Letter From Berkeley
In March, 1965, Calvin Trillin wrote "Letter From Berkeley" for the New Yorker (abstract), about the Free Speech Movement (F.S.M.) at the University of California, Berkeley. At that point, the end of the movement, F.S.M. was working on the trial of 800 students who had been arrested, out of 4000 who had occupied Sproul Hall. Police had carried students out "wearing blue jeans and singing hymms".
By Trillin's arrival, the students "conscientiously presented themselves, in quiet, well-dressed groups of fifty, in a make-shift courtroom", to enter their pleas. The now compliant group, having once "attacked the computer as the symbolic agent of its followers' alienation", was "borrowing the university's I.B.M. machine to keep track of all the people [including 20 lawyers] involved in its legal affairs".
Trillin's description of the protestors is pretty much how students at Berkeley are today -- organized, smart and generally compliant. Despite that, they're often depicted almost instinctively as carrying the torch of the 1960's era "rebels".
The C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the F.S.M.
The student protests in the 1960's were movements, they actually moved things and people, not only cars and police but ideas of powerful people. The federal and state governments looked at the F.S.M. as a force to be reckoned with -- a threat. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. attempted to associate Berkeley's free speech movement with an imaginary Bay Area hotbed of Communism in order to turn citizens against 'unruly' youth.
Reagan and conservatives ran election campaigns depicting the corrosive nature of the F.S.M. and student activities at the University of California, and in one speech Reagan declared that the F.S.M. leaders should be thrown out by "the scruff of their necks". He decried the shocking occasion of "a dance" held on campus featuring acts so reprehensible that he couldn't talk about it for fear of shocking his audience. He then read a list of the horrifying acts anyway: three "rock and roll bands playing simultaneously" and movies where "persons twisted and gyrated in provocative and sensual fashion".
The future governor and president presented himself as a complete square, but keep in mind that Reagan, Greenspan and other budding neoliberals had been poring over bodice rippers like Ayn Rand's, "The Fountainhead" for years. It was the threat to political economics that perhaps perturbed them -- the "free" next to "speech", instead of next to "markets". But the ascending neoliberal movement made it about sex and drugs and rock and roll -- they successfully painted it as a culture war.
Despite conservative outrage and Reagan's condemnation, the F.S.M. succeeded. Today students have the right to set up card tables in one area of campus and give passing students information about churches and student clubs they may join, as well as various petitions they can sign. It's radical.
But although in the end the F.S.M. prevailed, the movement seems altogether impotent compared to the power of neoliberal ideas that took root during Reagan's acts as governor and president. Regardless of the relatively weak power of Free Speech Movement, UC Berkeley, the university has never really shaken its reputation as the somewhat sinister, hippy-dippy, center of California left-wing ideas.
Today's Protests, and Those 40 years Ago
When people think of UC Berkeley they think of the 60's protests. But look closely at today's protests. On the occasion of, for instance, BP's massive energy collaboration with the university in 2007, there on the steps of California Hall, 40 students held signs, gave speeches, and then spilled a little bit of organic molasses ("oil") on the steps. Forty strong, the protestors proved they meant no harm by licking molasses off the steps of California Hall. Police in riot gear, wearing shields over their faces surrounded them. A biohazards team was called in to clean up the molasses, despite the students offers to clean it up themselves.
That's the nature of the nice, if limp spirit of today's student rebellions. But people still think Berkeley as radically "left wing". They tend not to associate "Berkeley" with its conservative influences, like John Yoo, who wrote the Bush torture memos and teaches constitutional law, or the law school that defends Yoo's position in the name of "academic freedom". They ignore the power differential that makes such protests anemic.
People think of UC Berkeley and think science and politically liberal values. They tend not to think of retired law school professor Phillip E. Johnson, conservative born-again Christian, who is the father of the intelligent design movement, and who, along with Berkeley science professor Peter Duesberg, denies that the HIV virus causes of AIDS. People ignore the existence of the vibrant libertarian and student Republicans groups (the student Republican group is the largest student organization on campus), and probably don't know about the Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements, established last year. What prevails is the cliche of a subversive, pot-smoking, Birkenstock wearing, long-haired, provocatively liberal university.
Letter From California, The Reality
Last fall, the cliche was reinforced when students took over Wheeler Hall, protesting increases to student tuition. The erosion of state support for the University is a travesty, but the students protests were very personal. Their cries were not about wars (either of them), or free speech, in fact in many cases they were not even about higher education. Some negotiators had a hard time figuring out what the students demands even were -- something about janitors jobs being reinstated? But this 21st century student uprising concerned the increased costs of higher education that would be in part coming out of their (or their parents') pockets.
It was a protest not without irony. Tours of campus routinely compare Berkeley to Stanford University, and the sense of competition is so fierce, apparently, that some Berkeley denizens will not wear any article of clothing that is maroon (Stanford's color). Stanford, a private school, is more costly than Berkeley, so now, financially at least, the comparison will be more apt. So what did the protestors want? Like the rest of America, don't 21st century protestors basically want Bergdorf Goodman quality at Walmart prices?
Not to mention that even as they they protest now, some of the students' parents no doubt voted for California Proposition 13, which gutted the state's ability to raise taxes and support things like higher education.
There was mixed tolerance for the protests on campus. Certainly some students participated, as did some faculty, like negotiator Ananya Roy, who the New Yorker recently profiled in its column "Letter From California". Some faculty and students were very sympathetic to the students, some of whom were in fact savagely batoned by police. But most students and certainly most faculty didn't protest, they were too busy with their own affairs.
Other onlookers complained about the student's behavior in Wheeler Hall, because apparently they "partied"" and "ordered pizzas". I asked one critic: "What should they be doing?", thinking about how boring it must be to sit in an administrative office building for hours on end -- I mean, even back in 1964 they had music, such as it was -- Joan Baez singing "We Shall Overcome". They should be "writing manifestos", came the answer, rather sternly.
Indeed, today's protests somehow fall short of expectations and cliches -- no manifestoes, students marching against fee increases rather than for world peace or the weighty issues of the centuries, and in the November 2009 protests, a piddly sixty-six protestors arrested, not 800, like back in the day.
Not to say certain actions can't stir up memories of students behaving very badly. Once police cleared protestors from Wheeler Hall (and not by blaring Joan Baez into the building, but with some bone breaking), a fringe group got out of hand when they marched to the home of Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. Here's how the New Yorker wrote about this subsequent act of violence in the last paragraph of their "Letter From California":
"That night, more than forty people carrying torches marched on Birgeneau's residence. A handful of the protesters smashed the outdoor lights and threw cement planters and burning torches at the house, scattering only after the chancellor's wife, who was writing Christmas cards, woke her husband and he called the police."
Since Birgeneau is well-respected for his leadership and contributions to this and other campus problems, this action was universally reviled. The New Yorker paints a good picture, if inaccurate. A more accurate account than the New Yorker's would include the fact that only eight "protestors" were arrested at Birgeneau's house and only two of those were students, and subsequently none of them were charged. While the act was reprehensible, this wasn't quite the scary spectacle described. One professor who witnessed the event questioned the official accounts.
Concert Tickets and The Cost of a Credit
All and all, this wasn't thousands of students convening in 1964 to make speeches about free speech while standing on a police car, any more than the Wheeler protests in November at all resembled the Sproul Hall protests in the 1960's. December's protests, for the most part strictly shut down by police, culminated in a handful of misaligned adults (some in their 40's) committing random and spontaneous acts of violence against someone who is actually working very hard on behalf of higher education. It was pathetic.
But so was the New Yorker's coverage in the "Letter From California". Today's protests aren't a continuation of the Berkeley of the 60's. The facts reflect the ennui of the noughts. The 2009 protests weren't a movement, and it wouldn't impede the changes in public education or privatization. Politicians barely batted an eye. Most people favor privatization, students included, unlike in 1964 when Mario Savio spoke about "the operation of the machine -- so odious...".
The 1960's were the cusp of major social-economic change, but in 2009/2010 everything that was novel and threatening back then -- from computers, to privatization, to liquid colors moving across movie screens, is part of who we are. It's outdated to fight against privatization, whether your aged or youthful. Increased fees, increased tuition? How is that any different than higher housing costs, more expensive medical care, and $150 concert tickets?
Berkeley the University is clearly not the place it was in 60's, when the state provided over 50% of funding; today the state only provides 28% of UC Berkeley funding and that's still shrinking. Although the funding cuts have been damaging, overall, the change in Berkeley is good -- institutions need to keep up with the times. California is privatizing education system like other states such as Virginia and Michigan -- higher education is ripe to be privatized.
Of course the question remains, how will the changes alter the institution of higher education? And how will that benefit society? Moreover, can California remain an economic powerhouse, in the top ten in the world, without the commitment to education it had in the 1960's under the original Master Plan? The state is perennially burdened by a government that promises the quintessential American dream to naive citizens who demand the whole pie for nothing -- safety nets, education, comprehensive services, and low taxes. California state government is ahead of the federal government in assuring citizens that there's no conflict in citizens' wishes, how will this work out?
