Reflections on the University of California: From the Free Speech Movement to the Global University (review)

Neil Smelser, University Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, offers us a most interesting volume of reflections on higher education in this book—part memoir and part analysis. Based on his distinguished 36-year career as a faculty member and administrator at the University of California, it includes essays drawn from Smelser's recollections of key events at UC, as well as the text of reports he authored. Although he held a number of administrative positions, both on the Berkeley campus and at the system-wide level, he was primarily a non-positional leader—that is, someone whose influence was personal and not dependent on occupying a position of authority. As such, he was always in the middle of things, often called to chair important committees and task forces, to which he devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Smelser's reports, which have a scholarly as well as a practical quality, are unusually well documented, creative, thoughtful, and well written. They are an important part of the history of the University of California, and their publication is most welcome.

It has become common for positional leaders, particularly university presidents, to write their memoirs and to publish their speeches and similar documents. Smelser's book offers an interesting counterpoint, complementing and illuminating the writings of the positional leaders of his time with a different perspective. Thus, this book is the ideal companion piece to the memoirs of Clark Kerr (2001, 2003) and David Gardner (2005) and to the speeches and papers of Richard Atkinson (2007), among other works.

The book's first chapter is an analytic and autobiographical account of the spring of 1965, when Berkeley's acting chancellor, Martin Meyerson, asked Smelser to join his staff as a special assistant in the field of student political activity. Smelser accepted and was soon involved in the events that followed the historic Free Speech Movement of late 1964, including the "filthy speech movement," or the shouting and display of obscene words by students, which caused Meyerson and Kerr so many problems with the Board of Regents and the public. Also, during that period, an escalation of the Vietnam War saw a corresponding increase in anti-war activity on the Berkeley campus.

Smelser dealt with these and other pressing issues and met with all of the players, including the legendary student leader Mario Savio. Smelser's account is interesting, not only because it provides new information but also because it offers a reflection on his management style, which he describes as proactive, rather than reactive. He tried to understand what was happening and to anticipate, and prepare for, what might unfold—an unusual approach in administration. Smelser's interest in planning is also evident in Chapters 2 and 3, which discuss why Berkeley became synonymous with political upheaval—a place full of surprises—as well as what additional turmoil might be in store for the campus and what steps might be taken to enhance preparedness.

Chapters 4 and 5 deal with diversity, an issue about which Smelser has shown consistent concern since the beginning of his career when he was a member of the Berkeley campus's committee on discrimination. As a sociologist with an interest in psychoanalysis, Smelser was preoccupied with the problems of women and minorities, showing a strong desire to understand their predicaments. His comments about the politics of ascription—or categories that cannot be altered by choice, such as gender and race—are insightful, as they highlight the fundamentally ambiguous situations in which members of these groups find themselves.

Smelser points out that social progress generates dissatisfaction, as "the wounds of exclusion from spheres not yet improved become all the sorer when advancement is attained in one" (p. 137). His conclusions are simple and to the point. First, "diversification in universities is becoming and will become...