterraneum -- a historic center of counterculture movements -- will be changing ownership.
¶
In the 1950s and '60s, Caffe Mediterraneum, often referred to as The Med, was popular among members of the Beat generation, the Black Panthers and those involved in the Free Speech Movement. As first reported by Berkeleyside, the property is set to be leased to new owners who plan on remodeling the business and reopening in 2017."
11/10/2016, Montreal Gazette, Anti-Trump protests continue across the U.S. for second day, The Washington Post
"At a student rally Thursday at the University of California at Berkeley, several hundred students watched as faculty members took turns speaking.
¶
'People make choices, and choices make history. We can be bystanders, or we can be upstanders,' said Rucker Johnson, an associate professor of public policy. 'We at UC-Berkeley are a beacon of light. We are the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. We can't allow stereotyping and scapegoating to fetter us. We will uphold our traditions of speaking truth to power.'"
11/1/2016, Real Independent News & Film, From Berkeley To Kent State, Gary North
"On September 10, 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at Berkeley. Almost no one remembers why.
¶
The University's Board of Regents had long imposed restrictions on what kinds of recruiting were possible on school property. Everyone involved in student government knew the rules. Every group had to be approved: fraternities, sororities, religious groups, and political activists. The underlying motivation, more than anything, was to restrict religious proselytizing: the church/state separation issue."
10/31/2016, Forbes, The University Of California's Censor In Sheep's Clothing, Tom Lindsay
"Her [Janet Napolitano's] observations are spot-on. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her prescription for what we should 'do about it.' Her prescription flies in the face of the ethos she claims to praise through quoting Thomas Jefferson, who, among his other accomplishments, founded the University of Virginia. Napolitano cites Jefferson's declaration that the University of Virginia 'will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.'
¶
Jefferson's maxim, she tells us, was not realized until the 'Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the mid-60s,' which 'established that the only limits on free speech should be those defined in the Constitution, at least as far as our nation's public universities were concerned.' She then asks, "Has this concept now been turned on its head?'"
10/27/2016, Fabius Maximus, See free speech crushed at Tufts today. Remember when we were wild & untamed…,
"To see the magnitude of this change since 1964, imagine how Berkeley's students of 1964 would react to regulation of their Halloween costumes. They would see the Orwellian nature of this intrusion of the Administration's heavy hand -- backed by police -- into their personal lives. They might respond with mass disobedience, an orgy of incorrect costumes. They might riot."
10/24/2016, Jacobin, Tom Hayden (1939-2016), Christopher Phelps
"The process of the document's [the Port Huron Statement] adoption also manifested the ideal, for without the contributions of other SDS members, Hayden would never have gotten it right. It was they -- Haber, Bob Ross, and others -- who told him to move the 'Values' section to the top of the document, not bury it in the middle. If they had not done so, the Port Huron Statement might have gone into the dustbin of radical pamphlets rather than inspiring a generation, for its declaration of 'Values' expressed in words what the Berkeley Free Speech Movement would manifest in action two years later, and what students the nation over would identify with avidly even in the moment of opposition to the Vietnam War."
10/21/2016, The Daily Aztec, The Black Panther Party speaks to students about equality, Jocelyn Moran
"[Roberta] Alexander said her grandfather was a slave and her father worked for the Civil Rights Congress in Oakland where he dealt with police brutality and unfair eviction of families from their homes.
¶
She said she grew up watching the Civil Rights Movement and going to demonstrations by herself in Los Angeles to support the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
¶
'It made me believe we can make a change in the world,' Alexander said.
¶
Alexander was a part of the Free Speech Movement when she attended University of California, Berkeley, then decided to join the Black Panther movement."
10/20/2016, Times Higher Education, How US universities became IP-based capitalists, Henry Heller
"The upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s may be seen in retrospect as an extension of the success of the 1950s, as university enrolments and funding continued to expand, and as the social and political role of universities assumed new importance. Universities became important sites of conflict over foreign policy, racism, gender equality and democracy, both within and beyond the campus. A new ideological cosmopolitanism emerged on campus as a result of the emergence of the first serious Marxist scholarship in the US, especially through the renewal of a historical perspective in anthropology, sociology, literature and history proper. Feminists opened up new opportunities for women in academe and began to create new theory around the question of gender. Most importantly, the very purpose of academic knowledge and research was questioned, especially in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. "
10/19/2016, Slate, The Marvelous Order of the City, Laura Miller
"The ’60s didn’t begin in 1960—or so the conventional history of the counterculture would have it. It wasn’t until 1964 and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, the story goes, that authority was seriously questioned. But tear your gaze away from those photogenic kids and consider these three books published in 1961, 1962, and 1963: The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Silent Spring, and The Feminine Mystique. All three books were written by women who were well beyond their college years, and all three transformed the world more lastingly than any protest. The third, by Betty Friedan, kicked off second-wave feminism. The second, by Rachel Carson, launched the environmental movement. And as for the first: If you have chosen an American city for your home, Jane Jacobs made the world you live in—although it might be more accurate to say that she saved it."
10/16/2016, Hungarian Free Press, Willie Brown is the keynote speaker at the 1956 Hungarian Revolution Commemoration in San Francisco, György Lázár
"In the 1960s, as a lawyer, Brown defended Mario Savio who was the leader of the Berkeley Free Speech movement. Willie knows the importance of the freedom of the press and he is the perfect choice to speak on the 1956 Commemoration in San Francisco." [Ed note: In March, 1964, a half year before the FSM, Brown represented some of those arrested in the SF Sheraton Palace demonstrations. Following the FSM, Brown contributed as a speaker and to fundraising efforts.]
10/11/2016, The Daily Californian, Students must work together with faculty for future of campus, Harry Le Grande
"I have a philosophy that one should leave a place better then one found it. The relationship between the university administration and students historically has certainly evolved, just as the university itself has evolved from its foundations to present. If one goes back several decades, there have been times when students have felt in direct opposition to the administration. This uneasy relationship indirectly led to the birth of the Free Speech Movement on our campus and the heritage of vibrant activism that continues to define the Berkeley experience."
10/10/2016, Spiked, WHAT WOULD SIXTIES REBELS MAKE OF CONSENT CLASSES?, Tom Slater
"The modern student movement was born out of students' desire to be treated as adults. When the Free Speech Movement began at the University of Berkeley in 1964, the demand to lift the Red-scare restrictions on political activism was bound up with the demand to lift in loco parentis itself - to have total autonomy over their social as well as intellectual lives. That then California governor Ronald Reagan would later lambast revolting Berkeley students as 'communist sympathisers, protesters and sex deviants' was no accident. Political dissidence and sexual depravity were seen as intimately related."
10/7/2016, The Eye of Photography, Stephen Shames and Bobby Seale, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, Jonas Cuénin
"In his introduction, Stephen Shames remembers his engagement with the movement: 'In 1966, I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley. One of my roommates, Marty Roysher, had been on the steering committee of the Free Speech Movement the year before. With his guidance I became active in student government and the anti-Vietnam War movement. In August 1967, after a summer job at a plastics factory, I hitchhiked to the East Village of New York City. I bought my first camera during the Summer of Love. When I returned to Berkeley in September, I realized I was not suited for the endless meetings and bickering of politics. My contribution to the movement would be as a photographer. Documenting the Black Panthers became my first long-term project.'"
10/04/2016, Countercurrents, WikiLeaks, 10 Years Of Pushing The Boundaries Of Free Speech, Nozomi Hayase
"'To me, freedom of speech is something that represents the very dignity of what a human being is... that's what marks us off from the stones and stars.' These are words spoken by Mario Savio, the spokesperson for the Free Speech Movement in the 60's. Decades later, the power of free speech has surged onto the global stage and began reclaiming the dignity of humanity.
¶
We are now entering WikiLeaks 10 year anniversary. The organization registered their domain on October 4, 2006 and blazed into the public limelight in the spring of 2010 with the publication of Collateral Murder. This video footage depicted the cruel scenery of modern war seen from an Apache helicopter gun-sight. It became an international sensation, with the website temporarily crashing with the massive influx of visitors."
10/3/2016, Reason, Janet Napolitano Defends Free Speech on University of California Campus, Anthony L. Fisher
"While creating a stampede for no good reason isn't protected speech, the Supreme Court decision which birthed that cliched analogy was actually about restricting the free speech of anti-war socialists during World War I-which is the kind of speech Napolitano seemingly would support the protection of, especially considering she evokes the anti-Vietnam War Free Speech Movement of the 1960s in this op-ed." [Ed note: and this is how untruths are propagated. Napolitano should know that the 1964 Free Speech Movement was formed to counter campus restriction on organizing for the Civil Rights Movement. The Vietnam War issue came later.]
10/2/2016, The Boston Globe, It's time to free speech on campus again, Janet Napolitano
"In the 1960s, as exemplified by the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, students on campuses demanded and received the ability to protest the Vietnam War. [Ed note: FSM was supporting the civil rights movement, not opposing the Vietnam War.] This was free speech, loud and angry and in your face. Today many of the loudest voices condemning speech and demanding protection are students on those same campuses. Listening to offensive, or merely opposing, views is subject to frequent criticism. What has happened, and what are we to do about it?
¶....¶
Wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, a year after founding the University of Virginia, 'This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.'
¶
But freedom of speech has had a bumpy ride at American universities, echoing our country's uneven interpretation of the First Amendment. In 1900, for example, Jane Stanford, the benefactor of Stanford University, forced the firing of a faculty member in large part because he supported labor unions. Not until the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the mid-60s was the principle established that the only limits on free speech should be those defined in the Constitution, at least as far as our nation's public universities were concerned. Has this concept now been turned on its head?"
10/2/2016, Pioneer Log, Physics professor Hershel Snodgrass retires after 30 years, Camille Pierson
"Snodgrass's undergraduate education began at Reed College.
¶
'All I can say is I was a mediocre student grade-wise,' Snodgrass said. He went on to graduate school, first at the University of Maryland and then at UC Berkeley. Yet it wasn't his science that got him a teaching position at Berkeley.
¶
'I ended up being invited back to Berkeley to teach, not because I was a good scientist but because I was politically active and so was the department. I was one of the 'student leaders' of the free-speech movement,' Snodgrass said. He even spent some time in jail after occupying the administration building.
¶
'I'm actually very proud of that,' Snodgrass said."
10/1/2016, Youngstown Vindicator, YEARS AGO, Associated Press
"On this date in:1964: The Free Speech Movement begins at the University of California, Berkeley."
10/1/2016, The Nation, Past in Perspective,
"It is October 1964, Berkley. A student protest has just been launched on the campus of University of California.
¶
The protest comes in response to the sudden termination of any venue for on-campus political advocacy by the university officials. During a time when awareness and passion for civil rights flew high among the student body, the move was taken as a direct threat to freedom. Initiated by left leaning [Ed note: left to right coalition] students, the Free Speech Movement would have long-lasting effects on Berkley as well as other places where students had now come to realise the potential of demonstration. As the movement grew further, and involved a massive sit-in, speeches made by students, the arrest of almost 800; the university finally conceded to the students' demands, and the ban"
9/26/2016, Mondoweiss, Palestine, 'safety' and the UC Berkeley affair, Juliana Farha
"You needn't dig deep to uncover the stinking heap of ironies infesting this deplorable episode. Of course, UC Berkeley is the famed birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, a series of protests in 1964-65 aimed at securing students' right to undertake political activity on campus.
¶....¶
Aside from the rest, it's a reminder that it was Berkeley students who drove the Free Speech Movement, earning the school widespread esteem for its embrace of that liberty, in the face of fierce opposition from its administration. Their contribution was to call the cops."
9/25/2016, The Daily Californian, Freedom of Speech: A Legacy or a Trap?, Elaina Provencio
"Our legacy as UC Berkeley students is to carry on this emblem of the movement, our responsibility to enact the freedoms that students before us fought to protect. The conservative versus liberal clash has always existed in the microcosm of Berkeley, reflecting the larger division in this nation. Republican Ronald Reagan was largely able to guarantee his successful election as California governor by promising to quell the future uprising of liberal student activism.
¶....¶
'On one hand, administration will take down flyers that are deemed offensive, and on the other hand, administration turns a blind eye to repeated, targeted attacks on a particular group,' said [Berkeley College Republicans' External Vice President Claire] Chiara. 'The absolute hypocrisy of condemnation of free expression at the very home of the Free Speech Movement is frightening.'
¶....¶
The students before us fought for our freedom of speech, so let's use it to create productive discourses that will aid us as the next generation of UC Berkeley students who strive for social reformation. Let's take the story back."
9/22/2016, The Garden Island, 1964: The 'Great Humanitarian Blossoming of America', Gabriela Taylor
"Inspired by Martin Luther King, blacks and whites protested segregation and racism with marches, sit ins, and other forms of non-violent actions that birthed the Civil Rights Movement. In the summer of '64, called 'Freedom Summer,' some students from UCB traveled to the south to assist with voter registration for Blacks who had been denied the right to vote. Three young Civil Rights workers, men from the north, were killed there. That fall, the Chancellor of the UCB campus clamped down on students' rights to set up informational tables about Civil Rights, as well as the Vietnam War, on the campus.
¶
Thus the rise of FSM, where 800 students sat down in Sproul Hall, Administration Building, in a peaceful protest. Because of my location on the hallway floor, I was the last person dragged by my collar to the booking room on Dec. 4.
¶
Before boarding a bus that would take us to Santa Rita Prison, the press stopped me for comment. I responded, 'This is just the beginning. We will not give up until we win'
¶
That statement was circulated in newspapers all over the county; my husband's grandmother in Rancho Santa Fe, California, read it and disinherited him. The important thing for both of us was that I did the right thing, not the loss of an inheritance. Neither I, nor any of my friends who were arrested, were ever communists. Rather, we were idealists who felt the call to help our fellow humans. And we did win. Due to overwhelming faculty support, the ban on political tables was overturned."
9/22/2016, London Review of Books, What are we allowed to say?, David Bromwich
"In 1964 the aim of the protests had been to remove the last barriers on 'unrestricted' free speech. Savio was always explicit about this. Fifty years later, the chancellor of UC Berkeley, Nicholas Dirks, sent a public letter to faculty, students and staff advising how best to honour the spirit of the Free Speech Movement. They should always remember that they live in a diversely constituted 'community' where a standard of 'respect' was a precondition of 'safe' use of the privilege of free speech. Above all, they must take care not to speak with unseemly passion:
¶
When issues are inherently divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings, the commitment to free speech and expression can lead to division and divisiveness that undermine a community's foundation … We can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin - the coin of open, democratic society.
¶
Reduced to a practical directive, the first sentence says: 'Indulge in free speech if you must; but please avoid issues that are controversial; and if you do address such issues, don't sound as if you care about them intensely.' This is what Mill meant by 'quiet suppression'."
9/20/2016, ACLU of Northern California, UC Berkeley Just Reinstated A Course on Palestine. It Should Have Protected Free Speech From the Start, Christine P. Sun
"Student-led courses at Cal come from a long tradition of student-led academic inquiry hailing back to Berkeley's Free Speech Movement itself. By reinstating the course, Cal is ultimately moving to protect the right of students to speak and study freely."
9/16/2016, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley political activists must not promote hatred, Senior Editorial Board
"Countless reminders of the Free Speech Movement mark our campus -- from the Mario Savio steps to the FSM Cafe -- forcing us to reflect on the principles of a movement driven by students from both ends of the political spectrum. Although often remembered as a liberal push, the Free Speech Movement was an attempt to provide all students a chance to politically engage on campus."
9/10/2016, The Huffington Post, What Was It Like to Attend Berkeley in the '60s?, Richard Muller
"Attending UC Berkeley in the 1960s was unbelievably educational. I arrived at Berkeley in September 1964, just in time for the Free Speech Movement. For several weeks I was a passive observer, although I sided with the students who had been (unfairly and unwisely, in my opinion) suspended. Then a friend, Richard Shavitz, called me and told me he was joining the sit-in at Sproul Hall. I went there too, and decided to be part of the sit-in. I expected to be arrested, and I was. The next morning the police 'invaded' the building. I was arrested, dragged down the steps of Sproul (I vividly recall my main worry: that I would lose a shoe!), taken to the Oakland jail, and released on bail the next morning. I was ultimately convicted of trespassing, failure to disperse, and resisting arrest. This was the first of the large number of sit-ins that took place at major universities over the subsequent years.
¶
The details comprise a rather long story. I learned a tremendous amount that I could never have learned academically (such as seeing the courage and leadership exercised by the leaders, many of whom had been on freedom-rides in the South, and had witnessed police brutality firsthand). Afterwards, I met a young woman who considered me to be a hero, and on September 3rd of this year we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. (Yes, we got married young!)
¶
If you've seen the black and white photos taken inside Sproul during the sit-in, odds are that they were taken by me; very few taken by others ever became public. I attach one that shows the police charging up to the second floor in a (successful) attempt to take control of the window that was being used to supply food and information to those of us inside. For more photos, see my web page: Muller's Free Speech Photos."
9/10/2016, Der Standard, Berkeley: Gespannte Ruhe an der Unruhe-Uni, Michael Freund
"Eine Tafel ist Mario Savio (1943-1996) gewidmet, der mit seinen Reden die Studentenbewegung entfachte und in Amerika so bekannt wurde wie später Dany Cohn-Bendit in Frankreich oder Rudi Dutschke in Deutschland und eigentlich beide in ganz Europa."
9/9/2016, UC Berkeley News, Berkeley's '60s radical roots show in major UK exhibit, Yasmin Anwar
"Though Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement came before the 1966-70 period highlighted in the exhibit, it's well known for sparking many of the U.S. movements featured in the show, says exhibit co-curator Victoria Broackes, who stopped at UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement Café in July as part of a press tour of the San Francisco Bay Area's counterculture landmarks.
¶
'Through the activities of its young people, Berkeley became the epicenter of various protest movements, including the anti-Vietnam-War movement, which unified nearly all protest groups of the time,' she adds. 'So much of the '60s change in the USA stemmed from Berkeley.'"
8/21/2016, The Guardian, Acid trips, black power and computers: how San Francisco's hippy explosion shaped the modern world, Alex Needham
"We go to the steps of the University of California at Berkeley's Sproul Hall, where Mario Savio, spokesman for the free speech movement, made his astoundingly passionate speech inspiring his fellow students to stage a sit-in and stop 'the operation of the machine'. The free speech protests marked a direct link from the civil rights movement, in which Savio had participated, to the anti-war protests that would convulse Berkeley at the end of the 60s; just as the Beatniks of the previous decade, such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, had profoundly influenced the hippies."
8/15/2016, Beyond Chron, REMEMBERING RALPH GLEASON, LEGENDARY SF JAZZ WRITER, Peter Richardson
"Gleason split with Ramparts in 1967, the same year he cofounded the Monterey Pop Festival. Later that year, he also cofounded Rolling Stone magazine and gave it early credibility within the music industry. If that's all he ever did, Ralph J. Gleason would be a notable figure. But he was also a leading jazz critic, cofounded the Monterey Jazz Festival, wrote the liner notes for Lenny Bruce's comedy albums, testified for the defense at Bruce's San Francisco obscenity trial, and became the only music journalist to land on President Nixon's Enemy List. When Gleason died in 1975, Greil Marcus wrote his obituary for the Village Voice. 'Ralph was always open to anything new," Marcus wrote, "not merely open to it but eager to fight for it, as he fought for Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, Joseph Heller, Lenny Bruce, the Free Speech Movement, Rock 'n' Roll, the San Francisco Sound, the Fillmore Auditorium when San Francisco was ready to close it down.'"
8/15/2016, Berkeleyside, How Quirky is Berkeley? Mark Bulwinkle's sculpture inside the new Mad Monk, Tom Dalzell
"Mario Savio became one of the primary faces of the Free Speech Movement in 1964 after a summer with SNCC in Mississippi. His oratory and love of ideas and dignity were of another time."
8/12/2016, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley biochemist dies at 97, Cassandra Vogel
"During the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, he acted as an advocate for students on campus and served on a faculty committee supporting the cause. He also fought to remove a mandatory retirement rule requiring university faculty members to retire by a certain age, allowing faculty members to continue working and conducting research at the university."
8/11/2016, The Pride L.A., VIDEO: California Legislative Caucus Honors LGBT Pioneers, Karen Ocamb
"Still, the troglodytes came after her. And though she had stood up to police and political pressure as a leader of the Berkley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s and she defeated Religious Right nutcase Lou Sheldon and his Traditional Values Coalition as President of the L. A. Unified School District, defending science teacher Dr. Virginia Uribe's dropout prevention program Project 10--Jackie [Goldberg] cried as anti-gay legislators hurled slurs at her and her beloved partner, poet Sharon Stricker. Their capacity for snickering cruelty was beyond understanding."
8/10/2016, Berkeley News, Biochemist Howard Schachman, an advocate for research ethics, dies at 97, Robert Sanders
"He became increasingly active during the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, and was a major faculty supporter of students protesting university policies that limited political activism on campus."
8/8/2016, The Daily Californian, The dark underbelly of Berkeley clichés, Natalie Silver
"This defiance of image and societal expectations bleeds into the local culture, crystallizing on Telegraph Avenue, while our defiance of administrative silencing in the 1964 Free Speech Movement is now something that is institutionally celebrated."
8/5/2016, Out & About Nashville, Marisa Richmond at the DNC, Marisa Richmond
"After I found my seat on the stage, my friend, Mara Keisling, managed to get this photo of me from her seat. I was sitting right in front of the California delegation, which included one of the loudest group of Sanders' supporters. While I do appreciate their enthusiasm, I have to admit that I found them to be very disrespectful of many speakers. One of the key lessons of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley (1964-1965) is that while you have the right to free speech, you should exercise it responsibly."
8/3/2016, Los Angeles Times, This terminally ill man says California's aid-in-dying law means he can end his life 'fully, thankfully and joyfully', Soumya Karlamangla
"He [Robert Stone] recounted attending UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, working in the Peace Corps in the Philippines and enjoying a career dedicated to helping the homeless."
7/25/2016, Albany Times Union, Some notes on Anne and warm weather, Warren Roberts
"Anne [Roberts] organized another program in 1984, a 20th-year celebration of the Free Speech movement at Berkeley, which began the year after we came to Albany [NY] from UC Berkeley. She attracted one of her former professors from Berkeley to participate, a Chaucer specialist, Charles Muscatine, who had been active in the Free Speech Movement and revision of the new curriculum at Berkeley. She also invited Sheldon Wolin, a prominent UC Berkeley political scientist, who was now teaching on the east coast. Anne also included several faculty members at Albany who had been at Berkeley for the panel discussions on the Free Speech Movement which she called 'Berkeley Revisited: The Impact of the 1964 Movement.' Our eldest son, James, had just graduated from UC Berkeley, and he was also part of the panel on what Berkeley was like in 1984. It was a well-attended and most stimulating event."
7/20/2016, KQED Arts, Oakland on the Precipice: A Video Postcard with Fantastic Negrito, Kelly Whalen
"The East Bay has a long history of inspiring musicians like Too Short, Tupac Shakur, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Metallica, along with birthing the Black Panthers, the Free Speech Movement, and the East Bay Dragons Motorcycle Club."
7/18/2016, New Paltz Times, Jason West: National hero to local activist, Rich Corozine
"...and to top it all off, was awarded the Mario Savio [Young Activist] Award in San Francisco [Berkeley] -- named for the philosopher/firebrand who led the 1964 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley."
7/11/2016, VTDigger, AG Candidate Deb Bucknam Says TJ Donovan Is Wrong On The First Amendment, Friends of Deb Bucknam
"Walden, VT - Over a half a century ago Americans of all political persuasions were in the forefront of defending and expanding First Amendment protections for all citizens. In Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement overturned a campus ban on political speech. In the courts, lawyers were successful in persuading judges to strike down numerous statutes for violating the First Amendment, including prohibitions against flag burning and wearing black arm bands, and laws which punished people, like members of the Communist Party, who held dissenting views."
7/11/2016, Jacobin, Students Are the Raw Material, Wes Bishop & Jaime Hough
"Even as the Morrill Acts created a higher education system for that purpose, Morrill and other state legislatures stressed the importance of maintaining the liberal arts and humanities. This mandate for a hybrid student -- both an industrious worker and developed thinker -- continued well past the 1860s and has defined much of the conflict over higher education's governance.
¶
Nowhere was this duality clearer than in the radical student movements of the 1960s. At the University of California Berkeley, President Clark Kerr gained notoriety for his declaration that education should serve the needs of future employers:
¶
The university is being called upon to educate previously unimaginable numbers of students; to respond to the expanding claims of national service; to merge its activities with industry as never before . . . What the railroads did for the second half of the last century and the automobile did for the first half of this century may be done for the second half of this century by the knowledge industry: that is, to serve as the focal point for national growth.
¶
Student activists took issue with Kerr's instrumentalism and launched the Free Speech Movement. Angered over the focus on profit and business, student leaders like Mario Savio argued that the university must transform itself into a more humane body that better reflected the ideals of free speech and political freedom:
¶
[If] this [university] is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I'll tell you something: the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw material[s] that don't mean to have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!
¶
Savio's sentiments -- and the broader historical tension over the role of American public higher education -- remind us that schemes like Bet on a Boiler, while new and insidious, don't represent a fundamental break from some halcyon past. The prerogatives of capital have always been integral to the public academy."
July 2016, Spiked, The Eve of Youthful Destruction, Todd Gitlin
"It was during the early 1960s that the generational idea first began to crystalise. And you can see that in the development of the self-conscious proclamations of student groups. You see it in SNCC in the South, you can see it in SDS, which itself was originally a branch of an adult organisation until it became clear there were generational cleavages, which weren't just arguments about Communism, but about matters of style and culture - matters, that is, which were more important to us than to them. And, by 1964, you can see it in the emergence of the mass student uprising known as the Free Speech Movement.
¶
Admittedly, the generational nature of FSM was partly exaggerated, thanks, in the main, to a journalist's decision to present 'we don't trust anyone over 30' as the FSM's core sentiment. This was an almost wilful misunderstanding of what one of the FSM leaders had said when responding to a question about whether there were any Communists in the FSM. It was something like 'Communists are old, and we're new - we don't trust anyone over 30'. But, even so, there was semi-truth inside the misunderstanding. That is, the revolt within the university was a revolt against old institutions and old assumptions about the ability and the right of the powerful to make fundamental decisions about what constituted acceptable university life."
6/21/2016, Huffington Post, New York State's Assault on Students Fighting for Peace, Vincent Intondi
"In the Fall of 1964, administration officials at UC Berkeley banned students from participating in political activities on campus. In response, students from across the political spectrum protested, sat-in, risked arrest and their academic careers, in what is now known as the Free Speech Movement (FSM). The victories won by Jack Weinberg, Brian Turner, Michael Rossman, Bettina Aptheker, Mario Savio, and others in the FSM are in large part, why college campuses remain a place where students can engage in rigorous debate of any topic. Now however, much of what these activists worked for may be at risk."
Summer, 2016, Vanity Fair, HOW TO BE A STUDENT PROTESTER: 1968 VS. 2016, Bruce Feirstein
"Berkeley Sit-In
¶
Police removed a student from Sproul Hall where students were holding an all-night sit-in at U.C. Berkeley in 1964. The demonstration was the culmination of one of the most seminal protests of the Free Speech Movement, after a student was arrested for handing out information on civil rights on campus. Nearly 800 students were arrested as part of the sit-in, but the university ultimately voted to end all restrictions on political activity."
6/10/2016, PR Newswire, Ever Seen a Campaign Button Worth $25K? The July 6-10 American Political Items Collectors National Convention Is a Likely Place to Find It,
"Seminars for registered conventioneers will be held on the mornings of Wednesday and Thursday, July 6 and 7. Topics include suffrage memorabilia, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and its consequences, the origins and legacy of the SDS, and more."
6/8/2016, The Hollywood Reporter, 'Political Animals': LAFF Review, Stephen Farber
"Two other openly gay women -- Christine Kehoe and Jackie Goldberg (a veteran of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s) -- joined them in the fight for domestic partnership laws that would benefit gay men and women. The doc suggests aptly that their victories helped to pave the way for the 2015 Supreme Court decision validating same-sex marriage."
06/02/2016, The Point Reyes Light, The architect and the goat: A history in politics, Charles Schultz
"Sim [Van der Ryn]: Yeah, and I was involved in the Free Speech Movement in 1964. Then in '65 to '66 I was appointed to an advisory committee on student housing. That's when the People's Park property came up. The University had leveled the old structures and said, you know, we want to build an extension to the medical school on that site. I looked at the regents' minutes; there were no plans to build anything there."
5/24/2016, Breitbart, Protests Planned for Milo Event at DePaul University, Breitbart Tech
"'What is behind the right's appeals to 'free speech', what do socialists say about the right to free speech, and how do we best confront the Right wing, today?' reads a flyer which has been posted around DePaul campus along with a picture of Yiannopoulos and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump at the top. 'Join the DePaul Socialists for a discussion following a presentation by longtime revolutionary socialist Joel Geier. A founding member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964 and a lifelong revolutionary, Joel is currently an editor of the International Socialist Review.'"
5/19/2016, The Architect's Newspaper, Denise Scott Brown on the unknown history of architecture and planning at the University of Pennsylvania, William Menking, Matt Shaw
"Bill Wheaton invited me to be a visiting professor at Berkeley, so I taught there during the Foul Speech movement, one semester after the Free Speech movement, at Berkeley."
5/17/2016, The New Yorker, RALPH GLEASON'S ARTISTIC ACTIVISM, Richard Brody
"Born in New York in 1917, Gleason moved to San Francisco in 1947, and his adopted home proved crucial to forming his sensibility and to his attunement to the times. He wrote of experiencing the 'San Francisco Renaissance,' calling the city 'the Liverpool of the United States.' He was also present for the outburst of a new political culture, with the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, in late 1964, with its famous sit-in, the climactic speech by Mario Savio, and what Gleason called its Black Thursday, when the police stormed in-'the adult tragedy whose most macabre moment came when the policeman slammed his arm against Mario Savio's throat, not only to remove him from the stage but to keep him from speaking.'
¶
In the prescient essay 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' from 1965, Gleason says that 'the revision of morality and the priorities of society that are evolving-and which the Berkeley FSM movement represents-first broke through the surface of social apathy in the form of folk singers like Joan Baez.' He adds that Baez and Bob Dylan 'are the two leading figures in this crusade for a New Morality.'"
5/9/2016, The Smart Set, FREE SPEECH & THE MODERN CAMPUS, Camille Paglia
"The uprising at Berkeley climaxed in Savio's fiery speech from the steps of Sproul Hall, where he denounced the university administration. Of the 4000 protestors in Sproul Plaza, 800 were arrested. That demonstration embodied the essence of 1960s activism: it challenged, rebuked, and curtailed authority in the pursuit of freedom and equality; it did not demand, as happens too often today, that authority be expanded to create special protections for groups reductively defined as weak or vulnerable or to create buffers to spare sensitive young feelings from offense. The progressive 1960s, predicated on assertive individualism and the liberation of natural energy from social controls, wanted less surveillance and paternalism, not more."
5/9/2016, Reader Supported News, Bernie Sanders Wins the Trust of America's Muslims While Jeremy Corbyn Stumbles Over Jew-Bashing in Britain, Steve Weissman
"These incidents, and there are many more, show how Red Ken has long gone out of his way to provoke and offend Jews. But, in the present case, he claims to be defending historical truth, which - he says - he has taken from a book by a Trotskyist author called Lenni Brenner, who happens to have been brought up as an orthodox Jew.
¶
When I heard Ken cite Brenner, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Berkeley had known him as Lenny Glaser -- he was using his stepfather's name -- and he had been a mind-opening and mind-blowing precursor to the Free Speech Movement."
5/2/2016, Hong Kong Free Press, The role of global solidarity in the fight for democracy in Hong Kong, Mark C. Eades
"Civil disobedience was likewise the tactic of choice for University of California students in the Free Speech Movement of 1964. Outside 10 Downing Street in 1984 as Thatcher met with Botha, civil disobedience in the form of a sit-down strike in defiance of British police was the method we used. Ultimately, in its own small way, it appears to have worked rather well."
4/28/2016, The Federalist, Silence Is Death: The Generational Case For Free Speech, Mark Hemingway
"Two years ago, the University of California Berkeley was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Berkeley free speech movement, often credited with kicking off the modern era of campus activism. Romanticizing the Berkeley free speech movement too much is a mistake, but by the standards of contemporary campus activism even the use of the term 'free speech' is laudable. However, I have my doubts that twenty-first-century Berkeley agrees.
¶
To mark the anniversary, U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent out a memo that read, 'As we honor this turning point in our history, it is important that we recognize the broader social context required in order for free speech to thrive.' You can probably tell where this is heading. Dirks went on to say, 'Specifically, we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so.'"
¶
[Ed note: The FSM Archives rebutted Dirks: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/09/16/boundary-free-speech-political-advocacy/
"It is precisely the right to speech on subjects that are divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings that we fought for in 1964."]
4/27/2016, The Republican-American, A liberal's lament over stifled speech, Andrew Wells, M.D.
"In the days of Mario Savio (check out his speech on YouTube) and the Free Speech Movement, hundreds of students became involved because the president of the university, Clark Kerr -- backed by Gov. Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown and California conservatives -- announced they no longer were allowed to use speech to advocate for any political cause, position, religion or any other point of view on the campus."
4/26/2016, Columbia Daily Spectator, Don't use your discomfort to discredit student activism, Nikita Singareddy
"These came to a head in March 1968 when rambunctious Mark Rudd threw a lemon meringue pie at a Selective Service official, challenging the American war machine and draft rules. Next month, SDS and the Student Afro-American Society led the occupation of campus buildings in protest of Harlem expansion. Hundreds participated in the protests spearheaded by Rudd, Harvey Blume, and other activist leaders. Meanwhile, students debated and eventually agreed upon a specific set of demands, knowing that salient policy change had come from past student demonstrations like UC Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement."
4/26/2016, Boston Review, The Privatization of Hope, Ronald Aronson
"The early New Left-as exemplified by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Free Speech Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the women's movement-was in many ways a response to the situation Ginsburg and Marcuse described. Convinced that the personal was political, many in the New Left placed individual needs and experience at the center of their activism and emphasized participatory democracy. These projects-along with casual dress, drug experimentation, long hair, sexual freedom, and an explosion of new music-militated against the dominant culture. Even as the wave of the '60s separated into two currents-one more political and the other more countercultural-it never stopped pushing individual liberation. This feature of the New Left has led otherwise astute observers such as Mark Lilla and the late Tony Judt to ignore the movement's organized and disciplined commitment to social justice and to reduce the '60s to an era of do-your-own-thing individualism."
4/23/2016, Daily Camera, Boulder history: Free School was one of country's most successful, Carol Taylor
"The Free School movement evolved from the Free Speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley in the mid-1960s. By the mid-1970s dozens of free schools and universities were operating in the United States."
4/22/2016, The News & Advance, No Longer Bastions of Free Speech, The Editorial Board
"The Free Speech Movement began during the 1964-65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley and spread like wildfire throughout higher education.
¶
The Free Speech Movement led to an explosion of dialogue and intellectual give-and-take on campuses and academic freedom for faculty reigned supreme."
4/22/2016, The Daily Californian, Letter: Carla Hesse unfit to head sexual harassment committee, Zachary Levenson
"Her odd conflation of the Free Speech Movement with the 'freedom' to harass others points to a fundamental misdiagnosis. It is not 'respect' as opposed to 'freedom' that has finally brought to light sexual harassment on our campus, but the courageous, persistent struggles of survivors and their allies despite obstacles at every turn. Hesse should demonstrate real commitment to these survivors, not undermine them by urging us all to be 'respectful.'"
4/22/2016, The Daily Californian, Letter: Close reading of Hesse op-ed introduces slew of questions, William Stafford Jr.
"Was it 'respect' that kept the Free Speech Movement from becoming the Filthy Speech Movement? Did that 'respect' take the form of adhering to administrative honor codes? What exactly is the freedom she is talking about, and how does it relate to the many formulations, experiments and calls for freedom which exist on and around the campus? There is a complete stifling and immobilization of the very difficult active engagements with questions of transgression, and dismissal of the kinds of care and caution which a developing sensitivity to these engagement can engender. Where will the meaning of those words in the honor code - honesty, integrity, respect - be discussed, explored, weighed and put into practice? How do we come to recognize injustices that did not appear as such to us before?"
4/21/2016, New Boston Post, Amherst, Harvard, Williams cited for 'muzzling' speech, Derrick Perkins
"'It's been frustrating, watching the sort of speech [suppression] shift over from administrators to students,' [Greg] Lukianoff told U.S. News & World Report.
¶
The magazine also quoted Bettina Aptheker, one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in the mid-1960s, which argued for students' rights to engage in political activity on campus and for academic freedom. The movement helped propel both civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests on campuses nationwide. Aptheker said she also worries about recent trends."
4/19/2016, The Daily Californian, Campus tours should retell more accurate history of Free Speech Movement, Free Speech Movement Board of Directors
"Although, as veterans of the Free Speech Movement, we are gratified that at least one UC Berkeley ambassador sees its importance as a defining moment in campus history, we are writing to correct the errors that this ambassador makes in describing the Free Speech Movement on campus tours. The Free Speech Movement was a nonviolent protest against the campus's closing down of the one place on campus (the Bancroft Way-Telegraph Avenue strip) where students were allowed to advocate for political causes, pass out literature, recruit members and raise money for political and social action. It was motivated largely by concerns about civil rights, not about the Vietnam War, which was still not on the radar of most Americans. There was no chaining of doors to any building - that was an event that happened years later - and no keeping the chancellor from his office. After a semester of fruitless negotiations, the struggle culminated in a massive sit-in at Sproul Hall, the arrests of almost 800 students and a faculty vote supporting the student demands. The resulting rules still prevail on campus: The campus shall make no regulations restricting the content of speech or advocacy, and the time, place and manner of political activities shall be regulated only so far as to prevent interference with the normal functioning of the campus.Our hope is that both those who train campus tour guides - and the guides themselves - will prepare by studying the history of the Free Speech Movement so as to give those who tour the campus an accurate account of this event and its importance in the struggle for a freer campus and a society free of racism. We would be happy to meet with UC Berkeley ambassadors to help them better understand this history."
4/15/2016, The Daily Californian, Tour de force: The life of a UC Berkeley campus ambassador, Brenna Smith
"'DC: What is your favorite part of giving a tour?
¶
BB [Becca Berelson]: I love talking about the Free Speech Movement. I think it's just one of the most defining aspects of Cal history that's shaped who we are as a current campus and our current campus climate. So I get super passionate when I talk about it just because I think it's beautiful.
¶
DC: Could you elaborate on the Free Speech Movement a little more?
¶
BB: Yeah, so in 1964 there was a lot going on in politics with the Vietnam War, etc. - and the students really wanted to be able to talk about free speech and have free speech on campus: demonstrations, protests - that sort of thing. And the administration wasn't really having it, so what the students did was one night, they chained together the doors of California Hall. And this was a big problem because this was the office of the chancellor at the time and at that time they didn't have Google Drive or anything, so he really needed his office to be able to run the school. So, it was a really big deal. The university retaliated, there was a police force - all this crazy stuff going on. There are really famous pictures of Mario Savio, the leader of the Free Speech Movement, standing atop this police car talking about free speech. It's just totally affected who we are. Cal students tend to be pretty passionate and activists and really driven. We're just committed to social issues, aware of politics and current events - which I think is a really beautiful thing. I think that without the Free Speech Movement, we might not be like that or have that reputation as much."
¶
[Ed note: it was civil rights, not ant-war activism, which precipitated the FSM. 10/1/1964 police drove car onto Sproul Plaza to arrest former student Jack Weinberg. 12/2/1964 over 1000 students occupied Sproul Hall. 12/3/1964 almost 800 are arrested. The basic issue: the content of speech or advocacy should not be restricted by the University. 12/8/1964 The Faculty Senate agreed. The FSM prevailed.]
4/14/2016, Times Higher Education, Free speech on campus advocates urge people to say the unsayable, Matthew Reisz
"In his introduction to Unsafe Space: The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus, Tom Slater -- deputy editor of online magazine spiked and coordinator of its Free Speech University Rankings -- looks back to the 1960s Free Speech Movement at the University of California, when 'students demanded to be taken seriously as autonomous beings, capable of negotiating their academic, political and social lives away from the tutelage of their tweeded minders'."
4/12/2016, The Daily Californian, Mutual respect must inform any solution, Carla Hesse
"Let's be honest. Freedom is great, but we have a very hard time talking about any other public values at UC Berkeley -- like respect. But if we are going to succeed in producing a campus environment in which every one of our members can enjoy the personal safety and social dignity that are preconditions for freedom, we are going to have to learn how to embrace the virtue of respect for those who are different and of those with whom we disagree.
¶
Without respect, the Free Speech Movement becomes the Filthy Speech Movement. Free love becomes harassment and even assault. UC Berkeley needs to find a way to stand up more firmly and more forcefully for the virtue of putting limits on our own behavior so that the opportunities that freedom affords are a privilege of every member of our community, and not just those of the most privileged members of our community."
4/6/2016, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Life on the Island: Latest on Bette, breweries, backyards, Janet Levaux
"Alameda Island Brewing Company, 1716 Park St., is hosting an opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday for photographer Howard Harawitz. 'The '60s: Through the Lens of Howard Harawitz' is on display this month and next at the brewery.
¶
Harawitz' images were recently featured in the film 'The Black Panthers Vanguard of the Revolution,' which aired on PBS. He photographed and participated in the Bay Area's civil rights, peace and the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s."
4/6/2016, San Francisco Chronicle, Henry Elson 1926 - 2016,
"Henry went back to college, this time to the University of Wisconsin, where he discovered left-wing politics and changed his major from journalism to political science. Upon completion of his undergraduate studies, he moved to Berkeley for graduate work. There he met and married Evelyn Gins, and recognized that a proper career was the appropriate next step. He graduated from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in 1952. After a few years as a solo practitioner, he joined Fred Howell in a thriving practice serving the Berkeley community. Henry and his partners set up small business corporations, represented individuals in personal injury cases, appealed death penalty decisions, wrote wills and trusts, and litigated divorces. Henry spent many pro bono hours representing student protesters during the Free Speech Movement."
4/6/2016, East Bay Times, Alameda: Iconic 1960s Bay Area photos subject of exhibit, David Boitano
"ALAMEDA -- The date was Oct. 1, 1964, and change was about to erupt on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.
¶
Graduate student and civil rights activist Jack Weinberg was arrested by campus police for refusing to show his identification. Students surrounded the patrol car where Weinberg was being held and remained in place for hours as a show of defiance.
¶
Charges against Weinberg were dropped and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was born.
¶
Weinberg's friend, Howard Harawitz, was in the crowd that day and began taking photos to document the event. Harawitz went on to photograph many of the protests that were so much a part of the Bay Area's activist climate 50 years ago."
4/5/2016, People's World, A desire to change the world: Author Gary Murrell on Herbert Aptheker, Tony Pecinovsky
"At the height of the student free speech movement Aptheker had been invited to speak at Ohio State University. To demonstrate the absurdity of the school's crackdown on free expression, Aptheker sat on stage silently while students challenged campus-based censorship by reading excerpts from his many books - all found in the school's library.
However, it wasn't only Aptheker's passion that endeared him to sixties-era young radicals or to African Americans looking to challenge the then-dominant narrative about Blacks in U.S. history."
3/29/2016, Power Line, Emory Doubles Down on Beclowning Itself, Steven Hayward
"By coincidence, tonight I'm up at Berkeley, staying a short walk away from Sather Gate, the scene of the beginning of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964. That famous eruption began because of . . . university restrictions on the places where students could put up card tables and engage in political messaging. Now students and weak-minded administrators like [Ajay] Nair want to crack down on political speech, but only when it is politically unacceptable speech. It would be one thing if 'chalking' were prohibited campus wide, but this is clearly just a bureaucratic hedge to clamp down on speech the left doesn't like. Would Nair make this same statement if campus Republicans objected to someone chalking 'Sanders 2016'? Don't make me laugh."
3/28/2016, the Wesleyan Argus, Since When Were Free Speech & Equality Enemies?, Joseph Nucci
"Perhaps unsurprisingly, the opponents of free speech have historically been on the right side of the ideological spectrum. Whether it was the suppression of slavery abolitionists prior to the Civil War, the Palmer Raids of 1920, the arrests of union organizers, McCarthyism, or the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) in the 1960s, free speech has historically been something that liberals have stood for, fought for and died for."
3/25/2016, Reading Eagle, At UC Berkeley, promises of a crackdown on sexual misconduct met with skepticism by students, Teresa Watanabe
"Nicoletta Commings and Sofie Karasek were drawn to UC Berkeley for its social justice traditions. Karasek read about the free-speech movement in history class at her high school in Massachusetts and wrote her college application essay about her desire to pursue environmental activism there. She arrived on campus for the fall term in 2011, just in time to join hundreds of protesters in Sproul Plaza who were supporting the Occupy movement for economic equality.
¶
'It was everything I wanted,"' she said.
¶
But after being sexually assaulted by fellow students, Karasek and Commings said, they were shocked that administrators seemed disinterested in their complaints, failed to keep them informed about their investigations and levied what they view as inadequate sanctions. They and a third woman are suing the university over the handling of their cases.
¶
The university has denied the allegations."
3/24/2016, The Phoenix, Swarthmore as a nation-state, Sarah Dobbs
"Read or watch Mario Savio's speech at Sproul Hall in 1964 during the Berkley Free Speech Movement. Ask yourself what has changed. Savio asks us to consider that if the educational institution is a capitalist operation, then the faculty are the employees and the students are the raw material to be commodified and translated into capital for the institution. He courageously asserts, 'We're human beings!' Savio continues to galvanize the crowd, 'There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! … And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus-and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it-that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!'"
3/22/2016, The Washington Times, When universities become day care centers, Clifford D. May
"'The claim that the FSM was fighting for free speech for all (i.e., the First Amendment) was always a charade,' according to journalist Sol Stern, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute who, back in the day, was a member of the FSM at Berkeley, where it was born. 'Within weeks of FSM's founding, it became clear to the leadership that the struggle was really about clearing barriers to using the campus as a base for radical political activity.'"
3/13/2016, The Asian Age, It's high time to change India's sedition laws, Meenakshi Ganguly
"The Berkeley Free Speech Movement served as a crucial milestone in the US struggle for civil liberties. Although the din around the Kumar arrest is dying down, this could well be the start of India's own movement. Will those who label critics 'anti-national' prevail, or will free speech advocates who contend it is patriotic to try to make the country better through peaceful criticism of state policies, win the day?"
3/6/2016, Hoodline, Waller Street Blues: An Interview With Denise Kaufman Of The Ace Of Cups,
"She was born in the city, raised in Palo Alto along with early members of the Grateful Dead, attended Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, rode the bus with the Merry Pranksters, and much more.
¶
....
¶
Then I got to Berkeley and all the tables were set up in the Plaza and everyone was handing out their political information. I was seventeen, a freshmen and took every ier. In a few weeks the campus police came and con scated the tables. That started the Free Speech Movement. I was active in that from the very get go. I got arrested at Sproull Hall. I got beaten up by the police and taken to the Oakland City Jail. That whole fall semester was pretty luminous because of the Free Speech Movement."
3/3/2016, OneDublin.org, Life in UC Berkeley: Joshua Price's Cal Eng Journey Part I, Joshua Price
"I thought all the excitement about Berkeley during Welcome Week would die off after the first few weeks of class, but it really didn't. Throughout Fall 2014 the campus was socially aflame with two big events: the Black Lives Matter movement and the 50th anniversary of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement. These generated an excitement at Berkeley like I've never seen before and affected my experience as a student daily."
2/27/2016, San Francisco Chronicle, The university divide in the region grows,
"Two prestigious universities dominate higher education in the Bay Area and possibly the rest of the nation and beyond. Both UC Berkeley and Stanford are ultra-selective powerhouses, churning out graduates, fresh ideas and social revolutions. Think of Silicon Valley and the Free Speech Movement, for starters."
2/25/2016, The Berkeley Daily Planet, An Evening With Bruce Barthol and a Work in Progress, Conn Hallinan
"Barthol, the original bass player for 'The Fish,' and long-time music director for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, takes the audience on an odyssey both political and physical. As the child of academics his family bounced around from Berkeley to Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, Spain, and finally landing him in Berkeley on the eve of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) in 1964."
2/22/2016, Catch News, counter-culture movement or existential angst of India's millennials?, Wajahat Qazi
"In 1960, student activism hit the campus of the famed University of California, Berkeley. The motivation behind the Berkeley protests were civil rights for African-Americans, the free speech movement and anti-war (Vietnam) protests. All in all, the protests were in the nature of a counter-cultural movement.
¶
The Berkeley protests find an eerie echo in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) saga. The apparent catalysts have been the demonstrations on the anniversary of Afzal Guru's hanging, and then these devolved into other ancillary protest themes."
2/15/2016, Los Angeles Times, Review: 'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution' on PBS, Robert Lloyd
"It doesn't completely place the Panthers in the context of the times, and of antiwar, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-establishment militancy that flourished in the Bay Area, Free Speech Movement and various other countercultural movements in the Bay Area. It was an time when some hoped and others feared that revolution -- a word as inflammatory as it was inexact -- was coming to America. Both sides were readying for actual war."
2/12/2016, Interview Magazine, DISCOVERY: SWMRS, Emily McDermott
"ACTIVISTS: We try to be as active as possible in things like the Black Lives Matter movement. I think we're all pretty into Bernie Sanders. We try to make our shows and music an inclusive and safe space for everyone, because I think a lot of times when you don't overtly state that, it can become unsafe and uncomfortable for marginalized people. We don't want anybody to feel excluded from our music because, in the end, it's something that helps people and makes them happy. Why exclude people from that? I think that [mindset] comes from growing up in the East Bay and the Berkeley punk scene. We were pretty influenced by the 'pre-hippie' ideology and free speech movement. We've always just known you pick your friend up if they fall down in the mosh pit. You have all-ages shows and you don't spread hate."
2/12/2016, Countercurrents, The People Make The Peace: Vietnam's Lessons For Today, Steve Thornton
"The writers in The People Make the Peace represent different political trends. Alex Hing, for example, was a self-described revolutionary nationalist. He recalls his development from Chinatown poverty, to San Francisco's Free Speech Movement and SCLC Poor People's Campaign, to the Red Guard Party (formed by the Black Panthers), and finally his union activism with the Hotel workers. He traveled through Vietnam and Korea, and as part of the first U.S. delegation to visit China since the 1949 revolution led by Mao Zedong."
2/10/2016, East Bay Express, Inkworks Press, 1974-2016, Lincoln Cushing
"Learning to print was a political act. Other such pioneers of the New Left included David Lance Goines' small shop for Berkeley's Free Speech Movement in 1964; Glad Day Press in Ithaca, New York and Peace Press in Los Angeles (1967); and Chicago's Salsedo Press and Red Sun in the Boston area (1973). Of those, only Salsedo and Red Sun remain. But other shops, such as Brooklyn's Radix Media, continue this noble trade. And the graphic design department of Inkworks, which spun off in 2002, is now the Design Action Collective, a very successful visual communications business in Oakland."
2/6/2016, CBS News, The Dish: Chef Alice Waters,
"Waters said even farmers thought she was crazy, but her conviction was unyielding. It came from the free speech movement in Berkeley.
¶
'I thought that I could do anything I wanted to do. I just had to be determined enough to do it,' Waters said.
¶
With that willpower she learned how to cook, all from a cookbook."
2/5/2016, Europa Newswire, From the Garden to the Glass House by Abdelkader K Abbadi,
"This is a true story of a young boy who lived in a cave with his grand parents in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and who later finds himself on a path of exciting discovery and learning. Traveling from New York to the mid western city of Lawrence, Kansas, then Fresno and Berkeley in California, he actually witnesses the turbulence on this campus and offers his reflections on the significance of the free speech movement. After he completes his higher education, he travels back east to begin an extraordinary professional career at the United Nations. In the course of his long journey, the young man learns about the values that make America great, and about the inner working of the international organization."
2/4/2016, Workers' Liberty, The world economy since 2008, Martin Thomas
"[Economist Hyman] Minsky came from a Menshevik émigré family background. As a school student in the late 1930s he was a member of the American Socialist Party youth group, where he probably came across Trotskyists. He studied with Oskar Lange, Henry Simons, Frank Knight, and Josef Schumpeter, and became an economics lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1957 to 1965. He supported the 1964-5 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, a big starting-point for late-1960s student radicalism; or, at least, he was one of only two lecturers who tried to intervene to stop a mass arrest of the protesting students (Columbia Daily Spectator, 18 December 1964). He was active in the left-liberal Americans for Democratic Action. In 1965 he moved from Berkeley to a smaller, quieter university, and remained in a quiet academic world until his death in 1996."
2/4/2016, truthdig, Credit Occupy in Bernie Sanders' Surge, Bill Boyarsky
"One day, I listened to a small meeting at which a dozen or more people were discussing how and how often to serve food. They argued over serving hours, menus (one person was a vegan, another loved protein), and who would cook and serve.
¶
'Interesting, isn't it,' said a friend, Art Goldberg. He's a lawyer who was one of the most famous leaders of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the mid-1960s and has been protesting ever since. He stopped by the encampment every day during breaks in trial at the nearby courthouse.
¶
'If you're interested in food service,' I replied sarcastically. He said I didn't understand what I was seeing. They weren't just arguing about food. If I had listened carefully, I would have understood they were talking about the essentials of political organizing-communicating, assigning tasks, scheduling, motivating, and making everyone feel they are part of an important effort.
¶
After the meeting, a young woman came over to talk to Goldberg. He talked to her about the need to work out the differences. She said she was trying to mediate between two strong women, one who cooked and the other who served. I could see what was really involved at the meeting I had observed: leadership and bringing people together, the essentials of both serving dinner and running a campaign."
2/3/2016, Yale Daily News, Activist highlights importance of "slow food", Veena McCoole
"[Alice] Waters drew parallels between the racial issues behind the protests on campus last semester and the free speech movement of the 1960s, which served as her initial source of inspiration for becoming an activist. In order to make dramatic change, she added, people must articulate themselves and say things out loud."
2/3/2016, The Seattle Times, Thank you, Signe Toly Anderson & Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane, Paul de Barros
"In the fall of 1965, when the music scene in the Haight Ashbury was heating up and the campus of the University of California was boiling over with rebellion, I had the privilege of reviewing the Jefferson Airplane's first concert on campus for the Daily Cal, UC Berkeley's student newspaper. I was 18 years old, a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and, like so many of my contemporaries, convinced that our activism and its soundtrack were going to change the world."
2/2/2016, Apollo Magazine, Art of Protest: Student Unrest at Berkeley, Peter Watts
"When Robert F. Kennedy visited California in October 1967, he made a point of praising the most radical university in America. 'You are the first college to become a political issue since George III attacked Harvard for being a centre of political rebellion and subversion,' he told the students of Berkeley. 'I welcome the passionate concern with the condition and future of the American nation which can be found on this campus.'
¶
Modern student protest - that's direct action, mass participation and slogans that stung like adverts - was invented at Berkeley. It began with the Free Speech Movement of 1964, which saw Berkeley students rise up for their right to have a political voice, and they were still at it in May 1970, marching against America's bombing of Cambodia and the murder of four fellow students during a protest at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen. Berkeley sympathised - a student had died in the previous year's People's Park riot - and students carried posters hastily created by the Political Poster Workshop at the College of Environmental Design. Around 50 of these, previously in the collection of the late publisher Felix Dennis, are going on display in London for 'America In Revolt: The Art Of Protest' at Shapero Modern."
1/25/2016, Coyote Chronicle, Looking to the past, focusing on the future, Chris Cauhape
"As the free speech movement began at University of California, Berkeley in 1964, college students all over the country rallied against the war in Vietnam.
¶
The student unrest was blamed on a so-called 'generation gap,' which morphed into a political issue.
¶
Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California in 1966, and he largely owed his political career to the student uprising and backlash of the UC Berkeley movement."
1/24/2016, Santa Barbara Independent, The Burning Bank Legacy, Sam Goldman
"In the years leading up to the riots, UCSB students - as well as their counterparts all around the country - witnessed a virtually unprecedented rights movement and faced a wide array of struggles and injustices. The 1964-1965 free speech movement at Berkeley helped illuminate the walls enclosing students' freedom of expression, while the previous decade and a half's Civil Rights Movement helped foster a sense of justice in university students. In October 1968, the occupation of North Hall by members of the Black Student Union brought about, among other reforms, the creation of the Black Studies Department. UCSB students marched in Sacramento in protest of Reagan's regressive education policies and waged their own free-speech battles on campus."
1/19/2016, The Temple News, Free speech: all or nothing, Austin Nolen
"First Amendment constitutional rights and academic freedom for students are not mere abstractions. Instead, both were first recognized as a result of student protests. Participants in the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s were diverse enough to include the College Republicans, but most wanted to exercise their free speech rights to advocate for civil rights and anti-war causes."
1/19/2016, The Irish Times, Free speech should reign on campus, Robert Dunne
"The students who took part in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965 (sic) recognised this when they protested so that political groups that offended common orthodoxies would be able to campaign openly in the university."
1/10/2016, Quirky Berkeley, OMG - 2233 McKinley, Tom Dalzell
"The house on McKinley was part of a commune. Michael Rossman and Karen McClellan were the - what do we say? -- anchors of the commune. Rossman was a Very Central Figure in the Free Speech Movement."
1/6/2016, The Telegraph, Why I'm finding it harder to call myself a liberal student', Hallam Roffey
"This absurdity is not confined to the UK; across the Atlantic the US has experienced an even greater proliferation of safe spaces and more ardent attacks on free speech. How sad it is to consider that just 50 years ago students in California fought hard and passionately during the Free Speech Movement.
Now we have Manchester's union blocking Julie Bindel and Milo Yiannopooulos from participating in a debate on, ironically, free speech, and London Southbank taking down posters of the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' because it may cause religious offence."
12/31/2015, The College Fix, Bill proposes fines for universities that infringe on students' free speech rights, Kate Hardiman
" [Republican Washington state lawmaker Matt] Manweller describes his bill as 'an academic bill of rights' with three key components.
¶
First, the bill reads that free speech may not be restricted to specified zones on campus. Second, it prohibits disciplining or dismissing a faculty member or student on the basis of a trigger warning or microaggression allegation. Third, it builds in due process rights for students.
¶
If a court determines that a university has violated any part of the bill, they are subject to fines of at least $500 plus $50 a day for each day that the violation remains.
¶
Manweller told The Fix that he has not faced any opposition from administrators or students so far. Planning to introduce the bill on Jan. 11, Manweller said he believes it will garner bipartisan support.
¶
'The free speech movement started at Berkeley in the 60's and was pushed by hard core liberals, and it was a long-standing liberal idea that free speech should exist in the face of hostile government repression,' Manweller said."
12/25/2015, Counterpunch, Generation Safe Space, Jonathan Taylor
"Watching authoritarianism on the right grow simultaneously with authoritarianism from the campus liberal-left produces anxiety, but anxiety itself fuels these attacks on free speech. Is it time for another Free Speech movement ala Berkeley 1964-6? Or would that potentially hurt somebody's feelings?"
12/23/2015, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Revisiting Radical Democracy in (Post) Colonial Okinawa: An Interview with C. Douglas Lummis, Maki Sunagawa and Daniel Broudy
"A lot of other things happened after that, but now the University of California has free speech on campus. It changed. But it was so interesting to sit in that group of 5,000 people, people around you whom you'd never met. Food was being passed around and everybody was friendly, and if you look at the photographs, you'll notice the faces of the protesters and the faces of their opponents are completely different.
¶
The opponents have, sort of, cynical grins. You can pick them out from the crowd, the people who wanted to use hate speech against us. For those few days, there was something like a new form, a different form of society, presaging a different way of people relating to each other. And, it was such a powerful experience that a lot of people who participated could never quite go back, could never quite forget that. We were changed by that experience.
¶
I think the same thing happened in the Philippines during the anti-Marcos movement of 1983-86, and in Poland on a far larger scale during the Solidarity Movement of the 1980s. When this change of state takes place, it's not just that it is effective and you get what you want, but it itself is a different way of being, a different way in which humans relate to each other. That is exhilarating."
12/21/2015, Politico Magazine, Campus Protesters Aren't Reliving the 1960s, Josh Zeitz
"One such Freedom Summer veteran was Mario Savio, the unofficial leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, who told his fellow collegians, 'Last summer I went to Mississippi to join the struggle there for civil rights. This fall I am engaged in another phase of the same struggle, this time in Berkeley. In Mississippi an autocratic and powerful minority rules, through organized violence, to suppress the vast majority. In California, the privileged minority manipulates the university bureaucracy to suppress the students' political expression.'
¶
On one level, Savio encouraged his peers to perceive a real parallel between political repression in the South-the familiar images of police dogs, water hoses and tobacco-chewing sheriffs-and the university administration's restrictive policies governing political advocacy on campus grounds. More viscerally, he tapped into an undercurrent of resentment about the everyday realities of student life."
12/17/2015, The Daily Caller, Camille Paglia EVISCERATES 'Drearily Puritanical, Hopelessly Authoritarian' Modern Feminism, Eric Owens
"'The problem with too much current feminism, in my opinion, is that even when it strikes progressive poses, it emanates from an entitled, upper-middle-class point of view. It demands the intrusion and protection of paternalistic authority figures to project a hypothetical utopia that will be magically free from offense and hurt. Its rampant policing of thought and speech is completely reactionary, a gross betrayal of the radical principles of 1960s counterculture, which was inaugurated in the U.S. by the incendiary Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley.'"
12/17/2015, Rolling Stone, There's No College P.C. Crisis: In Defense of Student Protesters, Angus Johnston
"Sometimes, as Frederick Douglass once wrote, 'it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.' Some occasions call for rational debate, he said, but others demand nothing less than 'a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.' To acknowledge that is not to express hostility to discourse, but to embrace it - to embrace the power of speech in its full scope and capacity.
¶
Student activists have always understood the power of thunder. And they understand as well that sometimes thunder, on its own, isn't enough. Sometimes you have to do more than just speak. Sometimes you have to organize - to, as the First Amendment says, assemble and pursue a redress of grievances. Sometimes, as Mario Savio declared in the greatest and most famous speech to emerge from the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley half a century ago, 'the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that … you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.' Because sometimes putting your body upon the wheels is the only influence you have."
12/15/2015, KQED News, Berkeley High Students Get Real About Race on Campus, Adizah Eghan
"'I'm so tired and I'm so burned out from trying to learn and be an activist, and just be black - in daily life - in a city that has not dealt with these racial issues since the Free Speech Movement,' says Alecia Harger, who is co-president of the Black Student Union. 'We use this Berkeley bubble as an excuse or a mask or something to hide from these issues so we don't have to address them.'"
12/9/2015, italiani, Una rivoluzione tradita/A Revolution Betrayed, Riccardo Liberati
"Il 2 dicembre 1964 all'Università di Berkley in California, un giovane studente di origine siciliana, Mario Savio, durante un'assemblea degli universitari che protestavano per chiedere il diritto al voto dei neri americani, prende la parola.
¶
Il suo discorso, breve, conciso, ma perfetto, viene considerato ancora oggi uno dei più bei discorsi di tutti i tempi insieme a quello del presidente Lincoln al campo di Gettysburg.
¶
Mario Savio rivendica il diritto degli studenti ad essere trattati come esseri umani pensanti e non come il semplice prodotto di una società che vuole plasmarli per i suoi scopi. Inizia quel giorno la rivolta dei giovani americani che in Europa diventerà famosa come 'il 68'. In quei tempi i ragazzi statunitensi morivano in un luogo oscuro della terra chiamato Vietnam e l'America iniziava a porsi una domanda terribile: perché?"
12/8/2015, The Daily Star, Student movement is now eroding free speech, Cary Brunswick
"Mario Savio was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 when he became a leader in the Free Speech Movement in response to a university policy that barred any political activity on campus. That ban included lobbying on behalf of political parties or issues and also activities in support of the civil rights movement that was sweeping the nation.
¶
Today, it is difficult to believe that just 50 years ago on a large college campus that you could not hand out leaflets, hold a political meeting or hear a civil rights leader speak.
¶
Savio [ed note: the FSM, not Savio] was credited with launching the practice of the campus 'sit-in' to protest the administration's policy, and his group eventually succeeded. But, nationwide, the seed was sown for campus politics, especially concerning the Vietnam War, and also for student power to win curriculum reforms to make subjects more relevant in the contemporary world. "
12/7/2015, The Architect's Newspaper, A revived Sproul Plaza complex supports student life and activities, Mimi Zeiger
"Five decades after Mario Savio stood on the steps of UC Berkeley's Sproul Hall and addressed student activists gathered in the plaza, the echoes of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement still linger on campus-not in any monument but in the strength of today's student groups and organizations. It was these voices that the architects of Moore Ruble Yudell heard as they approached the Lower Sproul Revitalization Project, a $223-million initiative that opened this fall."
12/7/2015, Claridad, La adoctrinación no es educación, Oscar López Rivera
"El sistema se ha perpetuado pero no por falta de críticas, luchas y grandes esfuerzas para cambiarlo. En la década de los 60 se dieron muchas luchas, se levantaron grandes críticas y se presentaron alternativas viables. En 1963 la organización el Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (Comité Nacional No Violento de Estudiantes) comenzó a organizar las 'Escuelas Libertadoras' (Freedom Schools) en el estado de Mississippi. Su meta era cambiar un sistema injusto y decadente, dónde no existía la libertad académica, se destruía la curiosidad intelectual y se deshumanizaba a los y las estudiantes tratándolos(as) como objetos. Treinta escuelas fueron fundadas para ofrecerles a sus estudiantes una educación libertadora, que les ayudara a transformarse en pensadores(as) críticos(as), para que fueran conscientes de su historia y su identidad y su cultura y para ser ciudadanos(as) activos(as) en sus comunidades. Y aunque sólo pudieron existir por dos años, muchas de sus ideas y filosofía existen en diferentes proyectos relacionados con la educación.
¶
Otro movimiento que fomentó mucho interés y entusiasmo en la lucha para transformar el sistema fue el Free Speech Movemenf. Mario Savio, un estudiante en la Universidad de California en Berkeley, comenzó un discurso incesante exigiendo que se cambiara el sistema y exhortando a los y las estudiantes a actuar. Hay un momento cuando la operación de la máquina se convierte tan odiosa, que te enferma el corazón y no puedes tomar parte, no puedes ni siquiera fácilmente tomar parte. Y tienes que poner tu cuerpo sobre el engranaje, las palancas, encima de todo el aparato y tienes que indicarle a la gente que la maneja, a la gente que es dueña, que a menos que no seas libre la máquina será impedida de funcionar.
¶
Los burócratas de la Universidad de California en Berkeley decidieron expulsarlo para callarlo. Pero ya su discurso había llegado a oídos fértiles y en muchas universidades los y las estudiantes comenzaron a protestar, exigiendo que el sistema de educación superior pusiera fin a la práctica de reducir al estudiante en un diente más de la dentada. Los y las estudiantes exigían libertad de expresión y para decidir la educación sin las trabas de la burocracia académica.
¶
El movimiento Estudiantes para una Sociedad Democrática -Students for a Democratic Society- también comenzó a exigir cambios en todo el sistema para democratizarlo. Ocupaban universidades y las transformaban en espacios libres. Había todo un despertar de alegría, de consciencia y de espíritu de lucha. La mayoría era de estudiantes de clase media que veían la necesidad de cambiar un sistema burocratizado, conservador y enajenante."
12/6/2015, The Union, Is the free exchange of ideas being sacrificed for political correctness?, George Boardman
"Do we want our colleges and universities to be forums for the free exchange of ideas, or shelters for students who are easily offended by ideas they don't agree with and actions they find personally hurtful?
¶
That's the question posed by a series of student disruptions at some of America's leading institutions of higher learning, a question my generation thought was answered when the Free Speech Movement swept through campuses in the '60s and '70s.
¶
Back then, you could get arrested by UC Berkeley police for trying to raise funds on campus for civil rights causes. That's what happened to occasional grad student Jack Weinberg on Oct. 1, 1964, triggering a massive student protest demanding that administrators lift the ban of on-campus political activity and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom.
¶
Free and open discourse became the order of the day, even if some of it was offensive, repulsive or just downright stupid. Students were expected to absorb the blows and respond with strong arguments of their own; you know, the free and open exchange of ideas.
¶
Everybody in the academy was on board with this concept.
¶
'Education should not be intended to make people comfortable,' said Hanna Gray, a former president of the University of Chicago. 'It is meant to make people think.'"
12/3/2015, The Nation, December 3, 1964: Mass Arrests of Students at the University of California, Berkeley, Richard Kreitner
"Months of civil rights demonstrations have taught metropolitan police officers everywhere to handle 'limp' demonstrators; it requires two officers per demonstrator, and it can be efficient and painless. In Sproul Hall, however, police chose to drag the students, male and female, by twisting their arms into hammer locks, bending their wrists cruelly backward, and hauling them so that the pressure was on their sockets. One girl was pushed into the elevator on her face from several feet away. It should be stressed that there were reporters on the scene-but the police didn't always know it. Downstairs, they were letting no reporters go up.
¶
After about forty arrests had been made, the police saw that the process was taking too long. They withdrew temporarily (the students now call this 'the coffee break'), and when they returned had apparently decided to get rough. The new plan was to bring women down in the elevator, and men by the narrow marble stairs, although a few unfortunate women also made it down the stairs. Some were brought down by arms or shoulders, but reporters present say that most were hauled by their feet. One conscientious reporter counted the marble steps as he followed a girl whose head jarred sickeningly as she was dragged down. There were ninety….
¶
On Thursday afternoon, I watched the end of The Day of the Cops. There was no civilian authority anywhere on the campus. President Kerr was still in Los Angeles. Chancellor Edward Strong, chief Berkeley administrator (Kerr runs all nine university campuses), had disappeared. The University of California was completely in the hands of police. In every window of Sproul Hall a police guard was visible. There were guards on every door. Police patrolled the campus."
12/2/2015, The New York Times, Letters, Ellen D. Murphy
"To the Editor:
¶
Once upon a time in America (in Berkeley, to be precise) a Free Speech Movement brought students together to protest restrictions on political activities on the campus. Now, however, students at Amherst College demand that their classmates who advocate free speech should be remanded to 'extensive training for racial and cultural competency.'
¶
When did this core constitutional principle become not only divisive, but also identified with invidious discrimination? How is 'free speech' now the enemy?"
11/30/2015, Summit Daily, American universities now First Amendment-free zones (column), Morgan Liddick
"They are joined by UC-Berkeley's Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, who remarked on the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement: '(W)e can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so.' Somewhere, Mario Savio is spinning in his grave. Irreverence, aggressive challenge and, sometimes, brutal honesty are the very stuff of academic discourse that undergirds intellectual growth. And it is being driven from the campus in favor of approved thought and emotional airbags."
11/25/2015, U.S. News & World Report, From Megaphones to Muzzles, Susan Milligan
"It was students in California who birthed a new era on college campuses, one in which collegians would demand to be included, to be treated like adults and to have a very public say on such hotbed issues as civil rights and the Vietnam War. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964 became a defining moment in a nationwide trend, with students insisting they would not be silenced on some of the most controversial issues of the day.
¶
A half-century later, campuses are again the site of unrest and tension, but it's not about making speech more free - it's about curtailing hurtful speech and expression, whether displayed in a dormitory name, a Halloween costume or the would-be reporting by journalists barred from covering a protest for fear they won't parrot the demonstrators' views. Instead of warring, united, against the campus administration and government officials, students are facing each other down, demanding both diversity and a separate place to express their differentness. Professors worry about offending students in class with provocative texts or topics, while college administrators - far from being asked to let the young adults fight their own battles -- have been asked to step in as arbiters in the conflicts among the students themselves.
¶
...
¶
Regardless, muzzles have replaced megaphones on campus in many cases. And Bettina Aptheker, one of the leaders of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, is concerned at the trend.
¶
'As abhorrent as some speech is, and I certainly think [some] is, the administration of a university should not be in the position of policing it, because it's a very slippery slope,' says Aptheker, who is now a feminist studies professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz. 'A lot of us liberal types or radical types could say racism is on the upswing, and I agree with that. But I don't think the solution to that is restricting freedom of speech,' she adds."
¶
[ed note: Bettina Aptheker, 11/25/2015, personal communication: "And the quote from me is not in context since I spoke at considerable length about the seriousness and gravity of racism on the campuses (and sexual violence) and what needs to be done about it."]
11/23/2015, The Conversation, Here's how history is shaping the #studentblackout movement, Marshall Ganz
"But the civil rights movement inspired other currents of change that did target colleges. For example, the free speech movement that started in the fall of 1964 was sparked by University of California's attempts to curb student fund-raising for civil rights groups."
11/23/2015, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Salem comes to campus, Bradley R. Gitz
"Crazy things are happening at Missouri, Yale, and other colleges these days. And at the heart of the madness is a shocking rejection, even a condemnation, of the once-hallowed principle of free speech; the kind of speech that liberals used to at least pretend to believe in.
¶
The Berkeley 'free speech' movement of the 1960s thus comes full circle; now inverted to mean freedom not for, but from, speech, or at least speech that doesn't follow the ever-fluctuating party line. Once you conclude that speech you don't agree with is not just wrong but hurtful, perhaps even criminal, the next step is put those who have uttered it in the stocks, to be pelted by the frenzied mob.
¶
But our campus social-justice warriors don't just want to restrict speech; they also want to restrict any speech criticizing their efforts to restrict speech. People shouldn't be free to believe in the wrong ideas, defined as any that makes the left look bad, including such heretical concepts as 'truth,' 'facts' and 'logic.'"
11/20/2015, sfist, After Five-Day Sit-In, Stanford Students Protesting School's Fossil Fuel Investments Leave Quad, Caleb Pershan
"The San Jose Mercury News writes that every day more than a dozen professors have led teach ins' for the assembled protestors including a lecture on 'The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley,' a task undertaken in solidarity with students. Other students, alumni, faculty members, and university employees have delivered food and supplies to the protestors."
11/20/2015, San Jose Mercury News, Stanford warns students of possible sanctions while protest expands, Lisa M. Krieger
"Each day, more than a dozen professors lead 'teach ins' on topics ranging from carbon accounting to Bible-based civil disobedience. Professor [Eric] Roberts taught a class on 'The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.' Rush Rehm, a professor of drama and of classics, spoke on 'Antigone and Social Dissent.'"
11/18/2015, Los Angeles Times, Aided by social media, college students find new power in campus protests, Thomas Curwen, Jason Song and Larry Gordon
"Echoes of the 1960s in today's actions are clear, said Robert Cohen, a history professor at New York University and author of 'Freedom's Orator,' a biography of Mario Savio, who led the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s.
¶
'The tactical dynamism of these nonviolent protests and the public criticism of them are in important ways reminiscent of the 1960s,' Cohen said. 'Today's protests, like those in the '60s, are memorable because they have been effective in pushing for change and sparking dialogue as well as polarization.'
¶
...
¶
Institutions often valued for their support of free speech find themselves wrestling with the prospect of limiting free speech, but to focus on what is or isn't politically correct avoids the more important issue, Cohen said: whether campuses are diverse enough or how to reduce racism."
11/18/2015, History News Network, What the Media Missed: The Missouri Student Revolt in Historical Perspective, Robert Cohen
"The mass media have never been very good at covering student protest. Back in early December 1964, for example, the press totally missed the significance of Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio's historic speech calling for mass civil disobedience, which helped inspire the largest campus sit-in in American history. Though Savio's 'bodies upon the gears' speech would eventually end up quoted in most US history textbooks and in narrative histories of the 1960s, even leading newspapers, such as the New York Times, garbled Savio's words and ran articles that gave no hint that his speech was one of the most memorable dissident orations ever made on a university campus. It was not until a week after the sit-in that Jazz columnist Ralph Gleason, who heard the music in Savio's words, became the first print journalist to quote Savio's speech extensively and accurately, and alerted the world that Savio's 'classic words' of resistance to unjust authority would be long remembered.
¶
This media tendency to miss the historical significance of a student protest was again on display this past week in the coverage of the revolt led by African American students at the University of Missouri. Though reporters did cover the story few set it into historical context, and none seemed to realize that Missouri's student movement against racism has with lightning speed emerged as arguably the most effective on-campus student revolt in American history. In less than a week the Missouri movement was able to win its central - and not easily attainable - demand, the removal of Timothy Wolfe, the University of Missouri's racially insensitive president, and also brought down the chancellor as well. Wolfe has been replaced by Michael Middleton, a veteran African American academic leader, with a strong civil rights record, including a history of anti-racist activism in his own student days at the University of Missouri in the late 1960s."
11/14/2015, Daily Journal, OUR VIEW: Free speech under fire on college campuses, editorial
"At the Ivy League campus in New Haven, Conn., the Christakises are facing heated calls for their ouster simply for questioning the conventional Yale wisdom that students should avoid ethnic costumes like sombreros, headdresses and turbans. While some may find those articles of clothing insensitive, Erika Christakis said discouraging the dress could deprive students of intellectual discourse on the subject.
¶
"Nicholas says, if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended," she wrote in a reply to an administrator's mass email denouncing offensive garb. 'Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.'
¶
We applaud and echo that statement. Yale students, however, responded by surrounding Nicholas Christakis and unleashing a vulgar tirade, then demanding his and his wife's resignation.
¶
Progressives spawned the 1964 free-speech movement at the University of California-Berkeley when administrators there sought to suppress their political views. Today's campus liberals, however, are quick to deny others the same freedom.
¶
Modern undergrads want to live in 'safe spaces,' collegiate cocoons where PC values are sacrosanct, dissent is silenced and offensive speech protected by the First Amendment is quashed. They believe administrators should control student expression - even their dress - like overbearing parents.
¶
If young adults can't read classic literature without trigger warnings or endure a controversial opinion without throwing temper tantrums, our universities, our workforce and our society will ultimately suffer."
11/13/2015, Townhall, The Closing of the American Mouth, Suzanne Fields
"Once upon a time panty raids and swallowing goldfish were the rites of passage for sophomores, challenging authority on campus with innocence and high spirits. Student rebellion darkened with the free speech movement at the University of California in the 1960s. Today free speech on campus is under attack from the students themselves."
11/13/2015, The Daily Californian, Korean textbook nationalization will harm Korean students, Hong Suk Oh, Bo Hyun Paenng, Hongjik Yang and Sangbin Lee
"We lament that although the Free Speech Movement Cafe is one of the favorite on-campus gathering places for Korean students, many are apathetic - even opposed - to this critical issue regarding freedom of speech while a number of their non-Korean counterparts supported our cause. Mario Savio urged us to 'indicate to the people who run it' that without freedom, 'the machine will be prevented from working at all.' Our protest was a clear message to the operators of the machine that many of us at UC Berkeley demand that Korean citizens retain their freedom and that we refuse to be mere bystanders as democracy sinks, yet again, in South Korea."
11/13/2015, Providence Journal, Editorial: Illiberal education, Editors
"What happens in college matters. The intellectual habits that students pick up during these formative years go on to shape their behavior through the rest of their adult lives. And with college no longer the exclusive province of a tiny elite - some 40 percent of working-age Americans have now graduated from it - the hostility to free speech portends a dark future for American society.
¶
There's an irony here. During the last period of widespread campus activism, the late 1960s, the student agitators were fighting for freedom of expression; UC-Berkeley's famed 'free speech movement' is a case in point. American universities today could use a little more of the spirit of '68 [sic], and little less of the spirit of censoriousness that seems to motivate them in 2015."
November, 2015, Potrero View, Hill Resident Judy Baston Expert at Tracing Family History, Jim Van Buskirk
"Longtime Potrero Hill resident Judy Baston's passionate commitment to Jewish genealogy earned her the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, awarded at the Association's annual conference in Jerusalem last summer.
¶
Baston was born in Oakland to parents who encouraged her to pursue a professional career. Her father suggested that she become a doctor. Her mother disagreed, 'No, she'll be a writer.' Mom was right: in 1965 Baston was awarded a degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was arrested during the Free Speech Movement.
¶
'When I left college I went to work for the People's World, a surprisingly independent left wing newspaper. Amazingly, in the seven years I was on that staff, no one ever told me what to write!' Baston quit the paper in 1973, after former editor Al Richmond was expelled because of his memoir, A Long View from the Left. 'I left because I didn't want to be part of an organization that didn't allow for the kind of questions that Al was raising.'"
11/12/2015, Daily Nexus, Jewish Community Urges Regents to Clarify a System-wide Definition of Anti-Semitism, Juliet Bachtel and Josh Ortiz
" [David] Goines, hearkening back to his days in the Free Speech Movement, argues students should not allow the UC to create any sort of policy regulating the content of their speech. This, he says, is surrendering the rights which he and his fellow activists fought for decades ago.
¶
'These rights that I fought for - you want to give them away. You just want to hand them over. You don't even want to put up a fight,' Goines said. 'Well, I think that's disgusting.'
¶
Santa Barbara Hillel executive director Rabbi Evan Goodman said free speech is not 'unlimited' and the Regents need to instate a policy that protects Jewish students from anti-Semitic "hate speech."
¶
According to Goodman, a line should be drawn - an argument he presented to the Regents at the working group's forum in October at UCLA. Rabbi Goodman spoke and advocated for the Regents to adopt a policy on anti-Semitism similar to that of the United States Department of State, which states that denying Israel's right to exist is an action considered anti-Semitic.¶
...¶
Former UC Berkeley student Goines argues that all advocates on the issue need to be well-versed on the First Amendment.
¶
'The First Amendment is not there to protect the government from you,' Goines said. 'The First Amendment is there to protect you from the government.'
11/10/2015, Breitbart, THE FERGUSON EFFECT AND THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE ACADEMY, Joel B. Pollak
"The issues that triggered the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 were real. The civil rights movement was raging, and students wanted to advocate for the cause inside the campus gates. Later, they moved on to protest the Vietnam War-a conflict that implicated students directly because of the draft.
¶
Today, students are motivated by a myth about racist police in Ferguson, Missouri, and are trying to suppress free speech on campus, not expand it.
¶
In 1964, students sat down around a police car on campus Berkeley to protest the arrest of one of their classmates. They proceeded to hold a 'teach-in' where everyone could speak-even those who disagreed with the them.
¶
Last month, students surrounded Wolfe's car in an off-campus parade to force him to acknowledge their demands. He still blames himself for not stepping out to talk to them-as if they had any intention of having a real conversation.
¶
And yesterday, the students forced journalists out of their 'safe space' on campus, in defiance of the Constitution, the law, and the principle of academic freedom. Students and professors assaulted photojournalist Tim Tai, and one activist even called for 'muscle' to remove a student photographer from the protest, where he clearly had a right to be."
11/9/2015, GOOD Magazine, Yale University Subject of Two Racially Charged Incidents, Katie Felber
"The video harkens back to fundamental sentiments first fought for in Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, but its context is vastly different considering the series of events on the Yale campus over the past week. According to a Business Insider article outlining the timeline of events, the tension began with alleged racism from members of the fraternity SAE, who were accused of turning away students on Halloween based on race and ethnicity."
11/8/2015, The Daily Californian, ACLU executive director gives Mario Savio Memorial Lecture on campus, Cassandra Vogel
"Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, delivered a speech Thursday evening to commemorate late activist Mario Savio and recognize young people for their work in accordance with Savio's legacy.
¶
In his speech, given at the 19th annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture in the campus's Pauley Ballroom, Romero - the first Latino and openly gay man to serve as the executive director of the ACLU - discussed how mass incarceration places limits on freedom of speech. The ACLU is a body that defends the rights of incarcerated individuals through legal representation.
¶
The event also recognized the winners of the Mario Savio Lecture Fund's Young Activist Award, a distinction given annually to young people who demonstrate a commitment to human rights and a proven history of activism.
¶
The three honorees of the evening included Eli Garcia for her advocacy of undocumented students' rights, Johnnie Turnage for his role as a voting-rights campaign organizer and Quentin Savage, who mobilized a campaign for racial justice in Kentucky."
11/6/2015, Counterpunch, Defending Socialism: Foner and Sanders v. Eugene Debs, Paul Street
"There's something to be said for working with and through the American radical lineage. But Foner's rendering of that tradition is disturbing. He mentions some very good names in the U.S. radical pantheon: Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley, the early 1890s Populists, and Sanders' own supposed inspiration, Eugene Debs. Many are left out, of course, particularly those of more radical hue, like the Haymarket Martyrs (including the revolutionary socialist-anarchists Albert Parsons and Adolph Fischer), Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, the radical syndicalist (Industrial Workers of the World - IWW) leaders Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, and Tom Mooney, IWW trubador Joe Hill, Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio, the heroic Communists and Trotskyists who sparked the emergence of mass production unionism during the 1930s and 1940s, Malcolm X, Leonard Peltier and the American Indian Movement, Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, the aforementioned anarchist-identifying linguist and anti-imperialist Noam Chomsky, and…I could go on."
11/6/2015, abc Eyewitness News Chicago, PRINCIPAL: BERKELEY HIGH STUDENT CONFESSED TO RACIST POST THAT LED TO WALKOUT, Lyanne Melendez
"Outraged, the Black Student Union at Berkeley High called for a rally, and on Thursday morning, close to 1,000 students this morning. First they marched around the school, then to city hall, and finally they took their voices to UC Berkeley, the cradle of the free speech movement."
11/5/2015, Times Union, When Berkeley visited Albany, Warren Roberts
"Anne and I had been at UCBerkeley between 1958 and 1963; we left the year before the Free Speech Movement began at Berkeley in October 1964. It unleashed forces that passed through college campuses across America in following years and along with the Civil Rights movement fed into a Counter Culture that changed America forever.
¶
Anne thought having an event at UAlbany in 1984 to look back on what happened in Berkeley in 1964 would be of interest to the college community and to Albanians who would be invited to attend the program she organized in the Campus Assembly Room. She had taken a Chaucer course from Charles Muscatine, one of the leading figures in the Free Speech movement; she would invite him to participate in a panel discussion. Bruce Miroff in the Political Science department suggested that she also invite Sheldon Wolin, who had been active in the Free Speech Movement."
11/4/2015, Los Angeles Loyolan, Freedom under assault on college campuses, Michael Busse
"American universities have long been a haven for freedom of expression. Since the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 1960s, college campuses have been a safe place for wild ideas to take root, grow and flourish.
¶
However, the tides are changing across the country when it comes to free expression on campus.
¶
For the last few months, the regents of the University of California system have been debating over whether or not to adopt a revised policy defining intolerance. The new policy, which emerged after complaints over pro-Palestine groups, would enforce limits on 'unwelcome conduct,' including the broad use of 'language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice.'
¶
On the other coast, a recent poll at Yale University revealed over half of its student population favors restricting free speech on campus. While many students expressed a desire for a code against hate speech, even more said professors should be required to warn students before discussing discomforting topics.
¶
The assault on free speech on nationwide campuses has even crept into the presidential race. Retired surgeon Ben Carson, who is competing for the Republican presidential nomination, has said he would use the Department of Education to make sure no 'extreme' political views could be expressed by professors."
11/2/2015, Xindex, Newsnight: David Aaronovitch debates free speech and universities, Ryan , RyanMcChrystal
"One of the truly great things about being a student used to be the exposure university life gave you to all sorts of views - absurd and otherwise - and being able to decide for yourself what to make of them. Students were once known for their dedication to free speech and academic freedom, epitomised by the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, 1964-65.
¶
In 2015, students are more renowned for the practice of trying to ban anyone they believe to have dangerous views in order to protect fellow tutees, whether it's removing the Sun from the shelves or refusing airplay to Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines. We witnessed this tendency most recently with the petition to ban Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University because of her 'misogynistic views towards trans women'."
11/2/2015, The Weekly Standard, Student Standouts, The Scrapbook
"No. There was a chance there to stand for something, for the hard-fought gains of the free speech movement that are now threatened everywhere from Michigan to California, rather than kowtowing."
11/2/2015, The Stanford Daily, Activism, Jack Herrera
"But while we are indeed deeply divided politically, the goal of the Free Speech Movement was never for students to agree on everything: The goal of the Movement was to get students to stand up for what they believe in, and to face the adversity that threatens our nation with ardor and hope. While we should continue to debate politics and argue about ideas, we should never endeavor to stifle the passion of the people with whom we disagree: When we get annoyed at bad activists, we ought to criticize bad methods, but not activism in general.
¶
Caring is apolitical, and apathy is equally dangerous to us all. Our generation faces unprecedented adversity, and we handicap ourselves when we spend our time trying to silence opposition rather than encouraging everyone to fight for what they think is right.
¶
The legacy of the Free Speech Movement survives in our sustained ability to speak out. Let us use it to declare what young people have declared for decades: We are this country's next generation, and things must change. We may be divided by ideas, but we will strive to remain united in ou |