ronald reagan and the berkeley free speech movement

8/3/2019 Ronald Reagan and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement

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Ronald Reagan

and Nancy

Reagan aboard a

boat in California,

August, 1964

(Ronald Reagan

Presidential

Library)

Ronald Reagan launched political career using the Berkeley campus asa target

By Jeffery Kahn, NewsCenter | 8 June 2004

BERKELEY Ronald Reagan launched his political career in 1966 by targeting UC

Berkeley's student peace activists, professors, and, to a great extent, the

University of California itself. In his successful campaign for governor of California,

his first elective office, he attacked the Berkeley campus, cementing what would

remain a turbulent relationship between Reagan and California's leading institution

for public higher education.

"This was not a happy relationship between the governor and the university you

have to acknowledge it," recalled Neil Smelser, who was a Berkeley professor of

sociology during the Reagan years. "As a matter of Reagan's honest convictions

but also as a matter of politics, Reagan launched an assault on the university."

As the Vietnam War expanded and the death toll climbed, students at Berkeley

launched a determined and, at times, confrontational attempt to stop the war with

demonstrations and protests that eventually spread to college campuses across

the country. Years later, much of the public came to agree with the students but in

1966, those opposed to the war were a distinct minority in America. Candidate

Reagan capitalized on this.

Smelser, assistant chancellor for

educational development at the time

Reagan ran for office, recalled that

"Reagan took aim at the university for

being irresponsible for failing to punish

these dissident students. He said, 'Get

them out of there. Throw them out. They

are spoiled and don't deserve the

education they are getting. They don't

have a right to take advantage of our


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"Just show me one of them Beatnik varmints."

(A political cartoon from the San Francisco

Chronicle, reprinted in Clark Kerr's "The Gold and

the Blue")

"One for the gipper."

(A political cartoon by Bob Bastian published in

Clark Kerr's "The Gold and the Blue")

system of education.'"

Reagan had two themes in his first run for

office. The man who later became known

as "The Great Communicator" vowed tosend "the welfare bums back to work," and

"to clean up the mess at Berkeley." The

latter became a Reagan mantra.

Earl Cheit, dean emeritus of the Haas

School of Business, was executive vice

chancellor at Berkeley from 1965 to 1969.

Like many at Berkeley, he remembers

being at the wrong end of Reagan's

political broom.

"Incidents of campus disruption andreports about what was going on here

often exaggerated reports became a standard part of his campaign rhetoric," said

Cheit. "Reagan also argued that the faculty was too permissive, or supportive, of

the students. One of his great skills was to understand popular feeling. He really

tapped into the discontent people felt about what was happening on the campus. I

have no doubt that this was a big factor in his election as governor."

After defeating incumbent governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Reagan did not relent

in his campaign to "clean up the mess" at Berkeley.

Said Smelser, "The governor could not intervene directly in the administration of

Berkeley. The two weapons he had were verbal abuse and the budget. He heapeda great deal of abuse on the Berkeley campus, and particularly on liberals and

liberal faculties. He even singled out sociology and philosophy as hotbeds. He tried

to cut the budget. And, he did get Clark Kerr fired as UC president."

Kerr was fired three weeks after Reagan

took office. The act was the culmination of

a process that began long before, when

then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover first tried

to persuade Kerr to crack down hard on

Berkeley students involved in the 1964

Free Speech Movement, which Hoover

alleged was a front for communistsympathizers. Unable to convince Kerr,

Hoover turned to gubernatorial candidate

Reagan, a rising conservative star. As

revealed by a 2002 investigation by San

Francisco Chronicle reporter Seth

Rosenfeld, Reagan and the FBI interacted

throughout the campaign about dealing

with Kerr and the student protesters.

Cheit said Kerr's firing galvanized the campus. "The firing of Clark Kerr really

caught the attention of everybody on campus and to a great extent unified the

students and facult . It was a ver emotional time. Most fundamentall because


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of the constitutional independence of the university, the idea that a governor could

force out a president was very disturbing."

John Douglass, a historian and senior research fellow at UC Berkeley's Center for

Studies in Higher Education, faulted Reagan for a "failure to understand theimportance of the University of California in the life of the citizens of this state."

Douglass said that after his election in 1966, Reagan proposed cutting the UC

budget by 10 percent across the board. He also proposed that, for the first time,

UC charge tuition and suggested that Berkeley sell collections of rare books in the

Bancroft Library. By and large, Douglass said, these measures were not approved

by the Legislature, but lesser funding cuts were imposed.

Ray Colvig, the chief public information officer for the campus during these years,

said the notion to sell rare books was quite telling. "Reagan did not think you

needed a great university supported by public funding," said Colvig. "He thought if

you wanted a world-class university, let the students pay for it. The idea of selling

rare books went along with that."

In some sense, said Colvig, "Reagan's bark was worse than his bite about the

university. He wanted to establish a special process to select faculty in several

disciplines. In other words, he wanted to set a political standard for appointing

faculty members. This idea was widely opposed, and it went away. Often, nothing

came of these things. But sometimes it did. The financial cuts were real, and they

introduced new special fees that, in effect, were the beginning of charging tuition."

May 1969 was the low point in the relationship between Reagan and UC Berkeley.

Students and activists had begun an attempt to transform a vacant plot of

university property into "People's Park." Attempting to head off the activists, the

university engaged a fencing company, accompanied by 250 police, to erect achain-link fence around the land at 4 a.m. on May 15, 1969. Five hours later, a

rally was called on Sproul Plaza to protest the action. Resource, a current UC

Berkeley reference guide for new students, relates the story of how Reagan

intervened, sending in the National Guard:

"The rally, which drew 3,000 people, soon turned into a riot, as the crowd moved

down Telegraph (Ave.) towards the park. That day, known as Bloody Thursday,

three students suffered punctured lungs, another a shattered leg, 13 people were

hospitalized with shotgun wounds, and one police officer was stabbed. James

Rector, who was watching the riot from a rooftop, was shot by police gunfire; he

died four days later.

"At the request of the Berkeley mayor, Governor Ronald Reagan declared a state

of emergency and sent 2,200 National Guard troops into Berkeley. Some of these

guardsmen were even Cal students. At least one young man had participated in

the riots, been shot at by police, gotten patched up, and then returned to his dorm

to find a notice to report for guard duty. In the following days approximately 1,000

people were arrested: 200 were booked for felonies, and 500 were taken to Santa

Rita jail."

From the standpoint of campus administrators attempting to manage the situation,

Reagan's actions were counterproductive.

Said Cheit, "The campus and other academics were appalled that the Guard came


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in, that tear gas had been sprayed on campus from a helicopter. Sending in the

Guard was quite peremptory. There were local and campus police available. The

Guard, in some ways, inflamed the situation. Within the administration, this was

considered provocative. To the outside observer, it might have appeared

justifiable. To those of us who were trying to control the situation, it seemed toexacerbate it."

Cheit added that, ultimately, "Reagan's political career owed a lot to the people

who used the campus as a radical base for political activity. It is an irony that

helped elect him."

The late Clark Kerr agreed with that assessment. In The Free Speech Movement:

Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, an anthology of essays edited by Robert

Cohen and Reginald Zelnik, Cohen discusses Kerr's essay for the volume. Kerr

details the progress he had made in expanding free speech at the university and

ending the "repressive 1950s" at Berkeley, documenting his battles with the

Regents and the Legislature in defense of the principle of free speech.

"In the Kerr narrative," writes Cohen, "it is the FSM [Free Speech Movement] and

its heirs that set in motion the political backlash that allowed Ronald Reagan to

capture the California governorship by promising to 'clean up the mess in

Berkeley.' According to Kerr, the FSM's significance rests less with its role in the

emergence of the New Left than with its displacing his careful, effective liberalism

by a reckless mass movement that inadvertently facilitated the ascendancy of the

New Right."

Ronald Reagan is an icon of conservatives. He will be buried on June 11.

ronald reagan and the berkeley free speech movement

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