By Kate Rix
When John Searle came to teach at Berkeley in 1959, he left what may have been a dream job for many other philosophy professors: a faculty position at Oxford’s Christ Church College.
"I was at Oxford for a total of seven years, and the last three I was teaching elegantly dressed men who were well-educated before I got near them,” recalls Searle, seated in a small conference room upstairs from his office in Moses Hall. “Students at Berkeley are more enthusiastic, more deeply involved. I love it here at Berkeley. It has so much vitality.”
It was 50 years ago this year that Searle moved his young family from Oxford to Berkeley. Born in Denver, he was attracted to Berkeley’s proximity to first-rate skiing in the Sierras, as well as to its reputation as a place that aims to be “the best university in the world.”
“I loved Oxford but I always felt a foreigner there,” Searle says. “I had an Ivy League offer that was very attractive, but Berkeley just seemed intellectually outstanding. Just paradise.”
Searle’s work as a philosopher examines the role of language in human consciousness and society. He helped found Berkeley’s pioneering Cognitive Science Program, and in 18 scholarly books and over 200 articles, he has advanced philosophical understanding of the ways that language, the mind and society connect.
“How is it that when I make these noises I succeed in performing speech acts or communication?” he asks. “That’s the philosophy of language.” That investigation led to an exploration of consciousness. “How is it possible that the stuff inside my skull can cause consciousness, and I can direct thoughts?” he asks.
That pursuit led to considerations about society. “We create society with language. We use language to create marriage and cocktail parties and money and so on,” says Searle. “These things all exist, but only because we think they exist.”
In 2000 Searle, who is Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy, received the Jean Nicod Prize, awarded each year to a leading philosopher of the mind. Four years later he received the National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony.
On February 23, the Philosophy Department hosted a two hour public event with six speakers celebrating Searle’s 50 years of distinguished service to the Berkeley campus. This was followed by a reception hosted by Chancellor and Mary Catherine Birgeneau, along with faculty members and friends at University House.
His half a century at Berkeley involved him in the politics of his time. Searle had not been at Berkeley for more than five years before he stepped into the fray of the early Free Speech Movement, eventually becoming the first tenured professor to join. He recalls his outrage in 1962, when a vice-chancellor would not allow him to speak at the on-campus screening of a film about the House Committee on Un-American Activities. “So when students came to me in early 1964 and said their free speech was being abridged, I went out and made speeches on Sproul Plaza,” he recalls. “It’s not my style to get up on top of police cars, but I did lead the march to the Regents along with other people. The movement grew faster than anybody expected and it was immensely successful.”
He remained involved to the end, serving as chairman of the Academic Freedom Committee of the Academic Senate and helping draft the Dec. 8, 1964 resolution that affirmed the free speech rights of students over the wishes of administrators. Searle later wrote about the experience in The Campus War.
Searle reflects that Berkeley changed as a result of that period, but has retained its essential core principles.
“I came here at the end of the ’50s, and then the ’60s made tremendous cultural and political differences,” he says. “But the most important development in the past few decades is that intellectual values have been maintained as the central values of the university.”
The Free Speech Movement was a “significant” event in Searle’s life, but not its essential feature. “My real work was not done in the fall of ’64,” he says.
As he describes it, his real work is teaching and writing.
“I love teaching at Berkeley. The undergraduates here are very unusual. I get a lot of ideas from my time with them,” he says. Searle notes that he continues, after 50 years, to see very high quality students at Berkeley. “They want to challenge you on what you say, read more than the assignments require,” he says.
Reflecting on Berkeley’s next fifty years, Searle sums up by saying, “Even in tough economic times, we have to continue to compete for top faculty. It shouldn’t be an act of charity to teach at Berkeley. The secret to a great university is a great faculty.”
