The Berkeley Free Speech Movement, was a student-led initiative to increase and enhance the free-speech rights of students. Long-time political activist and University of California, Berkeley, professor Albert Lepawsky, said this:
“The main task we face is preserving the university not merely as a free political community but primarily as an institution that is privileged to be an intellectual sanctuary within a society that is now in political flux. After all, the university’s primary mission resides not in political activity but in the cultivation of the intellectual freedoms. . . . [I]t is imperative that no one facet of the university’s activities, certainly not the political, should dominate its overall responsibilities for cultivation of the intellect. . . . [A]ny conflict between the intellectual and the political way of life must be resolved in favor of the intellectual over the political.”
(Albert Lepawsky, “Intellectual Responsibility and Political Conduct,” in The Berkeley Student Revolt: Facts and Interpretations, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Sheldon S. Wolin (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1965), p. 22.)
So the strange reversal now is that it’s students who are now demanding restrictions and removals of their free-speech rights. Here is some data from FIRE in 2022:
Percentage strongly against allowing onto campus a speaker who says BLM is a hate group (N=37,000):
Women: 69%
Men: 39%
Gay men: 52%
Straight men: 36%
Democrat: 73%
Republican: 21%
Very left (on a 7-point scale): 84%
Very right: 12%
Black: 74%
White: 54%
Asian/Hispanic: 64%
Ivy League schools: 55%
Non-Ivy League schools: 59%
On whether violence can be used to shut down speech:
Never acceptable – 77% of men, 74% of women.
Blocking speaker – 63% of men, 53% of women say it’s never acceptable