When I arrived at Berkeley in 1985, I saw a makeshift shantytown on the campus. It called attention to apartheid in South Africa and sparked my awareness of that situation and of politics in general.
I mean, the campus was steeped in political protest since the free speech movement decades earlier had ignited a trend—that you would find engaged, activist students at universities speaking out against social injustice.
Now, in 2024, we have students being arrested, sometimes, violently, for exercising their rights to assemble and speak. Beleaguered campuses, assailed by the radical right for being hotbeds of radical leftist thought, are proving two things: that they are places of chaos and that authoritarian actions and reactions can occur in places that should be dedicated to the free exchange of ideas.
It can happen here, folks.
And I’m embarrassed to be an Emeritus Associate Professor if this is how universities treat their students.
MUSOFYR 