The Midpeninsula Free University (MFU) was one of the largest and most successful of the many free universities that sprang up on and around college campuses in the mid-1960s in the wake of the Free Speech Movement at UC-Berkeley and the nationwide anti-war Teach-ins which followed. Like other free universities, it featured an open curriculum—anyone who paid the nominal membership fee ($10) could offer a course in anything—marxism, pacifism, candle making, computers, encounter, dance, literature, walking in the woods, whatever. Courses were publicized in illustrated catalogs, issued quarterly and widely distributed. It had no campus; classes were taught in homes and storefronts. Its magazine-style, illustrated newsletter, The Free You, published articles, features, fiction, poetry, and reviews contributed by both members and nonmembers. The MFU sponsored, Be-Ins, street concerts, a restaurant, a store, and was actively involved in every aspect of the flourishing counterculture on the Midpeninsula, including the anti-war movement at Stanford.
Read more about Midpeninsula Free University: Aims and Goals, Enrollment, Curriculum and Governance, Community and Political Involvement, The Free You Newsletter, Decline and Demise, People, FBI Surveillance
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or university:
“[The Declaration of Independence] meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
—Slogan by Czech university students in Prague, November 1989. quoted in Observer (London, Nov. 26, 1989)