A Campus Revolution

Abstract

University of California in the fall semester of 1964 have been widely reported and interpreted. They have been said to constitute the most dangerous crisis in the history of this university of 75,000 students and the most serious student demonstrations ever to have occurred in the United States. Lipsett and Seabury have described what took place as a 'small-scale but genuine revolution' as a result of which 'the authority of the administration and the faculty had become virtually non-existent by December I964'%1 The implications of the events extend far beyond the state of California, because of the extent to which they reveal the nature of the new generation of Americans and the weaknesses of an institution which has been regarded by many as a prototype of the university of the future. As an illustration of the effect of the new rights won by the students, and the use to which they have put them, on 15 and I6 November 1965 a massive demonstration (involving over 8,ooo persons) against the war in Viet Nam was organized from the Berkeley campus. Heirich and Kaplan2 have analysed the nature of student protest movements on the campus in the last thirty-five years and placed the 1964 revolt in its proper context. Throughout the thirties the students, while tending to ignore the depression, were continuously demonstrating against the breakdown of disarmament and the approach of war. Campus 'strikes' against 'War and Fascism' took place every year from 1935 to 1941 but were mainly of a symbolic nature. Between 1941 and 1952, during the Second World War and its aftermath, the Berkeley student body followed the pattern of most other students, in showing little interest in politics. The early fifties, though relatively quiet years in so far as student politics were concerned, saw the long struggle of the Berkeley Faculty against the special loyalty oath they were required to take. Since the mid-fifties student political interest and involvement has undergone a rapid development and the question of student political rights and privileges has been constantly debated. As the Bay Area * B.A., M.A.; Lecturer in Statistics, London School of Economics; Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Berkeley, 1964-5.