Early Life, Education, and Academic Career
Filner was born in Pittsburgh, in Squirrel Hill into a Jewish family. Filner began his advocacy for civil rights at the age of 18 when he became one of the first people to set foot on a Greyhound bus that was headed into the Deep South on what would become known as the Freedom Rides. At the time he was a student at Cornell University where he was studying engineering. In June 1961, after pulling into the bus station in Jackson, Mississippi, Filner was arrested along with his co-riders for "disturbing the peace and inciting a riot." Filner refused to post bond in for his release and remained incarcerated in prison for two months. His case was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States along with all the cases for other activists; the Supreme Court also overturned the laws for racial separation. Filner believes that what he did during that Freedom Ride is what he needed to do to have a say in what was happening. In Filner's own words he says "I've never been a passive person. I've always felt that, if you think something should be changed, it's your responsibility to actively pursue that change."
As a student, he worked on the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper. He graduated from Cornell in 1963 with a degree in chemistry, and earned his doctorate in history of science from the same school six years later. Shortly after earning his PhD, he moved to San Diego, becoming a history professor at San Diego State University for more than 20 years. He resigned his position in 1992 to run for Congress.
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