20.

MIDPENINSULA FREE UNIVERSITY. A group of five semester catalogues:

i) Summer 1968; ii) Fall 1968 (+ variant ‘censored’ edition); iii) Winter 1968; iv) Spring 1970; v) Spring-Summer 1971. Formats and pagination vary (32pp., 60pp., 48pp., 56pp., and 20pp.). Illustrated, including some b/w photographs (a full-frontal photograph of two hippie students inside the front cover of the Fall 1968 catalogue led to it being re-issued with the offending image censored, “for those of us under 18”).

Located in the Midpeninsula south of San Francisco, the MFU came about after the merger in 1967 of The Experiment at Stanford and the Free University of Palo Alto, which had been running classes since early 1966 (see item #15). The preamble in each of the catalogues here describes the MFU’s governing structure and political rationale, and its commitment to “the emergence of a new politics, a new economics, a new religion, a new education, and a new version of humanity, based on libertarian, democratic, and communitarian values.” Its foundational belief that personal and interpersonal transformation were essential to political transformation was reflected in the significant number of courses devoted to personal growth, in part due to the arrival of teachers from the Esalen Institute in nearby Big Sur.

Printed below its hippie student photograph, the Fall 1968 catalogue provides an outline of its course classification, contrasting it with those offered by traditional universities: “Sun, palms, and celebration of all the rites of life. Wine Making, Computer Methods, Astrology, Primitive Body Movement, Rhythms of Intimacy, Psychodrama, Chinese Poetry, Karate, Doctors and Patience, Political Occultism, Advanced Fantasy, Urban Guerrilla Warfare, Black Liberation for Whites, Peace Games, Survival, Ecstasy, Progressive Relaxation. Little or no preparation necessary or promised.” Ralph Metzner (“Centering and Grounding”), Gavin Arthur (“Jungian Astrology”), and Eric ‘Big Daddy’ Nord (“Mind Unfucking”) are just three of the course leaders whose names appear in the catalogues.

Alongside the proliferation of courses in encounter groups and psychodrama, computer technology classes also featured, with titles such as “How to End the IBM Monopoly”, “Computers Now”, and “Algebra in Computerland”, run by Larry Tesler and Bob Albrecht, both of whom, with fellow MFU teacher Jim Warren, contributed to the growth of Silicon Valley.

The MFU also sponsored numerous community activities, including street concerts, a restaurant, a store, and a print shop, as well as organising a series of Liberation Festivals and Be-Ins. The June 1968 Be-In, advertised on the back cover of that year’s Summer catalogue, announces the appearance of Charley Musselwhite, Sons of Champlin and Mad River, though doesn’t mention Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary, both of whom spoke at the event. The following semester’s catalogue lists a Robbie Basho concert at Stanford, among other ‘Special Projects’. The MFU also owned and subsidised The Free You, an in-house newsletter that published writers such as Wendell Berry, Ken Kesey, Thom Gunn, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, Robert Stone and Richard Brautigan (see item #21).

During its heyday, the MFU was one of the largest of the Free Universities, with an initial enrollment of 650 students, rising between 1968 and 1970 to over 1200, and despite having no campus (classes were taught in homes and storefronts) it offered a large number of courses, ranging in number from 150 up to 300. Following a move in April 1970 from its offices in Menlo Park to a Co-operative Coffeehouse-Restaurant called the Full Circle in Palo Alto, and the arrival of a new, younger and more politically active left-wing leadership, membership fell dramatically. Then, after the Full Circle closed down in December 1970, and enrollment dwindled to 70, the MFU finally disbanded in July 1971.

Like most other free universities, the MFU originated in the wake of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley as a New Left-inspired reaction to the traditional university, but more so than any other radical anti-institution, the MFU expanded to include and embody almost every strain of the ‘60s counterculture, anticipating and promoting the explosion of the New Age and human potential movements in the decade that followed.

Foredges of Fall 1968 (first issue) slightly torn; Spring-Summer 1971 tabloid newspaper format, slightly worn; o/w Very Good. Mailing addresses to back covers of four catalogues, two of them to Michael Rossman, a FSM spokesman, prominent Movement activist and co-founder of the Free University of Berkeley.

(6 items).

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