Interview with Arthur M. Eisenson : The Movement Oral History Project
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Art Eisenson begins the interview by describing the influence of his upbringing in a Jewish family in suburban New York, touching on his family’s ties to the Democratic Party and local unions, as well as the impact of major events of the time, including the civil rights movement and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Arriving at Stanford as a graduate student in the Department of English in 1963, Eisenson describes the genesis of the Graduate Coordinating Committee (GCC), which formed around free speech and took its cue from the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, and later joining protests against the Vietnam War following a series of teach-ins.
- Art Eisenson begins the interview by describing the influence of his upbringing in a Jewish family in suburban New York, touching on his family’s ties to the Democratic Party and local unions, as well as the impact of major events of the time, including the civil rights movement and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Arriving at Stanford as a graduate student in the Department of English in 1963, Eisenson describes the genesis of the Graduate Coordinating Committee (GCC), which formed around free speech and took its cue from the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, and later joining protests against the Vietnam War following a series of teach-ins. In discussing his campus activism, Eisenson moves through his involvement with the Stanford Committee for Peace in Vietnam (SCPV), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Venceremos and the Revolutionary Union, and the April Third Movement (A3M), especially the sit-ins at the Applied Electronics Laboratory (AEL) and Stanford president Wallace Sterling’s office in protest of the Stanford Research Institute’s contributions to the Vietnam War. He also describes experiencing a personal “rubicon,” a realization of the lengths he would go to in order to defend friends and beliefs if threatened. Eisenson also describes off-campus activism, including handing out leaflets to workers at a plant manufacturing napalm and supporting striking workers at a steel plant in Milpitas. Eisenson left Stanford in 1969, moving to Los Angeles, where he worked in the entertainment industry and became active in the Writers Guild. Throughout the interview, he aims to give a sense of the cultural milieu of the time, including the impact of books, movies, and music on his generation.
Description
Type of resource | sound recording-nonmusical, text |
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Extent | 4 audio files; 1 text file |
Place | Stanford (Calif.) |
Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Date created | April 16, 2018 - 2018-05-11 |
Language | English |
Digital origin | born digital |
Creators/Contributors
Interviewee | Eisenson, Arthur M. |
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Creator | Eisenson, Arthur M. |
Interviewer | Ochavillo, Vanessa |
Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Subjects
Subject | Bay Area Revolutionary Union |
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Subject | Venceremos (Organization) |
Subject | College Students > Political Activity > United States |
Subject | Student movements |
Subject | Anti-war demonstrations |
Genre | Interview |
Bibliographic information
Biography |
In 1963, Art arrived at Stanford to become a writer. Until then, he lived all his life in New York, growing up in a New York suburb and then studying English and comparative literature at Columbia College of Columbia University. In part to avoid the military draft, he went on to pursue a master’s degree at Stanford. As a graduate student, he began his activism with the Graduate Coordinating Committee, followed by the Stanford Committee for Peace in Vietnam and Students for a Democratic Society.
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Transcript |
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Finding Aid | |
Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wk832wz4281 |
Location | SC1432 |
Repository | Stanford University. Libraries. Department of Special Collections and University Archives |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. For commercial permission requests, please contact the copyright holders.
- Copyright
- Copyright © Arthur M. Eisenson and Vanessa Ochavillo, 2018. All rights reserved.
Collection
The Movement oral history project, 2018
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