BERKELEY, Calif. – Anybody who has contempt for those with a liberal bent probably would not think too highly of the Berkeley campus, where the free-speech movement had its beginnings in the sixties—perhaps earlier, as we shall see.

It was a quiet, balmy Sunday when I passed this way recently, chuckling out loud that many of my compassionate conservative friends would castigate me for just mentioning the name Berkeley. Some would be offended that I would take the time to even drive by the historic campus.

The University of California plays football, mind you, and they sometimes take care of business with dispatch in their league, which will have to undergo a renaming now that Colorado and Utah have joined the old Pac 10 Conference.

You can’t deny the institution’s distinguished academic reputation. Berkeley, which the school is referred to more often than it is the University of California, ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top ten in their fields. A Berkeley brochure notes that there are seven Nobel Laureates on campus. Also 28 Mac- Arthur Fellows and four Pulitzer Prize winners who are members of its active faculty.

Proud alumni will remind you that teaching excellence has always been affiliated with the institution. Accepting that as fact requires that we go back to the post–Civil War era when two Georgians—John and Joseph LeConte—were among the original scientists hired by the University of California.

John was acting president of California in 1869 and president from 1875-1881, and Joseph became established as a beloved and admired teacher and researcher.

Whenever I ride by LeConte Hall on the Georgia campus or visit my friend Jim Cobb at his office there, I often wonder how many students pass through the University of Georgia and enter LeConte Hall without ever knowing anything about the men for whom the building is named. There are buildings named for the LeConte brothers here at Berkeley, too, and at the University of South Carolina where they also taught.

“A mountain in the Smokies is named for John, and several landmarks in the High Sierras honor Joseph,” says Lester Stephens, retired history professor at Georgia who is the foremost LeConte expert. His book Joseph LeConte, Gentle Prophet of Evolution is still in circulation.

Once when I was traveling through Yosemite National Park, I happened upon a lodge that is named for Joseph LeConte. There was a rush of excitement, knowing of his affiliation with the University of Georgia. I immediately found the nearest phone and called Lester Stephens to tell him of my good fortune. While it wasn’t a eureka moment, it was fun to browse around a place in the Golden State named for an academic with a Georgia connection.

The accomplishments of the LeConte brothers are extensive, and you might find it interesting as to why they left the University of Georgia. While they were not provincial types, they probably would have preferred to live out their life and conduct their research in their home state. What hastened their move resulted from a row with a narrow-minded president, Alonzo Church, over a requirement that had them monitoring student behavior. They disagreed with the administration’s decree and left.

Since they embraced the concept that the world is older than Biblical accounts suggest, Stephens suspects that stance was the real issue with President Church. At Berkeley, such views were never a problem. Their departure is a reminder that conflicts between administrations and faculty on campuses is not anything new.

The LeContes were never called on to serve as dormitory proctors at Berkeley, and their views of evolution were never an administrative concern. You might say that the free-speech tradition at Berkeley took root when two Georgians settled here in 1868-69.