Freedom vs Anarchy on Campus

RONALD REAGAN

In 1966--after the eruption of the student movement, motion picture actor Ronald Reagan achieved what Richard Nixon had failed to do in 1962, winning the governorship of California. In the process he inherited the leader- ship of the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party. Although it would be fourteen years before Reagan gained the White House, his initial successes in the political arena came with his positioning himself against the student demonstrators. The 1968 radio address excerpted below demonstrates Reagan's hard-line stand against the student militants, as well as a call to political action from “the rest of us.”

The people of California founded and generously support what has become the finest system of public higher education in the land.

Within this system there are now nine university campuses, nineteen State-college campuses and 81 community colleges, plus many fine independent colleges and universities which are also supported, for the most part, by the people of California.

The system has worked well.

Yes-on these campuses, generations of Californians have pursued knowledge within the widest range of disciplines. They have sampled widely of man's knowledge of man, of the history of his ideas and what he knows of the world around him.

This is the role of higher education in California. At least this has been the case up until recently.

Within the past five or six years, something new has been added-a violent strident something that has disturbed all of us, a something whose admitted purpose is to destroy or to capture and use society's institutions for its own purpose. I say "whose admitted purpose" because the leadership minces no words. It is boastful, arrogant and threatening.

Consider these words from a campus teacher: "I think we agree that the revolution is necessary and that you don't conduct a revolution by attacking the strongest enemy first. You take care of your business at home first, then you move abroad. Thus we must make the university the home of the revolution."

From the capture of a police car and negotiations conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation, threats and fear; we went from free speech to filthy speech.

The movement spread to other campuses. There has been general incitement against properly constituted law enforcement authorities and general trampling of the will, the rights and freedom of movement of the majority by the organized, militant, and highly vocal minority.

Though the causes were cloaked in the dignity of academic and other freedoms, they are-in fact-a lusting for power. Some protesters even marched under banners that ranged from the black flag of anarchy, the red flag of revolution, to the flags of enemies engaged in killing young Americans-the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.

Academic freedom is one of the important freedoms to go in the new order envisioned by the New Left. There was no academic freedom in Hitler's Germany. There is no academic freedom in Mao's China or Castro's Cuba. And there is no academic freedom in the philosophies or the actions of the George Murrays, the Eldridge Cleavers or the Jerry Rubins.

It is therefore most imperative that we-the great and thoughtful majority of citizens of all races-keep our perspective. We must recognize the manipulations being carried out to frustrate our common interest in living together with dignity in one American society. And we must also recognize that those who exercise violence must be held accountable for their actions-and held equally accountable regardless of their color.

Nationwide, experience has shown that prompt dealing with disturbances leads to peace, that hesitation, vacillation and appeasement leads to greater disorder.

Isn't it logical, in view of past experience to ask that no campus official negotiate or hold conferences with any individual or group while such individual or group is disturbing or disrupting campus activities, violating any rule or regulation of the campus or its governing board, or committing any criminal offense? And, likewise, to insist that there shall be no consideration of the demands or requests of any such individual or group while their disruptive or disorderly conduct continues?

And finally, isn't it time to demand that when individuals have been arrested as a result of their participation in the disturbances and disorders, the chief campus officer-or such other person designated by him-shall sign a criminal complaint against such persons and shall co-operate in the prosecution of those individuals and shall immediately suspend them from the university? ...

From which group will we-and, really, from which group will you young people now going to college-elect your future leaders? Will it be from the few, but militant, anarchists and others now trying to control and run our campuses? Or will we elect our future leaders from the majority of fine young men and women dedicated to justice, order and the-full development of the true individual?