Different Perspective To Understand FSM

Jiajun Li

Section A02

Reading Reflection #1

In response to: Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism

In the article of Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism, the success of FSM influenced many of its contemporaries in the States. As is known around the state, UCB is known for its radical political movements, one of whose examples would be the famous Berkeley Riots in the era of Vietnam War. The consequence of these radical movements, eventually, ended up with a relatively good result. After the hippie’s Berkeley Riot, along with other anti-Vietnam War riots in different cities, the US drew back their troops in Vietnam and ended the most infamous proxy war in the age of Cold War. The consequence of FSM, as is indicated in the article, permitted students with full rights to free speech on campus. But as we look back, besides the student’s untiring, what other factors might play big roles in the entire movement?

We have to understand history from a broader, more general perspective, not just to attribute their success to any singular factor. In the case of FSM, faculty’s sympathy did count. Even though the sympathy generated as a result of the failure of the two-day sit-in, the large majority, in fact, served as a decisive force to put FSM to an successful end. The faculty-based governing body eventually approved “a series of resolutions which vindicated the strikers and settled the free speech controversy”. It was this actual approval that finally pushed FSM to success, not the student’s sit-in, not the standing-on-a-police-car speech by Mario, but the faculty’s approval. However, based on my humble observation, this caused a controversy at this point. Urging for the rights for free speech, student protests should’ve taken those who made the laws as enemies. Paradoxically, it was those who made the laws, or the faculty assembly, that eventually offered sympathy and voted to give rights to student’s free speech. How we, as scholars who study FSM as a past event, gain a deeper understanding on such event might stir a new wave of arguments.

Question: Is there any other on-going student rights movements in UC Davis?