Revolution interrupted: Chronicling and comparing student protest movements at Stanford University, San Francisco State College, and the University of California at Berkeley, 1964--1970

This dissertation chronicles and compares the student protest movements at Stanford University, San Francisco State College, and the University of California at Berkeley during the same time period (1964–1970), and in the same geographic region (the San Francisco Bay Area). I chose these schools because I believed that given the close geographical proximity of the college and universities, the fact that each school had a local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), movements for an Ethnic Studies department, an organized anti-war movement, and that these uprisings occurred in roughly the same time period (1964–1970) there would be a more pronounced trans-university student movement engaged in political protest affecting the political culture of the San Francisco Bay Area. To my surprise, the factors identified above did not have the effect I predicted. Rather, these movements remained local affairs—rarely going beyond the boundaries of the university or college campus—making the degree of interaction between students groups at each school neglible. The political and social issues that surrounded the protest movements at each school were more different than similar, but they were not so dissimilar as to preclude any sort of comparison. These comparisons—which are preceded by an historical chronicle of the protest movements at each school, and then explored in the final chapter—revolve around four points: (1) A refutation of the elite manipulation theory of social protest as measured by the degree of student mobilization at each school. (2) The role of the media in helping and hampering the political agenda of the student activists. (3) The police reaction to the protests. (4) The ideology of the protest movements and their reaction to liberal-pluralism. I hope that by comparing these three schools, one will be able to have a better understanding of both the particularities and larger themes that comprise these movements in order to comprehend why and how these movements came into being, what they were protesting against, what political and structural reforms they were able to make in the college and universities, and why they ultimately disintegrated.