Sixty years after UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement ignited a wave of campus activism, the university’s Ethnic Studies Department is one of its enduring legacies. Born from the demands of student activists who, like those in the Free Speech Movement (FSM), sought to reshape academia, the department symbolizes the intersection of free speech, academic freedom and social justice.
The Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) — a multi-racial coalition of students who advocated for a relevant and robust education — played a crucial role in realizing this vision, making UC Berkeley a site of groundbreaking work in the field.
“The TWLF and FSM challenged the very structure of the university, advocating for academic spaces to address the histories and realities of racism and colonialism at home and abroad,” Ethnic Studies Department Chair Keith Feldman said. “Their struggles laid the groundwork for generations of students and faculty committed to knowledge production in the service of building a better, more vital world for all.”
Harvey Dong, an Ethnic Studies professor and a veteran of Berkeley’s TWLF 1969 strikes, said that the FSM created a foundation for the TWLF’s activism. Many FSM advocates stood in solidarity with the TWLF in 1969, as both movements were part of a broader continuation of civil rights struggles.
The TWLF’s original vision — a Third World College — was meant to serve community needs and resist both racism and imperialism, said Dong. While that vision has yet to be fully realized, each cohort of students has worked toward it, he said, seeing the Ethnic Studies Department as an “unfinished project.”
“The FSM was a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement, and the TWLF strike was a continuation of the Black Power phase of the Civil Rights Movement — the earlier FSM resistance set the stage for the struggles that followed,” Dong said.
This unfinished project, Feldman said, is visible today across a wide range of contexts, including students’ ongoing involvement in advancing Ethnic Studies in K-12 education, and in defending bedrock commitments to academic freedom and social critique.
“The TWLF’s vision lives on in the ways that students bring contemporary struggles into the classroom,” he said. “It’s a dynamic tradition capable of reckoning with current issues, while also staying grounded in the formative values of access, solidarity and social transformation.”
The legacy of cross-cultural solidarity remains central to Ethnic Studies today, even as the field has evolved to address contemporary challenges. Feldman said that the TWLF’s emphasis on solidarity across differences laid a foundation for the department’s mission to this day. As students from various backgrounds came together during the strikes during the 1960s, they built a movement that not only resulted in the establishment of Ethnic Studies but also reshaped the university’s values.
That solidarity has continued, as seen in more recent campaigns against state violence near and far, and in support of curricular initiatives like the American Culture requirement, research initiatives like the Center for Race and Gender, and expanded opportunities for marginalized communities to cultivate a sense of belonging at Berkeley, in the form of the Multicultural Community Center, Feldman said.
Ethnic Studies’ history of activism offers current students a blueprint for addressing contemporary issues, such as institutional mistrust and racial injustice, Dong said. He believes that situating today’s challenges within the context of past movements like the FSM and TWLF helps students understand the importance of fighting for a multiracial democracy.
As UC Berkeley celebrates the 60th-anniversary celebration of the Free Speech Movement, both Dong and Feldman hope students and the public will recognize the importance of keeping these histories alive.
“We are currently at a similar impasse facing war, racism, institutional decay, which is calling for new generations of students to look back at the lessons of the past to build upon and apply the lessons from the past to the present,” Dong said.
Today, Ethnic Studies remains important for both academic inquiry and social justice. Feldman said the embrace of new knowledge he sees in his students, many of whom arrive at the university with little access to the histories that shape their world, is one of his greatest joys and honors. For these students, situating themselves in history for the first time is often a powerful revelation.
“It is so inspiring to see students learn about histories that they were never taught in school, and that might not have been shared by their family or elders — to see their excitement and enthusiasm — it's just golden,” Feldman said.
[For more on the Third World Liberation Front at UC Berkeley, see: twlf.berkeley.edu]