A message from Chancellor Lyons on the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement
Learn more about the legacy of the Free Speech Movement, and how the Berkeley community is carrying it forward today.
October 1, 2024
Today, Oct. 1, marks the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement here at UC Berkeley. On this day in 1964, thousands gathered to protest the arrest of one of their fellow students for tabling in support of the Civil Rights Movement on Sproul Plaza.
The demonstrations that ensued would lead UC Berkeley administrators to guarantee the right to political activities on campus. It became a watershed moment for civil liberties in the 1960s, with the protests that began here going on to influence similar fights for civil rights throughout the decade and beyond.
Above, watch a video message from Chancellor Rich Lyons about the legacy of the Free Speech Movement, and how the Berkeley community is carrying it forward today.
Read more about how UC Berkeley faculty, students and staff are shaping the next 60 years of free speech around the world.
Sixty years ago today, UC Berkeley students engaged in an iconic action that launched the Free Speech Movement. It was on this day that thousands of people, led by a student activist named Mario Savio, surrounded a police car on Sproul Plaza. In the back seat of that car sat a student arrested for the crime of participating in political expression on campus.
For 32 hours, the crowd engaged in peaceful civil disobedience, using the roof of the police car as a podium to advocate for free speech and students’ rights.
Their protest sparked a movement for free expression that swept the country, and led the Berkeley administration to guarantee the right to free political expression on campus.
Other universities soon followed suit, and today, free speech remains an essential, if embattled, value at Berkeley and across the country.
The Free Speech Movement is an inseparable part of our legacy and identity. I see it every time I walk through Sproul Plaza, where students gather to advocate for the causes they believe in. I see it in our classrooms, libraries and research centers, where Free Speech is an inherent element of academic freedom and an indispensable element of our ability to facilitate the constructive collision of ideas.
It is the legacy of the Free Speech Movement that is fueling our new Campus Bridging Project, one of a number of efforts to facilitate dialogue across deep divides of belief and perspective. You’ll see that legacy at work in the Edley Center for Law and Democracy, whose goal is to keep our democracy working for everyone. And you’ll see it every time we invite scholars from around the world to come and share their ideas and perspectives, without restraint or restriction.
As Clark Kerr, our university’s first chancellor, said, our mission is not to make ideas safe for students, it is to make students safe for ideas. At the same, rights come with responsibilities. Free expression must respect the rights of others to hold opposing views, and to pursue their academic aspirations. And that’s where our seven essential Principles of Community come into play. They call for civility in our discourse, support for diversity of perspective, and seek to ensure that every member of the campus community can feel a true sense of belonging.
We’d do well to remember that all those years ago, Mario Savio took his shoes off before he climbed on the roof of that police car on Sproul.
On this 60th anniversary of a moment and movement that define who we are, we can embody and model how members of a community can disagree without descending into identity-based condemnation, without violence, harassment, or discrimination, and without infringing on the rights of others.
Together I know we can and will carry forward the spirit of the Free Speech Movement to create and protect spaces where the broadest possible range of people and perspectives can flourish.
Fiat Lux and Go Bears.