University of California Repeals Decades-Old Speaker Ban
The Regents of the University of California on this day repealed a decades-old speaker ban.
The speaker ban was formally adopted either in the late 1930s or the 1940s (the precise date is not clear at this point). The object was to prevent known (or alleged) communists from speaking on campus.
The ban policy consisted of two important sections. Rule 5 held that “the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda.” Rule 17 put the control of all university facilities under the President. No one would be allowed to speak “except upon invitation of the president or his direct representative.”
In 1947 Vice President Henry Wallace was barred from speaking because he opposed the Cold War policies of President Truman. In 1951 Max Schachtman, a socialist leader but not a communist, was denied permission to speak. Malcolm X was barred from speaking in 1961 because university officials regarded him as a “religious” leader. Candidates for political office were all barred from speaking, and in 1950 Senate candidate Richard Nixon, and in 1956 Adlai Stevenson, candidate for president both stood on city of Berkeley property to speak to students.
The speaker ban did not attract that much publicity in the 1950s because the university was consumed by the controversy of the Loyalty Oath for faculty, which the regents adopted on April 21, 1950. The California Supreme Court declared the oath unconstitutional on October 17, 1952.
Political activism revived at the University of California, particularly on the Berkeley campus, where the famous Free Speech Movement erupted on October 1, 1964.
The Regents of the University finally abolished the speaker ban on June 21, 1963, by a vote of 15-2, with one abstention.
Read Jo Freeman’s “A Short History of the University of California Speaker Ban” here
Read about the UC loyalty oath controversy: David Gardner, The California Oath Controversy (1967)
Read: David Lance Goines, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s (1993)
Read the biography of FSM spokesperson Mario Savio: Robert Cohen, Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s (2009)