Talk:Free Speech Movement

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<< regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, signing of members, and collection of funds by student organizations at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues would be "strictly enforced." >>

This was prompted by the advocacy of what political causes and candidates? The signing of members and collection of funds by what student organizations? What was this really about?

What's described here sounds rather insignificant to have garnered the booming title "The Free Speech Movement". Did the outcome affect only the Berkeley campus, or did these events inspire anything larger?-PhD. Joe Shabadabado Jr. -- Beland 07:08, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The outcome was felt nationally, even perhaps globally. It was the first moment in modern U.S. history in which the authority of a campus administration was successfully challenged by students. This led other students on other campuses, and people outside of the university world as well, to believe that it was possible to expand political space and create social and political change from below. I wish there was some explanation in this entry of why the administration, at a time when it knew the civil rights revolution was spreading throughout the country and engaging students everywhere, thought it made any kind of sense to attempt to make the Berkeley campus, a campus which had been a center for political activism throughout the university's history, into a "politics-free zone". Did they really believe they could force the student body to totally disengage from political reality throughout their undergraduate careers?-- Ken Burch 14:05, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

This article deserves much expansion. The FSM was a pivitol moment in The Sixties that epitomized the rift between administrators expecting docile students and students caught in the social and political fervor of the civil rights movement. It did inspire student uprisings elsewhere, but is remebered as an important event of the decade. --Jia ng 08:55, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The backstory needs improvement.

The backstory needs improvement. Sproul Plaza, Sproul Hall, and the steps leading up to Sproul Hall, were the central point in the FSM, the stage, if you will. Campus groups of all types had always been allowed to set up informational tables near and around the fountain in Sproul Plaza, as well as the sidewalk area at and adjacent to the main entrance to the university. It was commonplace, accepted, and tolerated by the administration. By tacit agreement of students and the administration, the area near the bottom of the steps going up to Sproul Hall were kept clear of tables.

Sproul Plaza was centrally located at the university's wide main gate (easily wide enough for a campus or City of Berkeley police car to drive through). Adjacent to the plaza and the plaza's fountain were the University Bookstore, Student Union, and the university's administrative offices. Classrooms/labs/and the library were close by. Sproul Plaza was a hub and the natural meeting place for graduate and undergraduate students alike, whether coming onto and leaving the campus, going to the bookstore or student union, or simply sitting around by the fountain reading, thinking, talking with a friend or friends, or simply being idle and enjoying the California sunshine, whatever.

The turning point came when a few groups began handing out disturbing information about U.S. intervention and involvement in what the groups considered to be a nationalist movement, a civil war. Remember, then-U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower had reneged on the U.S. agreement to hold elections in Vietnam, cancelling them because as he and John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State said "... the Communists would certainly win." Dulles was, of course, the father of the Domino Theory of political collapse and slavery under Communism in all of Southeast Asia. And of course, the arch-regressive Republican politician Barry Goldwater was banging his nationalist, patriotic drum to become president of the United States.

Pro-communist students like Bettina Apetheker (whose father was, if I'm not mistaken, a leader in the U.S. Communist party) set up tables to dispute the government's claims, and to call for free elections in Vietnam as required by the agreements signed by France, the United States on the partition of Vietnam following the defeat of French forces (the French Foreign Legion) at Dien Bien Phu. As I recall, there were at least two tables set up between the fountain and Sproul steps peacefully handing out literature about U.S. intervention in VietNam, some of them signing up students to protest that intervention. Those students, in the main, saw the United States intervening in what was clearly a continuation of the Vietnamese nationalist movement, a movement thwarted by the U.S. refusal to allow free elections to be held in partioned Vietnam regarding the future of their country, and that the U.S. was engaging in what was essentially a civil war, one forced upon the Vietnamese people by the foreign countries that partioned their country after they had legitimately defeated French colonialism in their country. The students attempted to inform other students about how U.S. corporate economic interests (e.g., rubber production necessary for makers of tires for U.S. cars and trucks)was strongly influencing U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, and about the widespread corruption of large landowners and political/military leaders in South Vietnam.

The critical point came when, under pressure from politicized members of the university's Board of Regents who perhaps labored under the old and increasingly discredited philosophy of "... my country, right or wrong, but my country!", the university's administration (i.e., university president Clark Kerr) announced that student activist and informational tables would no longer be allowed to be set up in Sproul Plaza. Groups complying with the university's announcement set up their tables on the broad sidewalk on the Berkeley side of the main gate, but other groups refused to do so. The university's campus police regularly went to Sproul Plaza to have non-complying students remove their tables, with the threat of university sanctions imposed against them if they didn't. Most complied, but again, one or two didn't, citing their First Amendment right to free speech, especially when on the grounds of an institution of higher learning.

Student support at Berkeley for the FSM was mixed. Student support for the university's ban came not only from students opposed to the pro-Communist, anti-war pamphleteers, but also from students who disliked being forced to run the plethora, the gauntlet if you will, of pro-war/anti-war/social activist tables as they entered or left the campus, or went to the bookstore, student union, or to the university's administrative offices in Sproul Hall. But I think it would be safe to say that most students believed in the basic philosophy of the FSM, but not all were in agreement on the way the FSM leaders were going about it, ie., objecting to authority was okay, but outright defiance wasn't. Certainly the student newspaper (the "Daily Cal") printed editorials and letters for and against the activities of the FSM leaders. But for many undecided, unsure others, it was an awakening, and ephiphany of sorts, as to what young adults could do in the face of intransigent (and powerful) older, established adults.

The U.C. Berkeley Free Speech Movement clearly was a pivotal moment in U.S. political history. The movement was emulated on many college/university campuses across the country, and it led directly to the anti-war movement and its marches that in time led to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. This article is good, but I think in its brevity it fails to do justice to the Movement and its social impact.

It's sad to remember the anger, the balls, and the determination that those young students of the early '60's had in advancing the rights of students in the Free Speech Movement, and in being the advance guard of a nationwide movement that not only finally put an end to the war in Southeast Asia, but advanced the cause of Human Rights in the U.S. as well ... and then thinking of how so very, very much we need those types of students to come forth to lead us now.

K. Kellogg-Smith 16:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inspiration for the Free Speech Movement

Quick response to comment above inquiring about the significance — high school students across the country in the 'sixties heard about the FSM in Berkeley, and chose to go there because of its path-breaking collective spirit. That's one of the reasons, i would argue, that Berkeley developed a reputation for being radical. Recommended documentary video: Berkeley in the 'Sixties.

But i write here for a different reason — in the book by Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, 1976, page 204-205, it says:

When the Berkeley Free Speech Fight erupted in September of 1964, it was heavily influenced by the example of the IWW free speech fights of the 1910s and 1920s. IWW members were actively involved in the fight.

This is an IWW source, and i'm wondering if anyone can confirm this information from another source?

Info about the IWW's free speech fights here: Free speech fights

thanks, Richard Myers 05:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article is about free speech, not racism

I have removed this paragraph:

==Antithesis==

Reaction to the FSM, especially the Civil Rights/Minority causes, drew attention to a phenomenon that became known as "reverse racism". The reaction peaked locally with the Regents of The University of California v. Bakke judgement in favor of Alan Bakke in 1978. Bakke, a white applicant to the University of California-Davis Medical School, successfully challenged the University quota system set up to advance minorities which, advertently or inadventently, hobbled whites.

In my view, this recent contribution is off topic, and inappropriate for an article about the Free Speech Movement. Richard Myers 02:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)