JSTOR Daily | Wikimedia Commons
In 1966, the American Council of Education chose Berkeley as the nation’s “best balanced distinguished university.” But for Reagan’s gubernatorial campaign, campus radicalism was a goldmine. Rhetorically, he tied the “rioting” and “anarchy” of Berkeley students to academic freedom run amok and communist professors indoctrinating the next generation. He promised that, if elected, he would institute a code of conduct for faculty and appoint former CIA chief John McCone to investigate why “the campus has become a rallying point for Communism and a center of sexual misconduct.”