(WIB) – The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s was a movement born from civil disobedience that helped reshape the nation. Students, faculty, and staff insisted their voices belonged in the debates of the day: war, civil rights, and the future of democracy itself. As Martin Luther King Jr. marched in Selma and protests against the Vietnam War spread, Berkeley’s campus community demanded the right to speak freely, to challenge injustice, and to call out poverty and racism in a nation deeply divided.

That history is etched into our campus. We still gather at Sproul Plaza. We still drink coffee in the Free Speech Café, a tribute to that era of courage.

But nearly 60 years later, our university is again being tested — not for expanding free expression, but for restricting it.

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