The following is the transcript for the above episode.
Isabelle Risha: [00:00:00] You’re listening to KALX Berkeley 90. 7 FM, University of California and community supported radio. This is Berkeley Brainwaves, a 30 minute public affairs show dedicated to sharing stories from the Cal experience. I’m Isabel.
Stella: I’m Stella.
Alejandro Leyva: And I’m Alejandro. According to a poll by Siena College, 84 percent of adults believe that there is a serious problem that some Americans don’t speak freely for fear of retaliation. Where does this concern come from?
Stella: October 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of Berkeley’s free speech movement. Sparked by the arrest of student activist, Jack Weinberg in 1964. [00:01:00] The spirit of free expression, fueled by both the Black Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, came to a head when Mario Savio gave his famous speech on Sproul Plaza.
Alejandro Leyva: 60 years later, free speech is still as contentious an issue as ever, as claims of censorship and speech crackdown have become an unavoidable point of political commentary
Stella: Today we’ll be talking to two people on opposite sides of the political spectrum, as well as the law professor here at Berkeley about an issue that unites them all. Free speech.
Alejandro Leyva: I am Alejandro Leyva here with Professor Chris Hoofnagle. Professor Hoofnagle is a law professor at UC Berkeley and is on the executive committee for the Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry. Thank you so much for joining me.
Chris Hoofnagle: Thank you, Alejandro. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Alejandro Leyva: So just to start, what is the Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry?
Chris Hoofnagle: This is a faculty initiative to protect free speech and academic freedom on the [00:02:00] University of California Berkeley campus. We have over a hundred faculty members, so we are one of the largest faculty-led organizations on campus.
Alejandro Leyva: That’s great. And where does the Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry believe the school’s role in free speech should be?
Chris Hoofnagle: It’s a complex issue because we’re both a public institution, so the First Amendment applies to us. But we’re also an educational institution. So free speech has a special meaning in the educational context. We’re very interested in faculty academic freedom, freedom in the classroom and freedom to host speakers and events, where maybe people disagree with the speaker and come to protest.
Alejandro Leyva: 84 percent of Americans believe that there is a serious problem that some people don’t speak freely for fear of retaliation. Does this correspond to anything that you’re seeing on campus?
Chris Hoofnagle: There’s a very interesting inversion that I’ve seen in faculty speech and that is, despite the fact that many of us have [00:03:00] tenure and we have very strong free speech rights, we often speak so carefully and with so much reserve. So there’s this interesting contour where in a faculty meeting, um, it is not a free for all. In fact, people are being very careful, very thoughtful about the arguments they make, the points they make. It’s characterized by restraint, rather than anything else.
Alejandro Leyva: Taking a step back from just the Berkeley campus and the UC system, there’s been a big issue recently with introducing politics into free speech with different groups feeling that their free speech rights are being suppressed or that they’re not being able to say what they want to be able to say.
And how do you see that happening?
Chris Hoofnagle: Well, I think it’s important to understand, to recognize that at an educational institution, we are trying to bring light to the world. We’re [00:04:00] trying to expand people’s horizons. And in that mission, we need to be ultra tolerant of speakers that come to the campus.
On one hand, any speaker should be able to give a speech on campus without being heckled. We should be able to invite anyone, and we should be able to listen to them and think about their arguments critically. On the other hand, because we are at a university, the people we invite ought to be people who agree with some basic assumptions. Basic assumptions about the goal of our activities, which is to enlighten Californians, to make the state better, to make our young people more resilient, more capable in the world.
While, on one hand, I believe that any speaker should be able to give a speech, on the other hand, I think that we need to exercise restraint in that we shouldn’t invite people who are mere provocateurs, but rather people who are here [00:05:00] because they have legitimate and earnest beliefs that they want to convince us of.
Alejandro Leyva: In your view, why do you think that the topic of free speech and the suppression of free speech has become such a polarizing topic?
Chris Hoofnagle: Traditionally, the law has recognized physical injury as harms to people that can be remedied. But many emotional injuries, many intellectual forms of upsettedness are not, often not recognized by the law as a harm.
We do not recognize mere disagreement and argument as an injury. But I think we’ve seen is a group of people arguing that in fact, when you look inside people’s brains and you look at people’s physiology, they do become upset by speech that is aggressive or hateful. I attribute a lot to what we’re seeing today to people who have decided that speech is too much of an [00:06:00] emotional harm to tolerate.
But I believe in a free society, This is one of the injuries that we have to endure in order to have freedom, in order to be able to think, to be able to question our own ideals. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable, and we have to be willing to put up with the lack of comfort that other people might experience.
Alejandro Leyva: How does the Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry allow this discomfort to be felt in a way that is productive to the campus environment?
Chris Hoofnagle: Our members have hosted a number of events on topics that are really politically charged and what we’ve tried to do is model responsible engagement. We should be able to host speakers from different perspectives, and we should be able to listen to them.
And we can ask critical questions, we can ask really tough questions, but we should be able to listen to all [00:07:00] sides of a debate like that. So one basic issue is modeling. I think the campus is actually doing a pretty good job with that. Another issue that we’re very concerned with is the so-called heckler’s veto.
And this is where you have a speaker who is interrupted, intensely yelled at, hissed at, and so on, to the point where they basically can’t give their talk. So this issue of heckler’s veto is very difficult because we want speakers to be able to speak. We want critics to be able to ask hard questions. But in an environment when people start hooting and whistling, you actually lose the ability to have a conversation in a lot of subtle ways.
One signal of this is when you go to an event and they don’t let people ask questions, or they collect the questions on note cards. These are all examples where the people organizing the event have basically said, you know what, we can’t, we can’t pass the microphone to anyone because they might start [00:08:00] hooting and yelling and so on.
And so we all lose. We lose collectively from that type of behavior.
Alejandro Leyva: Going back to the politicization of free speech, do you think that it is possible for all different sides of this issue to come to some sort of fundamental understanding about free speech and what it represents?
Chris Hoofnagle: I believe that we all can recognize that if we don’t have free speech, we’ll have a collective injury to our consciousness, to our ability to make sense of the world.
And all you need to do is to experience that. All you need to do is to be, to experience being silenced. And then the gears start turning. So I think we have to all look into ourselves and ask ourselves. I ask myself, who might I not really listen to? And maybe I should go listen to that person. Maybe they have a point that would broaden my perspective [00:09:00] on, on, on a topic.
We all have to challenge ourselves to be broad minded. To listen to critics.
Alejandro Leyva: Do you think that there’s been kind of a downturn in being open to hearing the other side?
Chris Hoofnagle: I, I think the, the broader problem is the intolerance sometimes one sees from some activists where if you’re not fully with them, if you’re not a 10 out of 10, you’re not part of the club. And what I would say about that is having worked on politics in a long time, you can’t win elections and you can’t win political issues if you demand that everyone be 100 percent aligned with you. You have to think about the fundamentals to build a coalition, and you have to be willing to invite people in who don’t look like you or who disagree with you on some things.
And that’s what I see missing from a lot of activist groups.
Free Speech Movement Song Carol “Hail to IBM”: Let us all with drills and homework, manufacture human minds. Make the students safe for knowledge. [00:10:00]
Isabelle Risha: That was an excerpt from an event hosted by the Berkeley Forum, where Lynne Hollander Savio, Bettina Aptheker, and Jack Rady offered a glimpse of what it was like to be a student activist at the Sproul Plaza protests 60 years ago. To gauge the current status of Berkeley’s revolutionary spirit, I spoke with David S., a representative from the Revolutionary Communist Party.
You’re listening to KALX Berkley, 90. 7 FM, University of California, and listener supported radio. And this is Berkley Brainwaves, a show dedicated to telling stories about the Cal experience. I’m your host, Isabelle Risha, and today I have David S. from RevCom with me in the studio.
Thank you so much for coming in.
David S.: Thank you for having me on.
Isabelle Risha: Yeah, no problem. Uh, so tell me a little bit about RevCom, uh, its involvement with UC Berkeley [00:11:00] and what you guys are doing, uh, in and around campus.
David S.: Yeah, so this is obviously the 60th anniversary of the free speech movement. A time where, you know, the university and the country as a whole really was rocked by this, student-led movement that started here at UC Berkeley and that had its roots here.
And Bob Avakian is actually a student from, who participated in the free speech movement at that time in 1964. He was one of the people that stepped up and became a part of the free speech movement by standing on top of the police car that arrested Jack Weinberg, that they were trying to arrest him for organizing, for civil rights on campus.
Um, and that was part of what shaped that whole battle really in the 1960s was that there was a battle for students to have the right to engage with bigger questions on the outside world, to engage with questions of the Civil Rights Movement that was happening, the Black freedom struggle, as well as the Vietnam War that was going on at that time.
So, Bob Avakian was a student that stepped forward [00:12:00] at that time. And since then, he’s really followed through on that conviction to fight against injustice. And it’s led him to the conclusion that, you know, all of the injustices that they fought against at the free speech, during the free speech movement, not only have they not been resolved, but they’ve actually gotten worse. And that ultimately what it’s going to take is a communist revolution to overthrow this whole system that’s at the foundation of all of that.
Isabelle Risha: Right. Okay. Hence the name “Revolutionary”.
David S.: RevCom. Revolutionary Communist. Yeah.
Isabelle Risha: Um, so what do you guys do here on campus now? I know you guys had your, um, anniversary event at the revolution, at Revolution Books on, um, Telegraph last week. Do you guys host similar events like that? Um, just forums where people come speak?
Uh, what was, what was that like?
David S.: Yeah. So, uh, right down the street from the Cal campus, we have Revolution Books. It’s at 2444 Durant Avenue, Telegraph and Durant. Um, great place for people to come by and check out. We had a, uh, an event commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement. [00:13:00] And, uh, it, it was, was myself that, that spoke at that as well as, uh, author and professor Waldo Martin.
He’s a professor of history here at UC Berkeley and he wrote the book, uh, “Black Against Empire”, which summed up a lot of the history of the Black Panther movement and the Free Speech movement as well. Um, but we, we commemorated the, this anniversary by getting to what were, what were the lessons and what was the spirit of the free speech movement?
And, and some of what that really embodied was, you know, this refusal to back down in the face of repression and to stand against injustice. There was a real largeness of mind and generosity of spirit that existed in the free speech movement that involved uniting people of all different types of backgrounds in that struggle against injustice.
And what we’re really fighting for today is for, for there to be that spirit today. Because, you know, frankly, this is a spirit that’s being suppressed both officially by the administration, by the university. And it’s not really something that, that is, is common in, in the culture nowadays, including in the activist circles.
There’s far too much [00:14:00] distortion of truth for political advantage. There’s far too much suppression, suppression of ideas that people disagree with. And that’s across the board. So that’s a conversation that we’re really trying to, to open up that people really need to ask deeper questions and to think critically in this time where it really matters a lot.
Isabelle Risha: Yeah, it does matter a lot. And you talked about kind of how free speech, um, looks today. And I don’t know, that’s definitely something we’re interested in at, at Berkeley Brainwaves. How, you know, maybe like social media or how that’s all progressed, because it’s a totally different world from the 60s. And, you know, when Bob Avakian stood on that, that cop car. I’m, um, do you talk about that at RevCom, kind of what that looks like with social media and, you know, what is free speech nowadays? Um, Yeah.
David S.: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the lessons of the free speech movement have a lot to do with the struggle against injustice today and the struggle for a better world today. And, you know, Again, one of the things that really characterized the free speech movement was [00:15:00] this open contestation of ideas over the way forward, you know, over what’s right and what’s wrong and how do we actually struggle to, to end injustice.
They asked big questions and they were willing to think critically. And that is something that, you know, we’re, we’re really trying to fight for in, in today’s world. That you know, people need to ask deep questions about what is the source of the injustices. You know, I mean, there’s a lot of people nowadays that are protesting against what’s happening in Palestine right now, which is it’s a U.S. backed genocide against the Palestinian people, and they’re encountering some very real opposition from the administration right now.
Um, and at UC Berkeley and at universities throughout the country, restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on the right to protest and assembly. Now, there’s a question of what are we going to do to stand up against that? Are we going to accept those restrictions? or are those restrictions going to be challenged?
And then even deeper than that, What is the source of all of this suffering that people in the 1960s were fighting against and that we continue to fight against now? It’s a capitalist, [00:16:00] imperialist system, and we need to ask the question, are there alternatives to that? And Bob Avakian is presenting an alternative, for a new socialist society that actually incorporates the principles of the free speech movement.
But then goes much further in terms of giving people the means to to dissent, to protest, to debate over the way forward, grounded on that struggle against injustice. So really, what we’re trying to do is is keep alive that spirit of the free speech movement, but learn some of the lessons from that.
Isabelle Risha: And you, you identify that a lot. What, what are, would you say, are those key lessons in the free speech movement that RevCom wants to take away and disseminate?
David S.: Yeah, so, I mean, these, these are lessons that weren’t written in stone, you know, they didn’t have like a list of the principles of the Free Speech Movement, they kind of have to be extracted and understood correctly.
And that’s something that Bob Avakian, as a veteran of that movement, he took a lot of time and emphasis to be able to sum up those lessons. And they, essentially, they boil down to three points. The first one is the, [00:17:00] the largeness of mind and generosity of spirit that really unites, broadly, unites everyone who could be united against injustice.
And the second one is, is critical thinking and, and the open contestation of ideas. That, that is a really important principle. And the third one is not backing down in the face of repression and not backing down in the face of, you know, hypocritical moves to basically divide and conquer things, you know, to split apart the movement against injustice.
So those are really some of the key principles that can be extracted from the free speech movement. And then what Bob Avakian did is he took things even further. He said, look, the, we can actually incorporate these principles to run all of society, not just for a political movement, but a whole new constitution, a socialist constitution, a new socialist constitution that incorporates the principles of the Free Speech Movement, but then takes it even further in terms of giving people not just, you know, not just the right to dissent and protest, but encouragement for that, funding for, for [00:18:00] opposition.
That’s something that, you know, Bob Avakian has led, not just in, you know, we’re not just saying that this is better than capitalism. Bob Avakian is also making a distinction and a rupture from previous socialist societies as well. The communists have also been guilty of distorting the truth for political advantage and suppression of speech.
That’s, that’s a fact, and that, that’s a true, uh, uh, a hard fact that Bob Avakian has, has confronted. It’s an uneasy truth for, for communists and for revolutionaries to look at that, but it’s a reality and it’s a truth. And it’s a problem that, that has been solved with this new communism with a whole new framework for being able to, you know, appreciate truth coming from all different angles, including from, from people who vehemently disagree with you.
Isabelle Risha: Right, so truth is really at the heart of that movement.
David S.: Yes.
Stella: You’re listening to KALX Berkley. I’m your host, Stella. And with me, I have John Paul from Turning Point.
John Paul: Thank you for having me on the show.
Stella: So, what I understand is that Turning Point USA is a [00:19:00] group, it’s a politically conservative organization. The activist chapter is at high schools and colleges, Cal included, which among other pursuits intends to empower students to get involved in the fight for free markets and limited government.
John Paul: Yes, I would say that’s pretty accurate.
Stella: How would you say free speech fits into the ideologies or values that y’all have at TPUSA, or just that you have generally as a conservative on campus.
John Paul: I would say free speech, um, is very synonymous with those values, especially of limited government and anti-regulation against free speech.
Um, I mean, when you start regulating free speech, you have, these sort of two issues. Which is one, what is, you know, like hate speech or what is like wrong political speech. These are some debates I’ve had in the past, and that’s usually like reasons for why a government may want to regulate free speech would be because of like, you know, hate speech or, um, just incorrect speech.
But then you have the issue of what is false political speech and who defines it. [00:20:00] And that’s why, you know, we continue to have and foster civil discourse within our meetings. And that’s, you know, one of our main values, once again, um, is how to just have these sort of conversations. And you can’t, you can’t even begin to think, um, if you don’t have free speech.
Stella: Totally. And so could you maybe explain to me why, as Turning Point, y’all came to the conclusion that, you know, less government regulation is the way to go when considering false information getting spread and also the potential for hate speech to be something that happens?
John Paul: Yeah, I mean, of course, like to tackle issues of hate speech and the way that, you know, like the main concept of freedom of speech is that if someone says something that’s, that’s wrong, that’s evil, the people around you have, should have an understanding that that is, that thing is wrong and evil.
And if enough people come out and say that, you know, it’s wrong to wear a confederate flag on your, on your sweater. Then, you know, that, the person who wears the confederate flag on, on his sweater, he’s going to look [00:21:00] like an absolute idiot, to be, just to be frank.
People are not going to think highly of him. Like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be like, I’m not going to make a law to stop you from wearing a confederate flag on your sweater. But I think that’s a terrible, terrible thing, and I think you’re completely stupid for doing that. And that’s, that’s, I think, is, maintains the responsibility of free speech, which is one of the core tenets of free speech, actually.
Is that you’re free to say these things, but you’re also deeply responsible for the things you say.
Stella: Yeah, I see. That makes sense. And that’s sort of why I wanted to come in here and ask, because I know, what I, what I understand about Turning Point is it’s very focused on restrictions to the free speech of maybe conservative activists, for example.
And I was wondering if you, you know, in light of the Free Speech Movement 60th anniversary and, you know, the movement back then was characterized by like a struggle to end injustices around the world. I was wondering, like, what sort of injustices does Turning Point protest in the name of free speech?
John Paul: I think some of the [00:22:00] biggest, um, issues that we’re facing right now, especially just in general and politically, would be cancel culture, or specifically censorship on social media and online.
Like, I mean, we’ve, in the 2020 election, we’ve had, you know, the, the Hunter Biden story was heavily censored online, so these are things that are having major impacts politically speaking. Um, and also, like, stories shouldn’t just be censored. And there’s just been a complete dominance of, you know, a certain political ideology that’s been across, um, all the social media platforms that runs the social media platforms.
And there’s been various conservatives, particularly who have been cancelled for, in my opinion, in my view, very mundane things. Not all of them have been for mundane things, but Jordan Peterson got cancelled on Twitter for deadnaming someone. There’s also like, Babylon Bee has been cancelled on Twitter before, um, even though all they do is create satirical skits.
[00:23:00] And, you know, Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X now and now Jordan Peterson and Babylon Bee and these other people who have been cancelled are free on the platform now. And we’re kind of seeing how that’s affecting, you know just the spread of information.
Stella: So when I think of the First Amendment like for free speech, you know, and I think of maybe however long ago they made it. Um, the idea was that you could go into the town square and get on your soapbox and, you know, protest the institution or the government or say anything you want and you’re not going to get arrested or anything for it, right?
They’re not going to, you know, utilize any sort of punishment or state. The state is not going to act in any way because you’re doing that and they think that like you should be allowed to say what you want. But my question for you is, you know, Twitter was a private platform. Like someone made it up.
Someone, someone was like, I’m gonna start a company where we all on our phones get to like, you know, say stuff to each other. And then that person, you know, [00:24:00] who created that company, or rather the company, um, like what, what about that company’s, I don’t know, freedom to regulate the way in which they want to?
Like I, I totally understand what you mean about someone who wears the confederate flag on their shirt, you know, and people are all going to just bully you because why are you doing that? And, and kind of. My understanding is that the same sort of things happen when you go on Twitter and maybe you just say something that’s just unpopular, and, you know, you just, you’re sort of losing in the marketplace of ideas.
And, you know, you might even lose with whoever the CEO of Twitter is at the moment, um, and they want to ban you off the platform because, you know, it’s just a platform, but that doesn’t mean, you know, Jordan Peterson can go stand on a soapbox, you know, in the town square. So I’m, I’m just sort of wondering how substantive of an injustice can this really be when it sounds almost just that people are losing in the marketplace of ideas.
No one sort of wants to hear what they have to say because they don’t, it doesn’t resonate with them.
John Paul: Yeah, so I completely understand that point. Um, however, I think there’s a few main issues. [00:25:00] And I think you’re right in saying that, yeah, you could be unpopular in the marketplace of ideas, but that shouldn’t be, that, that shouldn’t allow you to be completely banned and removed from distributing those ideas to begin with. And you, you mentioned Twitter as being a private organization, um, the, the issue is, is that when you have a large amount of social media platforms all run by the same people with the same political ideologies, um, and these are platforms that spread a large amount of information to a large amount of people, when you completely remove a certain perspective, then that’s, that’s unconstitutional censorship in my view.
Stella: Yeah, that makes sense. And I, I think I do agree with you in that, you know, we have these social media conglomerates, um, that control so much of what we, uh, what we consume and what sort of news we are learning and how we are learning that news, um, about the world and culture and just other people.
And that is definitely something that I think needs to be remedied in so many ways. [00:26:00] I, I had a question sort of off that for you. It seems like, sort of, both your group and maybe the people who criticize or, like, protest, um, you know, your, like, the group that you have, it seems as though both sides think that they are fighting the establishment.
So my question is, how do you respond necessarily to criticism saying that, you know, it’s not that conservative voices are not, it’s not that conservative voices are being silenced necessarily? Um, but that actually, you know, you’ve been able to be forthright with your ideas and views that you’ve had people come and, like, speak at Berkeley, for example.
And that, um, like, leftism is the counterculture to the conservative mainstream.
John Paul: Um, I personally, I’m, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the clip, but I was tabling and we were, um, directly attacked and targeted by some person who was angered by what we were saying. Um, there was, you know, tomato juice being thrown everywhere [00:27:00] at us.
Um, and, you know, that, I don’t think anyone’s defending that really, realistically. So, but it’s like, you know, the culture exists, there’s a culture of, especially at the Berkeley campus, you know, if you talk to conservatives on campus, there’s, they’re, they’re scared to talk about their beliefs openly, or for other people to know they’re conservatives. But if you’re a liberal on campus, realistically, you’re not scared at all. And that’s something that I think Turning Point is actually trying to fight against is the polarization of the political climate.
We want to be able, like our founding fathers did, to have civil discourse and to have discussions and to have debates without getting violent.
Stella: So my last question I wanted to ask you is what you necessarily think, you know, the future of free speech on campus, in Berkeley, in the world, you know, in America is, um, and also maybe what, what you hope it will be.
John Paul: I’m [00:28:00] very optimistic about the future. Um, I think most people maintain these values of free speech at Berkeley and in the country in general as well, but at Berkeley, the campus of free speech. Um, so I think all we need to do is just maintain the values we have today and it will stand strong and forthrightly until, you know, the end of time or whatever. Um, however long that may be.
So I think these, you know, free speech will persist and, you know, one thing I want, I would like to mention is when I was tabling that day, um, you know, our sign set changed in my mind. So the, the purpose of it was for people to come up and sort of debate us on the topic. The majority, the vast majority of the conversations I had, were very civil, and we’re non hostile, and I’ve met people who genuinely just wanted to hear our perspectives, and genuinely wanted to, to, to learn, and were genuinely curious.
And I [00:29:00] think, you know, it would be a mistake to say that the majority of the people on Berkeley are like the person who attacked us. Um, the majority of the people, uh, on Berkeley completely condemn that action. Um, and the majority of people on Berkeley are curious. I mean, to be at a university in general, you must be a fairly curious minded person to begin with.
Stella: So did, was your mind changed?
John Paul: No, definitely not.
Stella: That was John Paul of the Berkeley chapter of Turning Point USA. And before that, you heard Isabel speak with a representative from the Revolutionary Communist Party and Alejandro chat with a UC Berkeley law professor about free speech.
Isabelle Risha: This has been Berkeley Brainwaves and happy 60th anniversary to the free speech movement.
Alejandro Leyva: If you like that, Be sure to go to KALX dot Berkeley dot EDU and check out KALXtra to stream this and other episodes. Thanks for [00:30:00] listening.
