Angus Taylor, Author of "Speaking Freely"

Date: 13 Feb 2009 20:48:50
From: samsloan
Subject: Angus Taylor, Author of "Speaking Freely"

Angus Ellis Taylor spent the last years of his life in his 80s writing
his memoirs as well as writing poetry. His memoir, Speaking Freely
(Institute of Governmental Studies Press, Berkeley, 2000), published
shortly after his death, provides previously unpublished and unknown
information about what went on behind the scenes, as the University
administration and governmental authorities and politicians tried to
deal with the 1964 student revolt taking place on the Berkeley Campus.

Probably the best previous public account of the events of the Fall of
1964 is found in the 1990 movie and video, =93Berkeley in the Sixties=94.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099121/

This video reflects the perception by most of the students that they
had =93won=94 the battle on December 8, 1964, when the Academic Senate
voted in favor of the students by a vote of 824 to 115. The most
important point of their five point resolution was that there would be
no punishment for the students for any of the events that took place
prior to December 8th, 1964.

This meant that the students who stood on top of the police car making
speeches on October 1, 1964 and the students who were arrested in
Sproul Hall on December 2-3, 1964 would not be suspended or expelled
from the university.

In the video =93Berkeley in the Sixties=94, the view was expressed that
the Regents of the University of California could not ignore the
overwhelming vote of the faculty members, which included not only
members of the Berkeley faculty, but also included members of each of
the nine other campuses of the University of California.

However, the students were very nearly wrong. As Taylor's book makes
clear, the initial mood of the Regents was for the outright rejection
of the resolution passed by the Academic Senate. In fact, one Regent,
Edward Pauley, demanded that all those arrested in Sproul Hall and all
those involved in the Police Car incident be immediately expelled
permanently from the university.

Had such a crazy idea been adopted by the Regents, the reaction by the
students would have been a full scale REVOLUTION; =93The Mother of All
Revolutions=94, as they say.

Fortunately, Angus Taylor, in a series of private meetings and
conversations with individual members of the Regents and even with
Governor Brown, was able to talk the Regents out of any such measures
and the December 8 resolution of the Academic Senate was eventually
accepted.

One of the arguments successfully put forth by Angus Taylor that
helped win over the extremists on the Regents was that a new semester
was due to start in January. There was bound to be trouble ahead and
Mario Savio, Art Goldberg and the others were bound to be among the
trouble makers. Thus, there would be plenty of chances in the future
to expel them if necessary. Going back to the events of October and
expelling them at this late date was unnecessary.

On pages 181-182 of =93Speaking Freely=94, Angus Taylor describes a
private dinner which does not seem to have ever been reported in the
press that took place on Wednesday, December 16, 1964 at the Beverly
Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Present at the dinner
were Governor Edmond G. =93Pat=94 Brown, Lieutenant Governor Anderson,
University President Clarke Kerr, University Vice-President Wellman
and 16 of the 24 Regents of the University of California, including
Catherine Hearst, one of the most conservative Regents and mother of
future radical Patricia Hearst.

Regents Hearst, Pauley and Carter basically wanted to hang the
students and expel them permanently. Governor Brown and President Kerr
wanted to try to settle the matter by negotiation and conciliation.
The Hawks including especially Carter and Pauley seemed to be
prevailing. However, after Angus Taylor, who was present as Chairman
of the Academic Council, spoke, the group decided to put off any
decision for the time being.

One point about which the students were probably not thinking but was
in the forefront of minds of the Regents was the difficulties created
by the tremendous expansion taking place of the university.
Originally, the sole campus of the University of California was in
Berkeley. Later, a Los Angeles branch was added. The Los Angeles
Branch, which came to be known as UCLA, was considered to be the weak
sister of the Berkeley Campus, and was known primarily for its
football team.

However, under Clarke Kerr, the University had started on an ambitus
program of building new campuses all over California in such places as
Riverside, Irvine, Davis and so on. This involved buying the land,
building new buildings hiring faculty, admitting students scheduling
classes and so on. Building just one new university would have been a
mammoth undertaking for anybody. Clarke Kerr was building eight of
them all at the same time. For example, the University of California
at Santa Cruz did not open until 1965 and soon thereafter had 19,000
students. Altogether, the student population of the entire University
of California increased from about 50,000 to more than 100,000 in just
a few years. It was during this period of tremendous expansion that
the students staged their sit-in demonstration in Sproul Hall.

The problem this presented was that any deal that was made with the
students to end their protests had to apply across the board to
everybody in all campuses. The rules that applied to the Berkeley
Students also had to apply to the students at the University of
California at San Diego, too.

In one of his earlier speeches, Kerr had referred to the =93knowledge
industry=94. The student revolutionaries had turned this into a rallying
cry, calling the University of California =93The Knowledge Factory=94 and
calling themselves the =93cogs in the machine=94.

The Regents were split into two groups. One group favored the view of
Chancellor Edward Strong, a hard-liner, who basically wanted to expel
all the trouble makers. The alternative was represented by President
Clarke Kerr, who had made his reputation as a mediator of labor
disputes and who wanted to negotiate with the students. At first, the
majority of the Regents favored the Strong approach. However, through
meetings and conversations with the various principals over the next
two weeks, Angus Taylor was able to convince them that the Kerr
approach was more likely to be productive. Because there seemed to be
an irreconcilable conflict between Kerr and Chancellor Edward Strong,
Strong was put on academic leave on January 2, 1965 =93for health
reasons=94. His retirement was announced a few months later and his
career as an administrator was over.

Strong was replaced by Martin Meyerson who was, at least at the
beginning, more successful in dealing with the students. The students
were satisfied that their demands had been met when it was finally
decided by the Regents that no student would be punished academically
for anything he did off-campus. In other words, a student could not be
expelled from the University for engaging in an Anti-War Demonstration
in Oakland. As a result of this decision, the FSM or =93Free Speech
Movement=94 was officially disbanded by the students in April, 1965.

All this time, Angus Taylor had been a member of the faculty of the
University of California at Los Angeles, or UCLA. He was both Chairman
of the Math Department and Chairman of the Academic Council. He had
not been at the meeting of the Academic Senate on December 8, 1964
that had voted in favor of the students. However, this fact may have
actually helped him persuade the Regents to accept the resolution of
the Academic Senate. Many of the members of the Berkeley Faculty were
even more radical than their students, such as for example Jacobus
tenBroek, a Professor of Political Science. Some of the Faculty
Members had even participated in the demonstrations with the students.

It was to the credit of Angus Taylor that he was able to convince the
Regents that support for the student positions was not limited to just
a few faculty members who were =93Commies=94, but rather was widespread
across the entire ten campuses of the University System. Even Clarke
Kerr had had to face the charge that he was a Communist, which he most
definitely was not. The regents had to be made to understand that,
with a few exceptions, the students were not left wingers and that the
student demonstrators had such widespread support that a move to expel
800 of them would have resulted in a total revolt across the entire
university system.

It might be added that I, Sam Sloan, played a small role in these
events. I took the Fall 1964 semester off, as I worked as a clerk in
New York City, so to my great regret I missed the main action. I have
often wondered what I would have done had I been there. I probably
would not have joined the sit-in demonstration in Sproul Hall, because
I have never been one to join groups and participate in group
activities.

However, I was involved in one incident that took place just before
the outbreak of the Free Speech Movement that Angus Taylor mentions as
significant. On page 149 in mentioned the action at the 1964
Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. I
was involved in that incident and the only other place I have ever
seen that incident mentioned is my own postings on the Internet,
especially one entitled, =93How I got in to the 1964 Republican National
Convention Where Barry Goldwater was Nominated=94.

What happened was there were leaflets handed out at Bancroft and
Telegraph on the very spot that the campus administration closed down
later the same year. The leaflets said that anybody who wanted to go
to the Republican National Convention should show up at the corner of
Bancroft and Telegraph at 6:00 AM the following morning. I wanted to
go, so I did. There were four or five chartered buses lined up to take
the students to the Cow Palace. However, we were told that if we
wanted to go, we had to put on a Scranton for President Hat and carry
a Scranton for President sign. Governor William Scranton of Scranton
Pennsylvania had been designated as the leader of the =93Anybody But
Goldwater=94 movement.

It turned out, mostly by accident, that I did get inside the Cow
Palace, where I immediately ditched my Scranton hat and Scranton sign.
I then went up into the balcony and watched all day long as Goldwater
was nominated. I was one of the few and perhaps the only Berkeley
student in this group who actually got inside the Cow Palace.

Usually commentators on the Free Speech Movement give the
demonstrations against the Sheraton Palace Hotel, demanding that more
Blacks be given jobs, in which the demonstrators were recruited from
the Berkeley Campus, as providing the reason why the administrators
wanted to close down the Free Speech Area. I was not involved in the
Sheraton Palace Demonstrations, so I do not know if the demonstrators
were recruited from the Berkeley Campus. However, I know for certain
that the demonstrators at the Republican National Convention were
recruited at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, because I was one
of them. Were the right-wing Regents so upset about this that they
decided to close down the six-foot-wide strip of concrete? I do not
know, but I do know that they made a big mistake.

When I got back to the Berkeley Campus for the Spring Semester 1965, I
later found my own little niche in the student revolution. Here is a
picture published in the San Francisco Chronicle of me listening
through a crack in the door at the debates of the Academic Senate in
December 1966. I am the taller man wearing the black jacket. This
debate concerned a lesser known student revolution in 1966 when the
University Administration allowed an ROTC Army Recruiting station to
be set up on campus in an area where student groups were prohibited
from handing out Anti-War literature. With the War in Vietnam
escalating, anti-war sentiment was high among the students and among
the faculty as well, especially in the Math Department led by anti-war
mathematics professors including Angus Taylor, John L. Kelley and
Stephen Smale.

Although Angus Taylor had been on the Faculty of USCL throughout the
1964 disturbances, in September 1965 he was appointed =93Vice-:President
of Academic Affairs=94, a new position created especially for him. He
bought a house in Contra Costa County near Berkeley and moved there in
1966, arriving just in time for the advent of a new student
revolution. Whereas the 1964 student revolution initially concerned
the right of the students to hand out leaflets at the corner of
Bancroft and Telegraph in Berkeley for the purpose of organizing civil
rights demonstrations, concerning the right of Blacks to have jobs as
Chambermaids in the Sheraton Palace Hotel, the 1966 Revolution
concerned the fact that the University administration had allowed an
Army Recruiting Station to be set up inside the ASUC Student Union
Building to recruit soldiers to go fight the War in Vietnam. When this
happened, I was right there, on the spot, as an eye witness. This
action was so inflammatory and so likely to lead to disturbances that
one must wonder what was going in the minds of the university
administrators who allowed this to happen.

Again, the Academic Senate led by Angus Taylor voted in favor of the
students. Again, the Regents of the University had to back down.

I have always found it ironic that even though I was not a participant
other than being a close observer of the 1966 student revolution, I
turned out to be the principal beneficiary of it. By September, 1966,
I was the president of a small campus student organization best known
for providing social outlets for the students. As a result, I was
allowed to keep my organization's tables set up at the entrance to the
campus at Bancroft and Telegraph. By then, most of the student groups
were setting up their tables near Ludwig's Fountain in full view of
Sproul Hall. Therefore, I was alone in setting up my table at Bancroft
and Telegraph, on the very spot where so many students has
demonstrated and even subjected themselves to be arrested just so
campus groups could set up their tables there. In October, 1966 a
picture of my table was published in Time Magazine. Here is the
picture. That sign is in my handwriting. The girl in the picture is my
employee. Her name is Joyce Caskey. She was a full time student, or
otherwise she would not have been allowed to sit there at my table. At
night, she worked as a topless waitress in San Francisco's North
Beach. I paid her $1.25 per hour to sit there and sell buttons with
such slogans as =93Make Love Not War=94 and to invite people to my off
campus =93social events=94 as they might be called. I organized social
events for the students for those times when they wanted to take a
break from studying. Here is also another picture of Joyce Caskey
sitting at my table. I do not know what ever happened to Joyce Caskey
and I would like to find out.

Sam Sloan

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=3D092389124=
2
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=3D092389125=
0

Date: 14 Feb 2009 09:44:59
From: None
Subject: Re: Angus Taylor, Author of "Speaking Freely"

On Feb 14, 7:54=A0am, samsloan <[email protected] > wrote:
> Volume 2 of Calculus with Analytic Geometry by Angus E. Taylor is out
> today and is available at Barnes and Noble Bookstores:
>
> http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=3D09238..=
.
>
> We hope to have Volume One out in a few days.
>
> (We do everything backwards here at Ishi Press.)
>
> Volume Two contains the really hard stuff like partial
> differentiations, Taylor's Series and how much weight can a cable
> across a river that holds up a bridge hold, and how to calculate the
> orbit of the Planet Jupiter.
>
> Sam Sloan

spammer

Date: 14 Feb 2009 04:54:10
From: samsloan
Subject: Re: Angus Taylor, Author of "Speaking Freely"

Volume 2 of Calculus with Analytic Geometry by Angus E. Taylor is out
today and is available at Barnes and Noble Bookstores:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=0923891250

We hope to have Volume One out in a few days.

(We do everything backwards here at Ishi Press.)

Volume Two contains the really hard stuff like partial
differentiations, Taylor's Series and how much weight can a cable
across a river that holds up a bridge hold, and how to calculate the
orbit of the Planet Jupiter.

Sam Sloan

Date: 14 Feb 2009 04:00:04
From: samsloan
Subject: Re: Angus Taylor, Author of "Speaking Freely"

I should perhaps have mentioned that this entire incident was what
first brought Ronald Reagan to power. Reagan was first elected
Governor of California in 1966 on a campaign promise to crack down on
the students, to whom he referred as "children".

Sam Sloan

Date: 14 Feb 2009 09:32:28
From: Angus Rodgers
Subject: Re: Angus Taylor, Author of "Speaking Freely"

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:48:50 -0800 (PST), samsloan
<[email protected] > wrote:

>Regents Hearst, Pauley and Carter basically wanted to hang the
>students and expel them permanently.

However, this plan was discovered to have two serious flaws.

--
Angus Rodgers