Mid-peninsula Free University

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The Midpeninsula Free University was a free university that emerged in Palo Alto, California out of the burgeoning counterculture scene of there in the 1960s and 1970s ^[1]. It offered classes on everything from intentional communities and "To Be Gentle", to sand-casting candles and "The Art of Giving Away Bread", to Maoist political theory and alternative education. It was formed as a reaction to the growing influence of the military-industrial complex on American universities.^[2]

One famous event organized by the Midpeninsula Free University was a debate between LSD-proponent Timothy Leary and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver in 1967.

In 1968, it was one of the targets of a series of small local bombings. ^[3]

In 1969, Jim Warren volunteered to produce the university's course catalog and newsletter and was thus elected the MFU's General Secretary. Sometime thereafter, Larry Tesler began helping with the publication production, using a tedious Selectric-like IBM Composer, and quickly realized that computers could be used to make publishing much easier. It was through that experience that Tesler would later go on to develop cut, copy and paste functionality at Xerox PARC.

The associated newsletter was called, The Free You. The journalist Phil Trounstine got his start writing for that paper.

By the 1970s, a rift had developed in the university between the Pacifists and the more militant Maoist newcomers.^[4] For example, Phil Trounstine starting working with Venceremos to take over the Midpeninsula Free University with the aim of turning it into a recruitment forum.^[5]