Meanwhile, University president Clark Kerr made a speech at the Chamber of Commerce in which he said “Students are encouraged, as never before, by elements external to the University.” A few days later, he said at a news conference that he believed some of the demonstrators “had Communist sympathies.” Where have we heard that before? It’s the standard line of the southern segregationists: we didn’t have any problems until the Communist-inspired outside agitators came, and just the thing to say about people with whom you are supposedly trying to make peace-some of whom just returned from contending with the southern segregationists. One wonders why that conversation couldn’t have been had in the first place, avoiding the antagonism and waste of time. This argument was settled within a couple of weeks with an agreement on the membership of an expanded committee. The committee went forward anyway and heard a procession of witnesses telling it that shouldn’t exist.

So the administration proceeded to name the members of the committee without consulting with the FSM, which responded that the committee was illegitimate and should be disbanded.

The FSM’s view of its own righteousness creates another sort of rigidity, no doubt strengthened by the American Civil Liberties Union’s announcement that the disputed restrictions violate the First Amendment and that the ACLU would intervene on behalf of the students who were suspended.įor example, last month’s demonstration around and on top of the police car was resolved with an agreement to establish a committee to discuss and make recommendations about campus political behavior and its control. From this distance, it seems the administration is unable to let go of its usual habits of exercising authority in order to deal with the rather concrete issues raised by the students (whose cause now has a name, the Free Speech Movement), practical resolution of which really should not be difficult. The festivities continue, albeit muted, at the University of California at Berkeley, where the administration continues its clumsy and tone-deaf standoff with students and some faculty who are demanding rather ordinary political rights in the public places of what amounts to their home town.

Heel by Philip José Farmer