On the side of angels: Reginald Zelnik

Reggie Zelnik, professor of Russian history at Berkeley, died last month. He was 68. I found out a week ago, through the alumni grapevine. I knew he was respected and liked by colleagues and students. What I didn't expect is how widely he was recognized, not only for his scholarship, but also for his advocacy on behalf of the political and academic freedom of students. Both his historical work and his role in the Free Speech Movement is remembered, not just in Berkeley, but also in dailies from The New York Times to The Scotsman.

I was never his student, but I heard him give public speechs on two occasions. The second time was at my history graduation in 1997. As chair of the history department that year, he persuaded Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park and Bay Area resident, to give the commencement speech. Smith was one of Zelnik's favorite novelists, and a sign that his love of Russian culture was deep and abiding.

The first time was in 1996, when he delivered a eulogy for Mario Savio. I don't remember much about his I remember he quoted from the "little known" (his words) Russian political theorist, George Plekhanov. I forgot his words, but from time to time I would try to recall what they were, because they had made an impression on me eight years ago. Well, today is as good as any to actually look them up:

"A great man is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time."

I think the idea embodied here is a wonderful antidote to the culture, and cult, of celebrity. And from reading the obituary, it seems like Plekhanov's words describe Zelnik himself, much as it did his friend.

Professor Zelnik could have mined a narrow, comfortable path in academic life. But he recognized one could not divorce the life of the mind, from life in our world. And our world, our nation, began to experience painful yet necessary changes during the 1960s on many fronts. The most important front was the battle for racial equality.

During the summer of 1964, many students from Northern campuses went to Mississippi to register African-Americans to vote, open schools and community centers for its poorer citizens, and organize alternative to the white racist Mississippi Democratic Party. It was known as Freedom Summer.

Many students were beaten by local thugs and local police. Three Northern volunteers - Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman - were killed. Three local blacks were lynched. Thousands of people were allowed to vote for the first time in their lives. Students returned to school that fall, filled with a sharpened sense of racial injustice and a passionate commitment to protecting civil rights.

When students returned to Berkeley to organize, the administration attempted to prohibit them from advocating political causes. All summer they had organized for civil rights in Mississippi and encountered harsh resistance - and now they discovered resistance and denial of their own political rights on the Berkeley campus!

The rest, they say, is history. You can read the chronology to learn how events unfolded, how five thousand students staged a sit-in, how Savio stood on an abandoned police car and gave his famous speech:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

As a young faculty member, Reggie Zelnik was scarcely older than the students themselves. He understood what they were fighting for in Mississippi, and why they were fighting this battle against the University. He also understood the faculty and administration, and the political pressures upon the university president, Clark Kerr. (Kerr was persecuted by reactionary political forces and eventually fired in 1967 by then-governor Ronald Reagan.) A majority of the faculty eventually sided with the students, whose right to organize and advocate on campus were recognized. Some senior faculty had been persecuted under the Loyalty Oath cases of the early 50s. Due to FSM's victory, neither blanket infringment of academic and political freedom would ever repeat itself at Berkeley.

The consequences of the Free Speech Movement extended beyond college campuses, which one by one conceded to students their inalienable rights. It signified that political discourse had freed itself from straitjacket of the Cold War. The changes wrought by a bunch of ordinary, ideologically diverse professors and students, also helped broaden the scope of history as a discipline. Social historians began to discover peasant movements and worker revolts, and investigate their impact. In 2002, Zelnik himself co-edited The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, whose essays examine these perspectives. His own essay is entitled "On the Side of Angels", examines the role of faculty in supporting the students.

Anyone who reads this little essay of mine is probably literate, politically informed, and interested in the world around us. The question is, do we have the qualities which make us capable of serving the great social needs of our time? Do you possess the passion, imagination, and ethical outlook that demands nothing less than service in the interests of good, and refusal in the face of evil? That's a question only we can answer for ourselves.

Go with the angels, Professor Zelnik.