THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT
AND CIVIL RIGHTS
BY JACK WEINBERG
FORMER TEACHING ASSISTANT IN MATHEMATICS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, CURRENTLY CHAIRMAN OF CAMPUS CORE AND A MEMBER OF THE FSM
STEERING COMMITTEE
Reprinted from Campus CORElator,
January 1965, by permission of Jack Weinberg.
Over the past several months the relationship
between the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the civil-rights movement has become almost
a cliche. Those who view the FSM merely as an extension of the civil-rights movement,
merely as a battle to enable student civil-rights groups to maintain the campus as a base
for their operations, have a very incomplete understanding of the FSM, and probably an
incomplete understanding of the student civil-rights movement. In this article we discuss
the student civil-rights movement and its relation to the FSM, the FSM as an on-campus
protest, and the implications of both the FSM and the student civil-rights movement for
American society.
I. FSM and the
Civil-Rights Movement
Over the past few years, there has been a
change, both quantitative and qualitative in Bay Area student political activity. Until
1963, only a relatively small number of students had been actively involved in the
civil-rights movement. Furthermore, until that time, student political activity of all
kinds was quite impotent in terms of any real effect it had on the general community.
Organizations such as peace groups raised demands which were so momentous as to be totally
unattainable. Civil-rights groups, on the other hand, often raised demands which were
attainable but quite inconsequential; a job or a house for an individual Negro who had
been discriminated against. In no way was student political activity a threat, or even a
serious nuisance to large power interests. In early 1963, a new precedent in the Bay Area
civil-rights movement was established, civil-rights organizations began demanding that
large employers integrate their work forces on more than a mere token basis. Hundreds of
jobs would be at stake in a single employment action. In the fall of 1963, a second
important precedent was established. Starting with the demonstrations at Mel's Drive-in,
large numbers of students became involved in the civil-rights movement. And as they
joined, the movement adopted more militant tactics. Thus with more significant issues at
stake and with more powerful weapons available, the civil-rights movement became a threat,
or at least a real nuisance to the power interests. Not only was the civil-. rights
movement, "a bunch of punk kids," forcing employers to change their policies,
but it was also beginning to upset some rather delicate political balances.
Attempts were made by the civil authorities and
the power interests to contain the movement: harassing trials, biased news reporting, job
intimidation, etc. But the attempts were unsuccessful, the movement grew, became more
sophisticated, and began exploring other fronts on which it could attack the power
structure. Throughout the summer of 1964, Berkeley Campus CORE maintained a hectic level
of continuous and effective activity. The Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination planned
and began executing a project against the Oakland Tribune. Since those who wished
to contain the civil-rights movement found no effective vehicles in the community they
began pressuring the university. Because a majority of participants were students, they
maintained that the university was responsible. After initially resisting the pressure,
the university finally succumbed and promulgated restrictive regulations with the intent
of undercutting the base of student support for the civil-rights movement. The reactions
to these regulations should have been predictable: immediate protest and a demand for
their repeal. Since the civil-rights movement was responsible for the pressures applied to
the university which led to the suppression of free speech and free political expression
and their interests were the ones most seriously threatened, the civil-rights activists
took the lead in protesting the suppression, and many concluded that the FSM is an
extension of the civil-rights movement.
II. The FSM as Campus
Protest
But if we view the FSM simply as an extension of
the civil-rights movement, we cannot explain the overwhelming support it has received from
students who have been indifferent to the civil-rights movement and even from some who
have been hostile to it. Civil-rights activists, those whose interests are really at
stake, make up a very small part of the ardent FSM supporters. The vast majority of the
FSM supporters have never before had any desire to sit at tables, to hand out leaflets, or
to publicly advocate anything. The Free Speech Movement has become an outlet for the
feelings of hostility and alienation which so many students have toward the university.
Early in the movement, one graduate student who was working all night for the FSM said,
"I really don't give a damn about free speech. I'm just tired of being sat upon. If
we don't win anything else, at least they'll have to respect us after this." Clearly,
his was an overstatement. Free speech has been the issue, and virtually all the FSM
supporters identify with the FSM demands. The roots, however, go much deeper. The
free-speech issue has been so readily accepted because it has become a vehicle enabling
students to express their dissatisfaction with so much of university life, and with so
many of the university's institutions.
The phenomenon we describe is not at all
unprecedented, even though the FSM may be an extreme example. There have been wildcat
strikes which in many ways are quite similar to the free-speech protest. The following
pattern is typical: there is an industry in which the workers are discontented with their
situation. The pay may or may not be low. There is hostility between the workers and the
management, but it is hostility over a great number of practices and institutions, most of
which are well established, and none of which have been adequate to launch a protest over
the abstract issue. One of the greatest grievances is likely to be the attitude of the
managers toward the workers. The union has proven itself incapable of dealing with the
issue. Then one day a work practice is changed or a worker is penalized over a minor
infraction. Fellow workers protest and are either ignored or reprimanded. A wildcat strike
is called and the protest is on.
The same kind of forces which create a wildcat
strike have created the FSM. Alienation and hostility exist but are neither focused at
specific grievances nor well articulated. There is a general feeling that the situation is
hopeless and probably inevitable. There is no obvious handle. No one knows where to begin
organizing, what to attack first, how to attack. No one feels confident that an attack is
justified, or even relevant. Suddenly there is an issue, everyone recognizes it; everyone
grabs at it. A feeling of solidarity develops among the students, as among the workers.
The students at Cal have united. To discover the
basic issues underlying their protest one must first listen to the speeches made by their
leaders. Two of the most basic themes that began to emerge in the very first speeches of
the protest and that have remained central throughout have been a condemnation of the
university in its role as a knowledge factory and a demand that the voices of the students
must be heard. These themes have been so well received because of the general feeling
among the students that the university has made them anonymous; that they have very little
control over their environment, over their future, that the university society is almost
completely unresponsive to their individual needs. The students decry the lack of human
contact, the lack of communication, the lack of dialogue that exists at the university.
Many believe that much of their course work is irrelevant, that many of their most
difficult assignments are merely tedious busy work with little or no educational value.
All too often in his educational career, the student, in a pique of frustration, asks
himself, "What's it all about?" In a flash of insight he sees the educational
process as a gauntlet. undergraduate education appears to be a rite of endurance, a series
of trials, which if successfully completed allow one to enter graduate school; and upon
those who succeed in completing the entire rite of passage is bestowed the ceremonious
title, Ph.D. For those who cop out along the way, the further one gets the better the job
one can obtain, with preference given according to the major one has selected. All too
often, the educational process appears to be a weeding-out process, regulated by the laws
of supply and demand. The better one plays the game, the more he is rewarded.
To be sure, there are some excellent courses at
Cal; some departments are better than others. Although a general education is difficult if
not impossible to obtain, in many fields the student is able to obtain an adequate though
specialized preparation for an academic career. Furthermore, successful completion of a
Cal education is quite a good indication that the student will be agile and adaptable
enough to adjust to a position in industry and to acquire rapidly the skills and traits
that industry will demand of him
When viewed from the campus, the Free Speech
Movement is a revolution, or at least an open revolt. The students' basic demand is a
demand to be heard, to be considered, to be taken into account when decisions concerning
their education and their life in the university community are being made When one reviews
the history of the Free Speech Movement one discovers that each new wave of student
response to the movement followed directly on some action by the administration which
neglected to take the students, as human beings into account, and which openly reflected
an attitude that the student body was a thing to be dealt with, to be manipulated.
Unfortunately, it seems that at those rare times when the students are not treated as
things, they are treated as children.
III. The Implications
for American Society
It is inadequate, as we have shown, to
characterize the FSM as a purely on-campus phenomenon, as a protest stemming from a long
overdue need for university reform, or as a response to a corrupt or insensitive
administration. Invariably when students become politically and socially active, one can
find that at the root, they are responding to their society's most basic problems.
Let us first consider why students have become
so active in the northern civil-rights movement. The problem with which the civil-rights
movement is trying to cope, the problem of the effect of our society on the Negro
community, is exactly the problem of our entire society, magnified and distorted.
Unemployment, underemployment, poor education, poor housing, intense social alienation:
these and many more are the effects of our way of life on the Negro community, and these,
to one degree or another, are the effects of our way of life on all of its members. When
taking a moral stand, when doing what they can in the struggle for equality for all
Americans, students invariably find that as they become more and more successful they come
into conflict with almost all the established interest groups in the community. Students
have turned to the civil-rights movement because they have found it to be a front on which
they can attack basic social problems, a front on which they can have some real impact. In
the final analysis the FSM must be viewed in this same light.
The University of California is a microcosm in
which all of the problems of our society are reflected. Not only did the pressure to crack
down on free speech at Cal come from the outside power structure, but most of the failings
of the university are either on-campus manifestations of broader American social problems
or are imposed upon the university by outside pressures. Departments at the university are
appropriated funds roughly in proportion to the degree that the state's industry feels
these departments are important. Research and study grants to both students and faculty
are given on the same preferential basis. One of the greatest social ills of this nation
is the absolute refusal by almost all of its members to examine seriously the
presuppositions of the establishment. This illness becomes a crisis when the university,
supposedly a center for analysis and criticism, refuses to examine these presuppositions.
Throughout the society, the individual has lost more and more control over his
environment. When he votes, he must choose between two candidates who agree on almost all
basic questions. On his job, he has become more and more a cog in a machine, a part of a
master plan in whose formulation he is not consulted, and over which he can exert no
influence for change. He finds it increasingly more difficult to find meaning in his job
or in his life. He grows more cynical. The bureaucratization of the campus is just a
reflection of the bureaucratization of American life.
As the main energies of our society are
channeled into an effort to win the cold war, as all of our institutions become adjuncts
of the military-industrial complex, as the managers of industry and the possessors of
corporate wealth gain a greater and greater stranglehold on the lives of all Americans,
one cannot expect the university to stay pure.
In our society, students are neither children
nor adults. Clearly, they are not merely children; but to be an adult in our society one
must both be out of school and self-supporting (for some reason, living on a grant or
fellowship is not considered self-supporting). As a result, students are more or less
outside of society, and in increasing numbers they do not desire to become a part of the
society. From their peripheral social position they are able to maintain human values,
values they know will be distorted or destroyed when they enter the compromising,
practical, "adult" world.
It is their marginal social status which has
allowed students to become active in the civil-rights movement and which has allowed them
to create the Free Speech Movement. The students, in their idealism, are confronted with a
world which is a complete mess, a world which in their eyes preceding generations have
botched up. They start as liberals, talking about society, criticizing it, going to
lectures, donating money. But every year more and more students find they cannot stop
there. They affirm themselves; they decide that even if they do not know how to save the
world, even if they have no magic formula, they must let their voice be heard. They become
activists, and a new generation, a generation of radicals, emerges.