Steven G. Ullmann, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School, remembers being in high school in San Francisco when there were student protests at San Francisco State College and seeing the police massing near the campus with their tear gas and rubber-bullet guns. When he and his classmates heard about the deaths of students at Kent State, they rallied around the flagpole and pulled the flag down to half-mast. He describes the sit-ins of Haight-Ashbury. Berkeley, which Ullmann attended, was "one of the very demonstrative universities in terms of the anti-war movement." He recalls that his first class at Berkeley was taught by a hippie-type professor who would discuss how the teachings of Chairman Mao related to calculus. "That was the environment of the day." The professors were anti-authoritarian enough to award a B grade for one paper turned in and an A for two papers turned in, because "grading was a bourgeois concept." Professors often invited students to their homes for informal discussions. Ullmann studied "radical economics" and recalls that the "Group of Four" Harvard professors who had been purged from their positions came to Berkeley because it was a more hospitable environment. He also says, to appreciative laughter, that a photograph of him during a student rally appears in a history textbook.
- Tags
-