![\"FSM\"](\"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/FSM.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(from the Bancroft Library University Archive)<\/p>\n
Background:<\/strong>\u00a0 The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states in part that \u201cCongress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.\u201d\u00a0 Today, the First Amendment is interpreted in a broad way, allowing us to speak freely about any issue including urging and recruiting other people to take (legal) actions or solicit donations for a cause.\u00a0 We understand that freedom of speech is not absolute, because there are certain restrictions, e.g., if the speech could cause harm to other people (such as making a libelous accusation or yelling \u201cfire\u201d in a crowded theatre), or is inciting other people to engage in illegal activities.<\/p>\n In the early 1960s at the University of California [1], the governing body of the university known as the Board of Regents followed a much narrower interpretation of the First Amendment governing students\u2019 speeches on campus.\u00a0 This narrow interpretation would provide the freedom to voice an opinion, but not the freedom to advocate actions to support that opinion.\u00a0 This means that on campus one could speak out that Black Americans in our country, especially in the South, did not have equal rights including the right to vote, but one could not encourage and recruit other people to go help with voter registration in the South.\u00a0 One also was not allowed on campus to solicit donations to help combat hunger or send people to voter registration drives in the South.<\/p>\n Why did the Board of Regents adopt such narrow interpretation of the First Amendment for campus activities? First, there was the belief that within a university campus, the university\u2019s administration could impose some restrictions on freedom of speech which normally would be allowed off campus.\u00a0 More importantly, the Regents were more concerned with the political pressure from the political powers of the right in California and the public\u2019s concern that too much freedom was given to students, so they did not pay enough concern that it is the university\u2019s function to question and seek new and better alternatives to the status quo.\u00a0 We need to keep in mind that just a few years earlier in the 1950s, there was McCarthyism, and that the University of California starting in 1949 required a loyalty oath of its faculties in order to retain employment, until the California Supreme Court rescinded that requirement in 1954.\u00a0 It should be noted that such restriction in 1964 on free speech on campus was already much better than in the previous decade, when in 1952 and 1956 it was forbidden to invite even the Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson to speak on the University of California Berkeley campus.<\/p>\n Starting in September 1959, perhaps realizing that their restriction on freedom of speech on campus was too restrictive for students to accept, the Board of Regents and Clark Kerr, President of the University of California System, decided to designate a 26\u2019x40\u2019 strip of space at the edge of the entrance of the South side of the Berkeley campus on Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue that allows advocacy and donation solicitation. Since the university was transferring this space to the city of Berkeley, this space was considered off campus, and therefore it did not violate the Board of Regents’ on-campus University policy (it was learned later that for some reason, the actual transfer never took place).<\/p>\n What Triggered the FSM in Fall 1964?<\/strong>\u00a0 On September 14, 1964, at the order of UC Berkeley Chancellor Edward Strong [2] and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Alex Sheriffs, the Dean of Students Katherine Towle put out an announcement that the 26\u2019x40\u2019 strip of space that allowed advocacy would be withdrawn starting on September 21, 1964.\u00a0 This would prohibit among other activities, encouraging people to participate in an anti-discrimination rally, recruiting people to join the civil rights movement, soliciting donations, or using university facility for the purpose of religious worship, exercise, or conversion.\u00a0 This was a surprise decision that was made without the concurrence or knowledge of President Kerr who was flying back from Tokyo on the day of the order.\u00a0 Even though the announcement came from Dean Towle, she did not agree with the policy and was ordered to do so by the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor.\u00a0 The response from the students from various organizations was immediate and flabbergasted.\u00a0 Keep in mind that the civil rights movement has been main stream news since the mid or late 1950s, and advocating and recruiting students to help with voter registration drives in the South was a major activity on campus in the previous few summers.\u00a0 The student activists were already unhappy with the University\u2019s restriction of freedom of speech within the campus and were barely satisfied with having that restriction lifted on that 26\u2019x40\u2019 strip of space on the edge of campus at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue.\u00a0 The removal of this tiny advocacy space was like the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back.\u00a0 Dissatisfaction with this new decision among student organizations was fairly across the board.\u00a0 It is not clear why this change was made by the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor; perhaps they learned that this advocacy space had not been transferred from the University to the city of Berkeley, and that the conservative newspaper Oakland Tribune was going to expose this and accuse the University of not following the Regents\u2019 policy of no advocacy on campus property.\u00a0 In his recollection of the FSM more than 30 years later, [3] President Kerr called this a great blunder by Chancellor Strong.\u00a0 Even though he immediately met with Chancellor Strong and tried unsuccessfully to change Chancellor Strong\u2019s policy, he called his action or inaction of not overruling Chancellor Strong\u2019s policy as another great blunder.\u00a0 However, even in this recollection more than 30 years later, President Kerr still did not realize, or did not want to admit, that the FSM was asking for freedom of speech on the whole campus, and not just on a small strip of space at the edge of the campus.<\/p>\n Confrontation and Civil Disobedience of the FSM:<\/strong>\u00a0 Representatives of various student organizations immediately discussed and objected to this new restrictive policy.\u00a0 In spite of several petitions and negotiations, they were unsuccessful to get the University administration to reverse this policy.\u00a0 The protesting students\u2019 attitude can be summed up by these remarks of Jackie Goldberg, one of the spokespersons for the protesting groups:\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re allowed to say why we think something is good or bad, but we\u2019re not allowed to distribute information as to what to do about it.\u00a0 Education should be more than academics.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to be armchair intellectuals.\u00a0 For a hundred years, people have talked and talked and done nothing. \u2026<\/strong> We want to help build a better society.\u201d<\/p>\n The student groups continued their protests, and their actions escalated to picketing, setting up tables with advocacy literature and soliciting funds in direct violation of then University policy, and an all-night sit-in on September 30, 1964 at Sproul Hall, the main University administration building. It was during this sit-in that the name Free Speech Movement (FSM) was born.\u00a0 The end result of these protests was that eight students were summoned for disciplinary action, which later resulted in their suspension.<\/p>\n The protests continued with two changes. One was that the student demands now included no disciplinary action against those who had received summons.\u00a0 The other was that as the protesting actions sometimes included civil disobedience, the students groups were no longer always a united front.\u00a0 Some students and student groups would join in protest activities as long as they did not lead to any unlawful activity, and sometimes there might even be open disagreements in debating on the tactics chosen.<\/p>\n The FSM continued to develop during the next three months.\u00a0 Here I just want to mention three major events during those three months.<\/p>\n Police Car Became the Podium for Protestors: \u00a0<\/strong>The first major event occurred late in the morning of October 1, 1964, the morning after the all-night sit-in inside Sproul Hall, a former student Jack Weinberg who was soliciting funds at a campus CORE [4] table in front of the Sproul Hall steps. He was confronted by University police. When he refused to identify himself and leave the table, he was arrested. He went limp, and the police had a police car driven to Sproul Hall Plaza to take him away. But the police car was immediately surrounded by hundreds of students who were gathering there for the noon protest rally. The police car was immobilized for the next 32 hours. Student protest leaders, such as Mario Savio, the main face of the FSM, would occasionally speak to the protest crowd on top of the roof of this police car. This scene of the stranded police car surrounded by hundreds of students and being used as the podium for protest rallies, together with a few other photos such as the one we showed at the beginning of this article, became historical archival photos of the FSM.<\/p>\n It should be pointed out that some of these civil disobedience tactics turned away the people who were neutral and even some of the former supporters of the FSM.\u00a0 There was even an anti-protest demonstration led by members of some of the campus fraternities and residence halls.\u00a0 In an October 2, 1964 editorial, the student newspaper the Daily Californian wrote “The demonstrators say that the campus administration is no longer open for discussion.\u00a0 How can the demonstrators themselves be open for rational discussion when the basic issues of solicitation of funds, recruitment of members and `mounting social and political action’ have been wholly overshadowed by defiance?\u201d<\/p>\n This episode of immobilizing the police car for 32 hours was resolved peacefully after representatives of the student demonstrators, faculty, and the Inter-Faith Council met with President Kerr and Chancellor Strong and reached an agreement containing the following main points:<\/p>\n This means that the issue of freedom of speech reverts back to the rules of pre-September 14, 1964 that prohibits political advocacy and solicitation of funds on campus, but allows those activities on the 26\u2019x40\u2019 strip of land on the edge of the campus.<\/p>\n December 2, 1964 Mass Sit-In and Arrest at Sproul Hall:<\/strong>\u00a0 Besides protest rallies, there were also many negotiations and discussions between the FSM leaders and the University administration over the next two months of October and November. However, no agreement was reached on the key issue of the FSM:\u00a0 On-campus political activities should have the full freedom of speech as off-campus political activities, and this freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution should be available anywhere on campus, and not just on a tiny strip of land on the edge of the campus.\u00a0 This lack of progress on this key FSM issue led to a massive rally at Sproul Hall Plaza on December 2, 1964 and the subsequent overnight mass sit-in that evening inside Sproul Hall. When the protesters refused to leave Sproul Hall, Governor Edmund G. Brown and the University administration had the police moved in shortly after 3 AM on December 3 and arrested close to 800 students.<\/p>\n Involvement of the UC Berkeley Faculty:<\/strong>\u00a0 As already mentioned previously, the UC Berkeley faculty was involved on and off on the issue of freedom of speech of the FSM as well as on the issue of whether and how students should be disciplined.\u00a0 After the massive arrest on December 3, the faculty then played a critical role in bringing the FSM to an end.\u00a0 At their meeting on December 8, the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate met and passed a resolution containing the following points:<\/p>\n Basically the Berkeley faculty endorsed the FSM\u2019s key objective, i.e., on-campus freedom of speech, and at the same time requesting no disciplinary action against any University member for any action prior to December 8.\u00a0 This was a major victory for the FSM as it found a powerful and influential partner to negotiate with the Regents and the University administration<\/p>\n Decision of the Board of Regents on December 18, 1964:<\/strong>\u00a0 On December 17, one day before the Regents\u2019 meeting on December 18, representatives of the Academic Senate met with representatives of the Board of Regents, explaining the Academic Senate\u2019s December 8 resolution . On December 18, although the Regents did not adopt the Berkeley Academic Senate\u2019s December 8 resolution, it did pass a resolution with the following main points:<\/p>\n The last sentence in Item 4 essentially adopted the key objective of the FSM, and acknowledged that the protesting students had a legitimate grievance from the very beginning.\u00a0 The FSM won a significant victory for freedom of speech for not only the University of California Berkeley campus, but for many other campuses across the U.S.\u00a0 It helped to initiate a new generation of student activism for civil rights, the anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as many other causes.\u00a0 To acknowledge the contribution of the FSM to freedom of speech, the University on December 3, 1997 renamed the \u201cSproul Hall Steps\u201d as the \u201cMario Savio Steps\u201d.<\/p>\n Because the Regents did not dismiss all disciplinary actions against people who had received summons or were arrested, many leaders of the FSM were very critical of the Regents\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n What Did the FSM Mean to Me?<\/strong>\u00a0 Although I was a senior at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1964, I was politically immature.\u00a0 I am not sure that at that time I really understood the subtle differences between on-campus freedom of speech and off-campus freedom of speech, or the subtle differences between what one was not allowed to do on campus but was allowed to do on that 26\u2019x40\u2019 strip of land on the edge of the campus.\u00a0 Having been brought up respecting authority, I definitely had reservations about advocating civil disobedience, or even just participating in civil disobedience.\u00a0 So even though I might have been supportive of some of the goals of the FSM, I don\u2019t think I was ever supportive of any sit-in or other illegal civil disobedience actions.\u00a0 Now with hindsight and more politically mature, I can understand why the FSM leaders adopted actions of civil disobedience.\u00a0 However, even now I am not certain that they needed to adopt those civil disobedience actions, or at least to the extent that they did, because eventually they could have won the war since their cause was just.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the First and Fourteenth Amendments would differentiate on-campus and off-campus with respect to freedom of speech. Although I do agree that disciplinary actions or charges against the large majority of those who were summoned or arrested should be dropped, I believe that if the leaders of a movement were willing to advocate civil disobedience actions in order to achieve their objective, then they should be willing to accept the consequences of those civil disobedience actions.\u00a0 To do so, these leaders would gain more admiration and support from the public, as did Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n —————————————– As difficult as it may be believed, a lot of freedom of speech activities that we now take for granted were actually not allowed in many college campuses in the U.S. about 50 years ago. \u00a0 Activities, such as advocacy for civil rights causes, recruitment of people to support off-campus activities like voter registration drives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3446"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3472,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions\/3472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n[1]\u00a0 As well as in many other universities in the U.S.
\n[2]\u00a0 The head of the whole university-wide system of the University of California is the President, which was Clark Kerr in 1964, and the head of each University of California campus is the Chancellor which for the Berkeley campus in 1964 was Edward Strong.
\n[3]\u00a0 Clark Kerr, \u2018Fall of 1964 at Berkeley: Confrontation Yields to Reconciliation,\u201d article in the book The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, edited by Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik, University of California Press, 2002.
\n[4]\u00a0 CORE stands for Congress on Racial Equality, a major civil rights organization for Black Americans.
\n[5]\u00a0 ASUC stands for Associated Students of the University of California, which is the official student government at UC Berkeley.
\n—————<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"