Berkeley at War: The 1960's - Tapa dura

1989 is the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. It is also the 20th anniversary of the Berkeley community's defence of a "People's Park", against the plan of the university and the state government to destroy the site and put a university building upon it. These are only two of the more dramatic incidents of a student protest movement, fuelled shortly thereafter by opposition to the Vietnam War, that would produce protest on college campuses across America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is a study of Berkeley in the 1960s. The author was a graduate student at Berkeley in the early 1970s. He was not directly involved with any of the student incidents, but he was part of the atmosphere and has since interviewed a wide spectrum of people involved with the events and has read all the written evidence of the period. The book is not only about the university and its students but about the city of Berkeley as well, and how university and community interact.

About the Author: W.J. Rorabaugh is Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition and The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age.