The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive student protest between the 1964-1965 academic year at the University of California, Berkeley. Thousands of students participated in the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students demanded the university administration lift the ban on campus political activities and acknowledge the student’s rights to free speech and academic freedom.
The FSM successfully caused university officials to back down, and by 1965, the new acting chancellor established provisional rules for political activity on the Berkeley campus. The movement massively contributed to the civil liberties movement in the 1960s and began a series of student activism.