Free Universities, Anti-Universities, and Liberation Schools: Education as Protest in the 1960s

• In Event: Remembering the 1960s

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of experimental education projects—free universities, anti-universities, and liberation schools—were created throughout the United States and around the world. This paper will consider experimental education as a critical form of protest for many political and social movements during this period. The protesting nature of these projects can be seen within the dissenting rhetoric they used to define themselves against society and the educational system. Manifestos and founding documents are filled with a litany of critiques, some targeted directly at the perceived shortcomings of nearby institutions and others launched more broadly at technocracy, racism, sexism, and capitalism. Yet many of these educational projects were also aspirational, with participants aiming to build community and prefigure alternative models of society.

My paper will draw upon three experimental education projects—The Free University of NYC, the Anti-University of London, and the Malcolm X Liberation University—to show how dissenting educational projects were established as dynamic spaces of critique and vision. Established in 1965, the Free University of New York brought together artists and thinkers on the left who volunteered to teach courses not offered in traditional institutions, aiming to build a radical intellectual community in New York City. In 1968, the Anti-University of London was created as a hub of dissent, discovery, and discussion in Europe, challenging conventional pedagogy and providing a space for the exchange of ideas outside formal institutions. The next year, in 1969, Duke students and community members frustrated by the racism and exclusivity of the American education system launched the Malcolm X Liberation University to provide an educational base for the black community and support the Black Liberation struggle. The organizers of MXLU recognized the importance of dissenting education for personal growth and collective action.

These learning experiments lasted only a few years, but they left rich records that allow us to explore their critical and imaginative activities. In my discussion, I will show artwork from course catalogues and posters and draw upon course descriptions to bring to life the vibrant energy of educational experimentation. My paper will also discuss the movement of ideas and thinkers—Herbert Marcuse, Allen Ginsberg, Stokely Carmichael, Ella Baker, and many and others—within and among these experimental education spaces. In the past few years, particularly in the wake of the Occupy movement and the 2016 Presidential election, there has been a resurgence of free universities and grassroots education spaces attempting to build radical learning communities. My work will consider historical models as a way of thinking through the possibilities of dissenting education today.

Author

• Laura Nelson, Harvard University