Brandeis University and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement

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FSM Campus Press

SUMMARY:
Marvin Garson, a former editor of the Brandeis paper The Justice was expelled for some phone hacking and eventually enrolled and graduated from Cal. In January of 1965, he published an influential pamphlet, “The Regents,” which was one of the intellectual sources for the student outrage during the FSM. There were at least 15 Brandeis alumni or transfer students on the UCB campus during the FSM. Ruth Sonnenblick, Brandeis ’62 published a detailed report from Berkeley on October 14, 1964. Brandeis cranked up its fundraising apparatus and sent money and at least one telegram, reported in a December 8, 1964 Press Release issued by the Free Speech Movement. On the same date The Justice published an editorial in support of the Berkeley arrestees. When an FSM group was invited to appear on ABC TV, they booked a friendly campus tour on the ABC travel allowance, Brandeis among them.


MY FIRST CLUE ABOUT THE BRANDEIS CONNECTION:
Jo Freeman, "At Berkeley in the Sixties," (Indiana University Press, 2004), p223

"Mario, Bettina, Steve and Suzanne went east on a speaking tour of college campuses. The ABC television network paid their fare to New York City so that they could appear on a TV show, and they used the opportunity to talk about the FSM at several campuses. The press generally reported this trip as a flop because only hundreds, not thousands, of students came to hear them speak. But for hundreds to turn out for anything political on most campuses was a lot, especially the last week of classes before the Christmas break, which was also exam week for some. They left the evening of December 9th and spoke at Michigan, Wisconsin, Brandeis, Columbia, and of course Queens College, where Mario had once been a student. All but Steve were from New York."

2/24/2018, Quirky Berkeley, Frank Bardacke -- He Stood Tall, Tom Dalzell,

I think now is the time for a brief digression about [Marvin] Garson.

Garson started his college career at Brandeis. He was ordered to withdraw for "conduct unbecoming a Brandeis student" - using a phony telephone credit card. Which we all did at one point or another.

He went to work in the City Room of the New York World Telegram and Sun. He scrimped and saved, and he and his wife went to Cuba in 1960. Back in New York, he went to meetings of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which was, he wrote, "crawling with Trots."

He was recruited by James Robertson, a Trotskyist involved with the Young Socialist League. He was admitted to Cal, came, matriculated, and eventually earned a BA in European history in 1963. Garson remained a good friend and theoretical inspiration for Bardacke over the years.

Back at Cal, there were the ideas and then there was action.


Marvin Garson, The Regents, January 1965, offset, 5.5 inches x 8.25 inches, 21 pp


June 7, 1959, Brandeis University, The Justice: Marvin Garson first appears as an editor.

I was also a freshman at Brandeis in 1964. And I remember very well that the entire student body was completely caught up with the FSM.
—Andy Ross, personal communication, 5/3/2019


October 14, 1964, The Justice p03

A Letter From U Cal.
Berkeley Protest
Ruth Sonnenblick

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Ruth Sonnenblick is a 1962 graduate of Brandeis, now a student at the University of California at Berkeley. The following is from a letter written to her brother Mark, a junior at Brandeis.)

I suppose you’ve seen, heard, or a t least heard rumors of what happened at Berkley, this last week, and more specifically in the last three days. We (15 alumni out here) sent a night letter to Brandeis asking for a sympathy demonstration.


October 14, 1964, The Justice, A Letter From U Cal. Berkeley Protest
by Ruth Sonnenblick


December 8, 1964: Telegrams of support for the Free Speech Movement
Press Release issued by the Free Speech Movement


December 8, 1964: The Justice: Berkeley and Brandeis
"The Berkeley students (some of them Brandeis alumni who have kept in constant touch with us)..."
News Editor Stephen Harris went on to UC Berkeley for his Ph.D.in Research Psychology.

I forgot how caught up we were in FSM."
—Steve Harris, personal communication, 2/17/2020


The Harvard Crimson
Friday, December 11, 1964

Mario Savio To Talk Tonight in Lowell Lec
NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, will speak at 8 p.m. tonight in Lowell lecture Hall. The address is sponsored by the Harvard chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Savio, who has called the settlement proposed by the Berkeley Faculty Senate an "FSM victory," will arrive in Boston at 5 p.m. today. He will attend and address a dinner here before his appearance at Lowell Lecture Hall.

Savio will also visit Brandeis University, probably between 9 p.m. and midnight. His trip to the East coast is being paid for by a New York television station.

 


December 15, 1964: The Justice: Mario Savio Evokes Enthusiastic Response


December 15, 1964: The Justice: Speech Breach at Berkeley, by Larry Spence,

David Lance Goines, The Free Speech Movement, Dramatis Personae, p663
"Larry Spence: FSM Public relations"

Spence, Larry D., "Berkeley: What It Demonstrates," Studies on the Left, Winter 1965 (Vol. 5, No. 2)

Larry Spence, "Berkeley: What it Demonstrates," in Revolution at Berkeley, ed. by Michael V. Miller and Susan Gilmore (New York: Dell, 1965), pp. 217- 24.

December 15, 1964: The Justice: Doctor Savio, I Presume, by Jay Livingston

Ann Fagan Ginger


11/26/1964, San Francisco Examiner, Behind the Scenes at UC, Ed Montgomery,

"Among university employees participating in the demonstrations is Ann Fagan Ginger Wood. She is a part time worker in law research, and is the wife of James Fenton Wood, guitar strumming member of the Communist Party, according toe sworn testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Mrs. Wood was photographed atop the stalled police car during the initial disorder advising demonstrators of their legal rights."


Oct. 2: Ann Fagan Ginger speaks; Burton White holds microphone. Tom Kuykendall photo

© Barbara Toby Stack

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