CO MM UNICATIONS
BERKELEY
'65
For the past four months students at the University of
Cali·
fornia have been engaged in a struggle with the administration. Regard.
less of the motives of the students or the means they have employed,
one fact is evident: the declared goals of the student Free Speech
Move–
ment are shared by the entire American liberal community. The
main
issue in the dispute at Berkeley was the ban by the administration on
on-campus advocacy of, :and organization for, activities like civil rights
sit-ins, which had been declared illegal by the courts. Students argued
that they be accorded the rights of citizens, that their civil offenses
be
judged only by civil courts and not by academic deans as well. Above
all, they claimed the constitutional right of freedom of advocacy, a right
which applies even
to
the advocacy of activities which
a~e
later ruled
by the courts to have been illegal. This kind of issue has been inscribed
on the banners of innumerable liberal struggles, from protests by
the
ADA against the encroachments of Congressional committees and
the
defense of persecuted faculty by the ACLU, to the efforts of unions
to
defend the free speech of their members within a plant.
The similarity of the FSM's aims, as distinguished from its means,
to the aims of other democratic movements, was recognized not only
by
the overwhelming majority of students, but by the vast majority of
the
faculty, which voted seven to one for a resolution incorporating student
demands. Campus chaplains also supported the FSM program; as
did
unions like the Building Service Workers and the United Automobile
Workers of California; and James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, Nonnan
Thomas, Michael Harrington and Paul Jacobs.
In view of this broad base of liberal support, it cam!:! as a shock
to the FSM that the analysis of the Berkeley events
in
liberal
magazines
was overwhelmingly hostile. Lead articles in the
New Leader,
the
Reporter
and
Commentary
denounced the FSM as a threat to law and order, and
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