The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s

An examination of Berkeley's celebrated Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964. Drawing from the experiences of many movement veterans, this collection of scholarly articles and personal memoirs illuminates one of the most important events in the recent history of American higher education. The contributors - whose perspectives range from that of FSM leader Mario Savio to University of California president Clark Kerr - shed light on such issues as the origins of the FSM in the civil rights movement, the political tensions within the FSM, the day-to-day dynamics of the protest movement, the role of the Berkeley faculty and its various factions, the 1965 trial of the arrested students, and the virtually unknown "little Free Speech Movement of 1966".

Table of Contents:
Illustrations Acknowledgments Permissions and Credits Preface, by Leon F. Litwack List of Abbreviations The Many Meanings of the FSM Robert Cohen Part I. Roots Thirty Years Later: Reflections on the Free Speech Movement Mario Savio From Freedom Now! to Free Speech: The FSM's Roots in the Bay Area Civil Rights Movement Jo Freeman Holding One Another: Mario Savio and the Freedom Struggle in Mississippi and Berkeley Waldo Martin Part II. Experience: Fall 1964 Students War Is Declared! Jackie Goldberg My Life in the FSM: Memories of a Freshman Margot Adler Gender Politics and the FSM: A Meditation on Women and Freedom of Speech Bettina Aptheker Recollections of the FSM Martin Roysher A View from the South: The Idea of a State University Henry Mayer Endgame: How the Berkeley Grads Organized to Win Steven Weissman A View from the Margins David Hollinger Dressing for the Revolution Kate Coleman The "Rossman Report": A Memoir of Making History Michael Rossman The FSM and the Vision of a New Left Jeff Lustig This Was Their Fight and They Had to Fight It: The FSM's Nonradical Rank and File Robert Cohen Faculty and Clergy On the Side of the Angels: The Berkeley Faculty and the FSM Reginald E. Zelnik From the Big Apple to Berkeley: Perspectives of a Junior Faculty Member Lawrence W. Levine When the FSM Disturbed the Faculty Peace Leon Wofsy The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Campus Ministry Keith Chamberlain Administration Fall of 1964 at Berkeley: Confrontation Yields to Reconciliation Clark Kerr Part III. Legal and Constitutional Issues Constitutionally Interpreting the FSM Controversy Robert Post December 1964: Some Reflections and Recollections Robert H. Cole The FSM: A Movement Lawyer's Perspective Malcolm Burnstein Part IV. Aftermath Mario Savio and Berkeley's "Little Free Speech Movement" of 1966 Robert Cohen The Limits of Freedom: Student Activists and Educational Reform at Berkeley in the 1960s Julie A. Reuben The FSM, Berkeley Politics, and Ronald Reagan W. J. Rorabaugh Mario Savio's Second Act: The 1990s Jonah Raskin Part V. Thoughts about Mario Savio Mario Savio and the Politics of Authenticity Doug Rossinow Remembering Mario Lynne Hollander Savio Mario, Personal and Political Suzanne Goldberg Elegy for Mario Salvio Wendy Lesser On Mario Savio Greil Marcus Mario Savio: The Avatar of Free Speech Reginald E. Zelnik Selected Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Robert Cohen is Associate Professor of Education at New York University and has an associated appointment in the NYU History Department. He is the author of When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929-1941 (1993). Reginald E. Zelnik is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his recent publications are Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872 (California, 1995) and Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections (1999).

Review :
"A superb book." - Todd Gitlin, author of Media Unlimited and The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage "This book gets the Free Speech Movement and its significance exactly right - from the civil rights origins to refusing to idealize the moment at the expense of what came later. And no two better editors could be doing it." - Michael Rogin, author of Ronald Reagan, The Movie, And Other Episodes in Political Demonology