A

CAMPUS PROTESTS

Cold War Laboratories

During the 1960s the baby boomers—the largest generation of young Americans in the history of the nation—reached college age; and, as a result of the general affluence of the United States in the years following World War II, more potential students were in a position to take advantage of higher education than ever before. Between 1955 and 1970 the number of college students nearly tripled, from 2.4 million to 6.4 million; nearly half a million instructors and researchers were employed by the nation's universities by the end of the decade, up from less than 200,000 twenty years before. In large part the explosive growth of the nation's academic community was made possible by the financial support of the federal government, specifically the Department of Defense, for whom American schools were often the laboratories where the cold war battle for technological superiority over the Soviet Union was waged. In 1961 nearly half of all federal research funds came from the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission. According to Kenneth Heineman, by the end of the 1960s schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan had hundreds of defense-related contracts worth millions of dollars annually; in 1969, "the Pentagon underwrote 80 percent of MIT's budget."

Education Factories

The role that the academic community played in that partnership between government and defense contractors known as the military-industrial complex tended to contribute to a conservative atmosphere on campuses. Many of the administrators of the country's state universities were corporate executives or federal bureaucrats rather than educators. By the early years of the 1960s, about the time that university enrollments began to swell with the arrival of the first baby boomers, there were indications that students and faculty were questioning the values that the administrations of their schools seemed to represent.

A United Front

The first incidence of a major student revolt against a school's administration took place in 1964 on the Berkeley campus of the University of California system, which was a major supplier of military research. At the beginning of the 1964-1965 academic year Berkeley student organizations were informed that they could no longer give political speeches or pass out literature on social issues on the grounds of the student union. Although students who had raised funds on the campus for the civil rights movement saw the new rule as primarily aimed at them, all student political groups, liberal and conservative, stood to suffer from it. A broad coalition was formed among the groups affected, and on 17 September the United Front petitioned the administration to allow continued use of the student union as long as certain rules were followed. While they waited for a response, the United Front set up tables at the union as usual and began an all-night protest vigil on 21 September. The administration stood its ground, and a series of demonstrations followed, drawing support from students who had never been politically active before.

Sit-in at Sproul

On 30 September, when eight students were issued citations from the school for continuing to man tables at the union, several hundred of their peers signed a petition saying that they were equally responsible. Demanding that they be punished as well, they occupied Sproul Hall, sitting in the building's corridors for the rest of the day and all night. While there the demonstrators planned their next moves and argued with administrators. One demonstrator, a junior in philosophy named Mario Savio, proved to be an especially compelling speaker. When a school official claimed that the new rule was to preserve political neutrality on campus, Savio responded, "The University of California is directly involved in making new and better atom bombs. Whether this is good or bad, don't you think …in the spirit of political neutrality, either they should not be involved or there should be some democratic control over the way they're being involved?" For the demonstrators the issue was not one of political neutrality but of free speech.

The Captured Car

The next day, 1 October, another demonstration was held on the steps of Sproul Hall, and Jack Weinberg, who was not enrolled as a student but was manning the table of the campus chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was arrested for trespassing on school property. Before the police could take him away, however, the assembled demonstrators sat down in front of and behind the police car, preventing it from leaving. Jumping on top of the car, Savio led the rally from there. That evening the demonstrators grappled with policemen to keep the doors of Sproul Hall unlocked while administrators and student representatives negotiated upstairs. On Sproul Hall's steps the situation was just as chaotic, with students, faculty, and school officials arguing about the legitimacy of holding the police car. The demonstration continued until 7:30 the next evening; Weinberg remained in the car the entire time. Even when the crowd dispersed, the battered car was unable to move.

The Free Speech Movement

On 4 October the demonstrators met again to form an organization to negotiate for them, which they called the Free Speech Movement (FSM). The FSM would be led by the students who had taken the most vocal parts in the capture of the police car. Several months of demonstrations and tense negotiations followed. On 9 November members began setting up tables in the union again, starting another period of open violations of university regulations. As with the first series of demonstrations, hundreds of students volunteered to be punished for the offense. On 20 November the FSM held its largest rally yet, outside where the university's board of regents was meeting to try to resolve what seemed like an increasingly bitter stalemate. Somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 demonstrators gathered; popular folksinger Joan Baez attended to show her support. The regents' decision was a setback: they voted to pursue new disciplinary action against the eight suspended students and enforce the rules prohibiting political activism on campus more vigorously. When the campus closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, members of the FSM were demoralized: they had been handed a defeat by the regents, and arguments over strategy were starting to jeopardize the movement's solidarity.

A Free University

On 2 December the FSM held yet another demonstration outside of Sproul Hall; after a series of tense speeches, more than 1,000 students filed into the building. Once inside, they held a free university: faculty members taught classes in languages and civil disobedience, and areas were set aside for sleep, dancing, and watching movies. The sit-in continued well into the night, until more than six hundred police from Berkeley and nearby Oakland arrived to break up the demonstration. They arrested 773 students, who, in classic civil rights style, went limp and had to be carried from the building. The process of removing all the protestors took another twelve hours. Within days, angered by the presence of state police on campus, students and then faculty called for a general strike.

Strike

The first day, a Friday, some 10,000 students participated in the strike, cutting classes or picketing the university's gates. Over the weekend the administration decided to negotiate; university president Clark Kerr announced that Monday he would propose a "new era of freedom under law" for the school. Sixteen thousand students packed into an outdoor amphitheater to hear the president's statement. When Savio tried to take the microphone at the end of the meeting, he was wrestled away by two university policemen, and pandemonium resulted. The strike continued into the week; coincidentally, a few days later student elections were held. FSM members and sympathizers received overwhelming support from the student body. On the same day they got another vote of confidence when the faculty senate passed a resolution calling for a lifting of restrictions on political activity on campus. Chancellor Edward Strong was relieved of his duties, and a new chancellor from Berkeley's academic community was chosen as his replacement. For a while it seemed as if the FSM had achieved victory. But that spring protests began again, this time over the use of obscenity in public. The FSM became the "Filthy Speech Movement," and the campus revolts continued.

Other Revolts

Campus unrest was not limited to Berkeley by any means, and particularly after U.S. military involvement in Vietnam intensified in 1965, protests developed across the country. Students and faculty members were increasingly critical of the contributions their schools were making to military research and thus to the war. The draft, understandably of great concern to eighteen-year-old students, prompted scores of hostile demonstrations. At Harvard in 1966 members of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) jeered at Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and refused to let his car leave campus; University of Chicago students staged a sit-in to protest Selective Service examinations being held there. In 1967 University of Wisconsin students smashed university property to protest recruitment by Dow Chemical, a major defense contractor, on campus. Student radicals frequently clashed with their more conservative peers and with local authorities, most tragically perhaps at Ohio's Kent State University in May 1970, when the National Guard ended months of tense antiwar protests by shooting into a crowd of demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine others.