Savio Blasts Kerr's 'Knowledge Factory'

Mario Savio, a leader or Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, last night accused University of California President Clark Kerr of being an "able practitioner of managerial tyranny," who was seeking to make Berkeley a "knowledge factory."

Savio told an audience of more than 300 people at Lowell Lecture Hall that the current controversy over political freedom at Berkeley was an outgrowth of Kerr's "worldly view" of the University.

Citing Kerr's book, Uses of the University, Savio asserted that the University President views students as the "raw material" who are fed into the knowledge factory, "where all the rough edges are taken off and smooth, slick products come out."

Multiman Denounced

Savio said that the student protesters at Berkeley represented a "more traditional educational philosophy. We believe in a university of scholars and students," he continued, "with inquiry as its defining characteristic, and freedom as its fundamental tool."

"Kerr's university is the most efficient," Savio said, "the most worldly. It is a University plugged into the military and the industrial--but not to truth."

Savio recounted the battle between the FSM and the University in these terms. He said that "Multiman," as he called Kerr, had sought to divide Berkeley into "the managers"--the administration, and the "managed"--the students and faculty.

Savio said that the Free Speech Movement had freed faculty members from the oppression of the administration. "Men whose spirits had been crushed back in the oath fight [when all faculty members were required to sign a loyalty cath], were released to stand up for their rights."

In a press conference at Sever Hall, just before his speech, Savio responded sharply to questions about Communist infltration in the FSM. "Of the 50 representatives on our steering committee," he said, "four would term themselves 'revolutionary socialists.'"

"But I'm sure," he continued, "that the Goldwater people and the followers of Ayn Rand, who were with us in Sproul Hall, would resent the assertion that they had been communist infiltrated."

No Prediction of Peace

Savio was reluctant to predict that the University Regents would accept the terms of a peace proposal by Berkeley's Academic Senate. The offer has been endorsed by the FSM.

"To me it's unthinkable that they would turn it down," he said, but it's possible." He added that Governor Brown and the District Attorney had said that there would be no amnesty for the 800 arrested students. "We need help for these people," he said.