LIPSET ON BERKELEY--1964

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I note that the Crimson of December 5 suggests that I "advised the administration against making concessions to FSM," while I was a professor at Berkeley. This statement is a total and complete untruth. My general position on the matter which I stated on a number of occasions publicly at Academic Senate meetings and in one case at a talk to the Graduating Coordinating Committee of FSM was reported by the California Monthly as follows:

"Seymour M. Lipset, professor of sociology and director of the institute of international Studies, described the ruled as 'irrelevant and destructive to the purposes of the university. social action is relevant' to both graduate and undergraduate education. He said that while the university has liberalized a great deal in the last six years, it still has not gone far enough."

On a number of occasions in conversations with various university administrations I pressed them to make major changes in the rules in the direction requested by the FSM. I should also note that in November 1964 I agreed to serve as a faculty advisor of the Cited Students Organization, an organization established by FSM members who had been cited for violating campus rules by setting up illegal tables.

I should add too that I sided with the so-called FSM minority of moderates which while agreeing with the objective of the FSM with respect to campus regulations did not believe that the cause required the use of civil disobedience on campus. I have argued that the cause of civil liberties on the Berkeley campus had made considerable progress in the years before the FSM by the regular tactics of normal campus politics, i.e., petitions, picketing, mass rallies, and participation in student council elections. I believe that the efforts to get the administration to drop the remaining objectionable regulations would have succeeded without the December 1964 sit-in or other forms of on-campus civil disobedience. A more moderate approach would not have divided the campus into bitterly hostile factions, and would not have produced an anti-Berkeley 'back-lash" among the electorate. Effective politics requires that one evaluate all consequences, not just immediate results. Seymour M. Lipset   Professor of Government and Social Relations