SID# 914019640
ASA 002 / A03
Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism
In Robby Cohen's "Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism," Cohen discusses how free speech movements began, using the University of California, Berkeley's free speech movement in 1964 as his prime example. The deans and president of the were strongly against large amount of on-campus students advocating for the civil rights movements that aimed to end racial discrimination and segregation in America, a movement named the "Berkeley Free Speech Movement." The students' passion had garnered waves of faculty sympathy through mass, peaceful protests—a tactic also used in the civil rights movement, proving that those tactics could be "as effective in fighting political censorship in the North as they had been in combatting racism in the South." Cohen compared the Berkeley student activists to those of the "silent generation," a generation of students in the 1950s that were "so affected by McCarthyism that they were afraid to demonstrate, sign petitions, or even speak out on controversial issues." The Free Speech Movement showed huge growth in political freedom, painting protest movements as moral and the students' political right, rather than being "un-American."
Although reading this piece was very empowering and inspiring, allowing me to learn the beginnings of student activism on campus, I couldn't help but reflect on Davis's "pepper-spray incident" after finishing. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement supposedly sparked movements of student activism and greater acceptance of political freedom, yet when Davis students faced the university as an institution and attacked the university's political regulations (and corporatization) just as the Berkeley student activists did, not only were they faced with faculty opposition, they were confronted with pure police force. The infamous incident clearly depicted a regression in acceptance in political freedom—the students were treated as criminals, with pepper spray being aimed directly into their eyes. Pepper spray in itself is supposed to be a defense mechanism to scare away offenders or keep their distance, not to intentionally harm peaceful student protestors. Reading Cohen's piece made me reflect on how truly despicable the campus police's actions were during the incident, and saddened me to realize we had not actually come much farther since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Of course, since then, people have demanded amends and taken appropriate measures to ensure our university is a safe educational setting, but I couldn't help compare the two events that were 50 years apart, with the most recent one not being much better.
Question: How far have we really come since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, taking the Davis pepper spray incident into account?
Works Cited:
Cohen, R. (1985). Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism. OAH
Magazine of History, 1(1), 16-18.
Los Angeles Times. (2016). [Image from the LA Times April 15, 2016]. Retrieved from
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