Section A01
Week7
In “Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus
activism”, the author Robby Cohen depicts the Free Speech Movement which took
place at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. The students protested
for the free speech rights because the university’s president and deans banned on-campus
political activities and literature on behalf of political causes. The result
of the protest is that the university officials loosened the regulations on
political activities on campus and then also open the space of Sproul Hall for
protests and free discussion. Hence, people generally believe that Berkeley
gave birth to the Free Speech Movements.
After reading the whole article, I was very impressed by
what those student protestors did because they definitely made a ground
breaking change. They were so brave and dedicated. I extremely like one of the
paragraphs saying that “students gained the confidence to believe that although
they were young, they could, with sustained effort, bring about substantial
political change.” Although we are just students and some people may think that
we are not powerful enough to make improvements on political issue but the
Berkeley students obviously proved the power of students. Since I have many
friends studying at UC Berkeley, I always hear them saying that protests and
many other activities happen at the Sproul plaza but I did not know the history
until I read this article. There is definitely a free speech rights gap between
UC Berkeley and UC Davis, so my question for this week is that what is the best
way Aggies should do to maintain our rights?
Besides political issue, in “How Trigger Warnings Are
Hurting Mental Health on Campus”, it talks about some universities claimed that
they want to protect the students by issuing trigger warnings. These trigger
warnings appear redundant to me because they restrict the academic freedom. It
is also meaningless to protect students from certain issue because they have to
face them when they graduated from colleges. Overall, these two reading
materials provide me a new understanding of academic freedom.
Cohen, R. (1985). Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the
way for campus activism. OAH Magazine of History,1(1), 16-18.
Singal, J. (2015, December 6). Is There Any Evidence Trigger
Warnings Are Actually a Big Deal? Retrieved May 14, 2017, from http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/12/are-trigger-warnings-actually-widespread-at-all.html
[Paul Richards]. (2011, June 20). The Free Speech Movement:
civil disobedience in Berkeley 1964 [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28aPyBrP0Yc
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