Public Comment

An Open Letter About Free Speech to Chancellor Dirks

The Board of Directors of the Free Speech Movement Archives, and the 50th Anniversary Organizing Committee
Thursday September 11, 2014 - 04:13:00 PM

Dear Chancellor Dirks,

The Free Speech Movement Archives and the Organizing Committee for the FSM 50th Anniversary would like to thank you for generously supporting our efforts to commemorate the Free Speech Movement, and to keep the memory of those events alive. We look forward to seeing you at our reunion. In the spirit of civil discourse, we would like to bring to your attention some history regarding the question of what the Free Speech Movement was about, what we won, and what it means for the campus today. 

In your letter to the campus community of Friday, September 5th you said, “… the boundaries between protected speech and unprotected speech, between free speech and political advocacy, between debate and demagoguery… have never been fully settled.” In fact, these questions were fully settled. On December 8th, 1964, the Berkeley Academic Senate adopted a resolution stating that: “the content of speech or advocacy shall not be restricted by the University.” This resolution was then reinforced by the Regent’s resolution of December 14th which stated: “Henceforth University regulations will not go beyond the purview of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” 

In celebrating the half century that the UC Berkeley campus has been “a symbol and embodiment” of the idea of free speech, you are proudly and properly referring to the outcome produced by the Free Speech Movement in the fall of 1964. Your statement seems to miss the central point. The struggle of the FSM was all about the right to political advocacy on campus. The UC Administration of that time insisted it would not permit speech on campus advocating student participation in off-campus demonstrations that might lead to arrests. The African-American civil rights movement was then at its height and students rejected these restrictions. This attempt to restrict our rights produced the Free Speech Movement. 

It is precisely the right to speech on subjects that are divisive, controversial, and capable of arousing strong feelings that we fought for in 1964. . . From the roof of the police car blockaded in Sproul Plaza, we heard a song written by a UC graduate (BA, MA, PhD) Malvina Reynolds that summed up our feelings toward the UC Administration and others who were then trying to reign-in the civil rights movement. The song was titled, “It Isn’t Nice”. 

“It isn’t nice to block the doorways, it isn’t nice to go to jail!/ 

There are nicer ways to do it, but the nice ways always fail./ 

It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice, you told us once you told us twice/ 

But if that’s freedom’s price, we don’t mind.” 

We note that the charge of “uncivility” was used by Chancellor Phyllis Wise of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to justify the discharge of Professor Steve Salaita. For this reason, many now read the call for civility in your letter as a potential threat. 

We understand you have issued no regulation nor taken any steps to restrict political advocacy or “uncivil” speech on the Berkeley Campus. Nonetheless, we are concerned that your call for “civility” may have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech by Berkeley faculty and students. We therefore encourage you to clarify the intent of your letter while continuing to uphold and affirm the proud traditions established on the Berkeley Campus fifty years ago. 

Sincerely yours, 

The Board of Directors of the Free Speech Movement Archives, and the 50th Anniversary Organizing Committee: 

Lee Felsenstein, Gar Smith, Anita Medal, Bettina Aptheker, Robert Cohen, Susan Druding, Barbara Garson, Jackie Goldberg, Lynne Hollander Savio, Jack Radey, Barbara Stack, Steve Lustig, Karen McLellan, Mike Smith, Dana MacDermott, Jack Weinberg, Margy Wilkinson