title: HOW REAGAN DEALT WITH RADICAL PROTESTERS At Berkeley University [VIDEO]
text: Reagan explains why the protesters got out of hand to the reporters:  All of it began the first time some of you who know better and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they had the right to chose the the laws they would obey, as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest. Compare and contrast Reagan s decision to address the unlawful behavior of these protesters, to Barack Obama hiding from the press, yet meeting with organizers and agitators of these radical groups to offer encouragment to the violent, unlawful protesters we are seeing across the United States today.Do you agree or disagree with Reagan s approach to stopping the protesters from breaking the law: In his 1966 campaign for California governor, Republican Ronald Reagan promised to  to clean up the mess at Berkeley.  Reagan was referring to the unrest prevalent not just at the University of California, Berkeley, but on college campuses throughout state. Students and faculty alike were engaged in protests, demonstrations, and strikes related to issues such as the draft, civil rights, discrimination, and women s liberation.In one 1966 campaign speech, Reagan declared that many leftist campus movements had transcended legitimate protest, with the actions of  beatniks, radi cals and filthy speech advocates  having become more to do  with riot ing, with anarchy  than  academic freedom.  He blamed university administrators and faculty, who  press their particular value judgments  on students, for  a leadership gap and a morality and decency gap  on campus, and suggested a code of conduct be imposed on faculty to  force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency. [1]Six months after Reagan took office in 1967, he wrote this letter to Glenn Dumke, the chancellor of San Francisco State College, one of California s largest public institutions. Dumke served as the public face of the state college system, and he was a staunch opponent of radical student and faculty demonstrations. In his letter to Dumke, Reagan criticizes liberal activism on campuses. He condemns  these people & this trash  on campuses as well as  the excuse of academic freedom & freedom of expression  in allowing protests and demonstrations to go on.  We wouldn t tolerate this kind of language in front of our families,  Reagan writes of campus protesters. He urges Dumke to  lay down some rules of conduct,  promising that  you d have all the backing I could give you. How far do we go in tolerating these people & this trash under the excuse of academic freedom & freedom of expression? Please understand, that question isn t made in any tone of accusation. I mean myself too in that use of the term  we. We wouldn t let a LeRoi Jones in our livingroom and we wouldn t tolerate this kind of language in front of our families. Hasn t the time come to take on those neurotics in our faculty group and lay down some rules of conduct for the students comparable to what we d expect in our own families? If we do and the  we  this time means you d have all the backing I could give you, I believe the people of Calif. would take the state college system to their hearts.[illegible] RonVia: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History