Reviewed by Aaron Philip, Criminology student, Kwantlen
Polytechnic University (March, 2015)
Phillip: Review of
Schwendingers’ ...Berkeley School?
Who Killed
the Berkeley School is a story of struggle and tragedy,
as the name suggests. The struggle is against what Jeff Shantz
calls one of Ronald Reagan’s forgotten “frontal assaults on
dissent and resistance.”1
It was in 1977 that the Berkeley radical school was defeated, as
Ronald Reagan, the Regent of UC Berkeley, Governor of California
and soon to be the next President of the United States acted
against them. Told from the perspective of central participants,
Julia and Herman Schwendinger, the book reads partly as a
historical account and partly as a eulogy, chapter one details
an “autopsy conducted after an assassination”2 The book’s goal
seems to be to provide insight into what happened at the
University of California—Berkeley and
provide lessons for contemporary radicals and activists. On this
basis, the book will be reviewed, in how well it meets this
goal.
The impact of the Berkeley school
is made very clear from the foreword by Jeff Shantz “The Berkeley
School radicals identified the real sources of social harm in
society-state, military and corporate actions. They also insisted
on calling these harms by their proper name—crimes.”
3 Jeff goes on to
declare that the Berkeley school is a model which critical
criminology should strive toward.
Main
Arguments and Insights
Based on the titles of the chapters and
the foreword, the book sets up a narrative of uncovering and
exposing the “friendly fascists” that are all around us and seeing
the deeper meaning behind power relations in society and how this
leads to oppression. The academic institution is joined with the
community as the Berkeley school offered means of resistance for
students and community activists.
Early on, the book identifies the
enemies of the Berkeley school as government and university
officials, including faculty whose senses had been dulled by
McCarthyism and the Cold War.4
It seems to be a constant feature of politics that blind
patriotism will allow otherwise rational and educated people to
rationalize the images of war and support their government in
campaigns of repression and terror.5 Also in chapter 2,
the powerful regents are introduced, the American elites who own
or sit on the board of directors for many transnational
corporations. The beginnings of the theory of overlapping nodes of
power, a central feature of critical theory are to be found here,
what Dwight D Eisenhower first called “the Military-Industrial
complex.” Regents sitting on the Lockheed Corporation, Institute
for Defense Analysis, amoung others set the stage for a
confrontation when the radical school of criminology at Berkeley
decided to resist the powerful capitalists. To suppress this
development the book provides a logical account detailing how the
regents attempted to silence the critics of the state-crime empire
by “seizing the power to veto tenure recommendations—a power
traditionally given to UC chancellors.”6 Throughout the book,
footnotes are engaged to add additional background information and
detail.
The Berkeley School fights the
stereotype of radicals as ““extremists” and “utopians” with
ultra-left aims.”7 The book
argues that the radicals were of diverse backgrounds and interests
but were brought together by a mutual awareness of the unjust
oppression endemic to a corrupt capitalist society and a desire to
be a part of the social movements that characterized this period
of history.
A point that is pertinent today, in the
age of mass uprisings around the world, including the Arab Spring
of 2011, Occupy Wall Street protests, and uprisings in Brazil and
other countries plagued by inequality and corruption, is the
comparison of how violence is being used. The protests organized
by Berkeley were largely peaceful, and the odd violent protestor,
acting outside the intent of the majority gathered through
“gratuitous, spontaneous and disorganized violence” “pales in
comparison with the organized and systematic clubbing and beatings
by the police.”8 Often the
message of a protest can be lost when violence enters the debate.
Most people who may otherwise be sympathetic to an oppressed
group’s movement now have an excuse to ignore them. The right-wing
critics of fox news cannot however ignore the approach taken to
violence by either side in this case, as the example of October
18, 1967 places 200 police officers who must have been pumped up
on testosterone “kicked, clubbed and beat 4,000 unarmed and
nonviolent demonstrators.”9
The book features press, physician, police and protestor accounts
which include amoung them the description of a “massacre.”10 A open letter in
the Daily Californian condemning the
police for brutality and violations of the law can be seen as a
model for resistance for contemporary citizens disaffected by
police actions and seeking an avenue for resistance. Although the
Berkeley school is no longer as it once was, the legacy can be
used to continue to resist, as videos emerge like the most recent
police shooting of a homeless man in Skid Row Los Angeles that
made international headlines March 2 2015.
General
Strengths
Much of the book focuses on how
Berkeley school engaged the community and offered avenues for
resistance. One of the most pertinent examples is the first
anti-rape group in the United States, Bay Area
Women Against Rape.11This group identified a gap in the criminal
justice system and lobbied for humane treatment of rape victims
while taking initiative to establish support networks and
disseminating information related to rapists’ Modus
Operandi, as well as advocating a victim-oriented
approach and providing sensitivity training to police officers who
would hand rape cases. 12
Descriptions and explanations of the
radicals themselves was a major strength of the book, as it
succeeded in portraying radicals as human beings, who held the
strength of their conviction and are relatable people, reacting to
events unfolding outside the school. The effect is to build a
Pathos credibility, especially mentions of the Irish Pub. Rather
than appearing as scary radicals out to burn the constitution and
blur all lines of familiarity, the book portrays the Berkeley
school as rooted in the liberal culture of the San Francisco Bay
Area, and as attempting to bring about more “equality, justice and
participatory democracy.”13
They were trying to make the United States into the place
Americans already think it is.
The fact that the book is available
freely online is also a strengths, as it seems the authors are
more concerned with releasing their story, than with making a
profit. The credibility of the argument is solidified through
this.
Criticism
Although the book engages a dramatic
style and tells the story with flair, the excessive detail and
understandably numerous characters involved makes it more
difficult to sort through the details to find the core of the
narrative. Although footnotes were used to provide additional
information, further versions could be edited down for readability
and flow.
Overall the book meets its objective of
providing insight into the assassination of the Berkeley school
and stands up to critical review. Other possible criticisms may be
centered around a biased account of the historical events, but
this is to be expected given the book is authored by participants
rather than neutral observers or researchers.
Attribution to include the author or artist's name, date of first publication, and the name of our journal: Radical Criminology. ISSN 1929-7904 (Print) | ISSN 1929-7912 (Online)
