Week 7: Samantha Nguyen

Samantha Nguyen

ASA 2 A03

Week 7

The reading, “Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism,” written by Robbie Cohen, was very inspiring and surprising to read. This reading reminded me of Imperial University and how universities are upheld as bastions of freedom of thought. However, students of Berkeley had to work for their freedom of speech on campus. The article mentions how their fight for free speech was difficult, and the students were confronted by the administration and police. The Free Speech Movement fostered a new spirit of activism among students and paved a path for other universities to demonstrate that engaging in dissident activity is their moral and political right. Personally, I have never seen a sit-in protest in person, but reading articles such as these, prove how effective and powerful a voice can be. To visualize several thousand students sitting around a police car to block Weinberg’s arrest truly inspires me and makes me grateful for all those students. Although this did happen over 50 years ago, there is still a struggle on college campuses for freedom of speech. Events such as the UC Irvine 11 and UC Davis pepper spray incident demonstrate that we still have a long way to go before we can accomplish the objective of having the freedom of speech on campuses. However, with resilience and confidence, young students can truly bring about substantial political change.

Question: What other tactics can students use to protest aside from sit-ins? Also, faculty members at UC Berkeley seemed to have a substantial impact on the outcome of the Free Speech Movement. If faculty members were to join in on student protests, would it have a bigger impact? Although, what would prompt these faculty members to join student protests if there is academic containment/policing of knowledge coming from the administration?

References:

1.     Cohen, R. (1985). Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism. OAH Magazine of History. Retrieved November 05, 2017.

2.     Morris, Conor. (2017, February). [Digital image]. Retrieved November 5, 2017, from https://www.athensnews.com/news/campus/more-than-protesters-arrested-after-sit-in-at-baker-center/article_be075b34-e8d4-11e6-97bd-37b4d959c9af.html