The Rise of Faculty Activism

By the mid-‘80s, the global disarmament movement was starting to chip away at the hawkish policies of the Reagan administration in the US and the Margaret Thatcher administration in the United Kingdom. It would later be cited by Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as an inspiration for his efforts to negotiate an end to the arms race with the West.(48) Meanwhile, the student-led UC severance movement was making major inroads among the UC faculty body at large.

Clearly, the majority of students already supported the severance movement's agenda, and it was only a matter of time before the faculty caught up. By 1982, every student government at every UC campus had passed a resolution opposing UC ties to the labs.(49) Voters in UCSB's spring 1985 student election overwhelmingly respond “yes” to the question of whether they would like to see the UC end its relationship with the Los Alamos and Livermore labs (64.6 percent of 2,462 voters).(50)

Until the ‘80s, faculty members had, for the most part, been much less visible within the grassroots UC severance movement than had students and community organizations. Although numerous professors and lecturers were members of the UC Nuclear Weapons Labs Conversion Project, they largely played an ancillary role, not serving as movement spokespeople.

One exception (of several) was Berkeley Physics Professor Charles Schwartz, who began a campaign in 1970 to obtain the right to present a single lecture at the Livermore Lab. Schwartz' intention was to present an alternative viewpoint to lab employees, who were entirely shuttered away from any dissenting perspectives, as well as give lie to the labs' claim of being sites for open, objective research and inquiry. Schwartz took his case to court and won in 1980. The Regents delayed things for several more years, before Schwartz was finally able to present the lecture in 1985.(51)

The first major indication of growing faculty sentiment in favor of lab severance was registered by the UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate in 1983, which voted 48-2 in favor a resolution calling for the Regents to cut ties to both labs. “We do not believe that it is part of the University's mission to be involved in the design and development of weapons,” the resolution read, “nor do we believe that the University or any committee of the Faculty can realistically oversee and control what is done at these institutions.”(52)

Notably, when asked whether the UCSC faculty's decision would impact the UC's involvement with the facilities, UC President David Saxon replied: “I wouldn't predict it… the faculty has (sic) no control over the labs.”(53)

The combined pressure from both the student and faculty forces did prompt Saxon to make a concession, albeit a predictable one: In 1985, he commissioned another faculty report on the UC-weapons labs relationship. This time, the faculty committee was chaired by Malcolm Jendresen of UC San Francisco. It also included UCSB Physics Professor Walter Kohn (who won a Nobel Prize in 1998) and Professor Karl Hufbauer, both of whom were staunch advocates of lab severance.

Taking seriously the Regents' claim that they “manage” the labs to provide a “public service,” the committee defined five criteria for evaluating the UC's effectiveness in the purported “public service" role:

1. The activity is supportive of the University’s primary missions of teaching and research
2. The activity is consistent with the University’s commitment to freedom of expression
3. The activity can be performed at least as effectively by the University as by other institutions
4. The activity has no serious adverse effects on the University
5. The activity contributes to human well-being(54)

During the interim period of 1986-89, before the report was released, faculty members such as Kohn developed into primary movement spokespeople. This period coincided with a marked decline in student organizing and direct actions, perhaps because institutional leaders had started to adopt a modified version of the movement's agenda. In 1987, the California State Legislature adopted language in its annual education budget calling for greater oversight to take place at the labs. The language was authored by long-time activist and Los Angeles Assemblyman Tom Hayden.(55)

In December 1988, the CA Assembly Subcommittee on Higher Education, chaired by Hayden, conducted a legislative symposium at Berkeley. The symposium included testimonies by a number of UC faculty members, lab officials, lab whistleblower Dr. Ray Kidder, Jackie Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation, Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), Dan Galpren of Sacramento Nuclear Weapons Freeze, Ephraim Kahn of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and student Damien Pierce of the group Lab Watch at Berkeley.(56)

The Livermore lab continued to be a major site for anti-nuclear resistance from 1986-89.  In fact, the largest of the series of Livermore direct actions occurred in 1987, when 2,000 people were arrested and subsequently jailed for 11 days.(57)

In November 1989, the Jendresen Report was released, and it breathed new life into the UC severance movement. All but one member of the committee concluded that the “public service” criteria had not been met. Six out of the eight committee members concluded that “the University should, in a timely and orderly manner, phase out its responsibility for operating the Laboratories while maintaining its cooperative relationship with them in teaching and research.”  In other words, the committee's overall recommendation was UC severance from the labs.(58)

UC faculty members, community groups, students, and even some state legislators quickly launched a 10-month campaign to publicize the report's findings in advance of the Regents' September 1990 meeting, where the Board would vote once again on a five-year renewal of its contract with the DOE. The NGOs that participated in the campaign included Physicians for Social Responsibility, Tri-Valley CAREs, Elders for Survival, and the Western States Legal Foundation.(59)

Meanwhile, the Cold War ended. On July 6, 1990 President George H.W. Bush, flanked by the leaders of the NATO Alliance, informed his former enemies in Moscow, “We are no longer adversaries.”(60)

In 1990, the UC Academic Senate conducted a UC-wide faculty survey on whether the UC Regents should implement the Jendresen Report's recommendations. The support for the severance proposal was overwhelming. 3,089 (64.6%) faculty members responded favorably, with 1,702 (34.6%) voting against. At UC Santa Cruz, the margin was enormous, 195 to 29; at UC Santa Barbara, 312 to 75. The campus with the smallest margin of victory was UC Irvine (204 to 201).(61)

Indeed, a tremendous amount of momentum seemed to be gathering in the severance movement's favor. In June, the Regents held a panel discussion with members of the Jendresen Committee to discuss their report. Walter Kohn and Mel Jendresen spoke on behalf of the faculty for close to 20 minutes.(62) On September 12, 1990, fourteen CA State Assemblymen wrote to the Regents, urging them not to renew the contact and instead “focus the University's work on building a peaceful and environmentally-secure world.”(63)

Meanwhile, the faculty and community groups conducted intense outreach efforts, garnering considerable media coverage throughout California and even nationwide. The Los Angeles Times published an article by Robert Bellah (sociology professor at UC Berkeley ), Owen Chamberlain (professor of physics at Berkeley – worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos ), and Walter Kohn on July 31, 1990.

“The state and the nation will be much better served if this great public university phases out an anachronistic management function and focuses its efforts on its primary missions of teaching and research, as well as on public service activities appropriate to a university,” the faculty members wrote. “Weapons in peacetime just do not qualify.”(64)

The confluence of faculty activism, the findings of the Jendresen Report, and the post-Cold War international climate convinced many members of the movement that success was within their grasp. Many faculty members, including Kohn, had gone on record saying they thought it likely the Regents would vote for severance.(65).

In the end, the Regents' decision was just as lopsided as ever: On Sept. 22, 1990, they voted 13-3-1 in favor of contract renewal.(66)

Over the next decade, the severance movement almost completed dissolved, with the exception of a few core faculty members and community members. The Regents did grant one concession, which had been called for by both the Hayden-led State Legislature committee and the Jendresen Committee report: the formation of a “University Committee on Research Policy on the University's Relations with the Department of Energy Laboratories” (UCORP).(67)

The creation of UCORP proved to be little more than a token gesture, and the committee lacked any real power. It produced its first (and, to date, only) report in 1996, concluding that “the University's management of the LANL and LLNL does not, on balance, fulfill… conditions of appropriate public service,” while reiterating the Jendresen Report's call for severance.(68) The Regents ignored the advice.

All in all, disarmament activism as a whole barely registered a blip on the UC student radar in the 1990s. At any given point during the mid-late-‘90s, a detailed survey of UC campuses might not have turned up a single student actively working for UC-lab severance or nuclear disarmament.


Navigation

Introduction
Part 1 - Los Alamos: "Born at the Crosshairs"
Part 2 - The First Disarmament Movement Wave and the ‘60s
Part 3 - Challenging the UC's “Mantle of Legitimacy”
Part 4 - The Early-‘80s: A Series of Radical and Creative Actions
Part 5 - The Rise of Faculty Activism
Part 6 - A New Generation Emerges
Part 7 - Moving Forward
Works Cited