Leslie Fishbein
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis
Institute for High School Teachers
Workshop on The Culture of the Sixties
November 18, 2016
BERKELEY IN THE ’60’S (1990) QUESTION SHEET
1. Why does the film begin with San Francisco City Hall in May 1960? How did participation in
protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) serve as a political
baptism for the Berkeley students involved?
2. Why did the HUAC decision to make the film Operation Abolition prove so critical to
mobilizing the protesters and to making the University of California at Berkeley campus a
mecca for dissatisfied youth?
3. How did President of the University of California system Clark Kerr depict the role of the
University of California as a modern university?
4. How did Kerr’s view of the university affect its receptivity to free inquiry and to political
protest?
5. Why was the University of California Board of Regents so eager to throw SLATE, the student
protest group, off campus?
6. Why did the civil rights movement prove so crucial to mobilizing student protest? What form
did that protest take? How did the students adapt their protest to local conditions?
7. What was the significance of the student success in leading a civil rights protest at the Sheraton
Palace in San Francisco?
8. How did the business community react to the student success?
9. Why was the University of California administration so eager to remove the student
organization tables from Telegraph and Bancroft?
10. What was the nature of the student protest that developed out of this decision? How
spontaneous was student activity? What kind of protest culture developed among the students?
11. How did the administration view of the protesters compare with their own view of themselves?
12. Why were students dissatisfied with the administration compromise of restoring the tables but
prohibiting advocacy of illegal activity by those using them?
13. Why were students willing to occupy Sproul Hall when the university decided to charge the
students cited in the original protest?
14. How did the Sproul Hall protest teach the students the techniques and culture of protest?
15. How did the University of California at Berkeley faculty respond to the student protest? Did
they have an analogous view of the issues?
16. How was gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan able to exploit public concern about the
student radicals? Was there any accuracy in his charges?
17. Why does opposition to the war in Vietnam become such a significant catalytic issue for
Berkeley students?
18. What is the significance of the incident that Gentri Anders recounted about the woman willing
to lay herself on the tracks in the path of an oncoming troop train?
19. Why does Jack Weinberg remain so guilt-ridden by his decision not to lead peace protesters
into a direct confrontation with the Oakland police?
20. How effective were the antiwar marches in Oakland? How important was the anti-student
backlash exploited by Ronald Reagan as a gubernatorial candidate?
21. How did the hippie counterculture developing across the river in the Haight-Ashbury section of
San Francisco compare to the culture of student radicalism in Berkeley?
22. How did the musician from Country Joe and the Fish defy his leftist parents? How did he differ
from them in his approach to radical social change?
Leslie Fishbein
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis
Institute for High School Teachers
Workshop on The Culture of the Sixties
November 18, 2016
BERKELEY IN THE ’60’S (1990) QUESTION SHEET
23. What is the significance of the fact that at one antiwar demonstration the song being sung by
the protesters switched suddenly from “Solidarity Forever” to “Yellow Submarine”?
24. Why did the members of the hippie counterculture champion Be- ins? How did hippies expect
to change society?
25. How does Country Joe and the Fish’s “Vietnam Rag” differ from earlier antiwar protest songs
like Phil Ochs’ “I Ain’t Marching Any More”?
26. Why did attempts to shut down the Oakland army induction center prove to be such a disaster?
How did the new recruits react to the protesters?
27. How well did members of the antiwar movement understand the reasons for the movement’s
failure?
28. How did white students react to the rise of the Black Panther Party?
29. What is the irony implicit in Bobby Seale’s story of how the Panthers raised money to buy
guns?
30. Was David Hilliard correct in saying that guns were the nemesis of the Panthers, or did the
Panthers profit from the white romance with violence?
31. How accurate was the belief that there was an international spirit of revolution in which the
United States was being swept up?
32. How did the women’s movement emerge out of the civil rights movement and the antiwar
movement? According to Ruth Rosen, how did the women’s movement differ from previous
radical movements in terms of the type of social change it demanded from its participants?
33. Why did People’s Park in 1969 become such a powerful symbol to the university community?
What exactly did that symbol represent?
34. How did the university decision to shut down the park and to reclaim it via police repression
shape the spirit of political activity in Berkeley at the end of the decade of the Sixties?
35. What was the legacy of the Berkeley student movement of the Sixties?
36. What do we learn about the continuing ability of the student movement of the Sixties to shape
people’s lives by examining what the film’s credits tell us about the subsequent careers of the
political activists who shaped the politics of Berkeley in the Sixties?