On Sunday, August 27, in downtown Berkeley, I witnessed thousands of protesters raising their voices against a planned white supremacist “Patriot Prayer” rally. In my decades as a documentary filmmaker of activism and now an academic studying movements and media, it was one of the most positive, diverse and unifying gatherings I ever experienced. While … Continue reading »
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement’s passionate readers
“Passionate readers” is not the tag line today for the people swept up in the Free Speech Movement, but it fits just as well as other efforts to sum them up. Thanks to the archives that the Library has built, serious students of the FSM know this. Margot Adler, a familiar voice on National Public Radio … Continue reading »
1964 to the present — a personal perspective
During the historic Free Speech Movement period at Berkeley, beginning in the autumn of 1964, I was a graduate student in physics at Yale University. There was no doubt that Berkeley students were playing a leadership role for us all across the country. At Yale, the focus was primarily on civil rights. Racism and its destructive … Continue reading »
Remembering Bob (‘Mario’) Savio
In the fall of 1963, Bob (“Mario”) Savio enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley. There, he quickly rose to national prominence as leader of the Free Speech Movement, which became a major catalyst for the anti-Vietnam War movement and years later for the South African anti-apartheid divestment movement. How did Savio, a brilliant … Continue reading »
Reconstructing memory
The Berkeley campus has an eatery with an interesting name and story: “The Free Speech Movement Café.” At the 2000 dedication of the café, then-Chancellor Robert Behrdahl lauded the tumultuous student movement of 1964 for having brought adult rights to college students, including the right of free expression, and for having broadened civil debate. Back … Continue reading »
Occupy Cal and the Free Speech Movement
As someone who participated in the Free Speech Movement as a student and who is now a member of the Berkeley faculty, I want to caution against the widespread impression (left, e.g., by the New York Times on November 20) that Occupy Cal is an extension of the substance, as opposed merely to the spirit … Continue reading »