A timely reminder of the danger to civil liberties when the FBI targets dissidents comes in a riveting series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle that describe J. Edgar Hoover's 1960s vendetta against the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and its president, Clark Kerr. Information released under FOIA after a reporter's seventeen-year fight reveals the bureau plotted with the CIA to harass student protesters, gave false background information about Kerr to the White House and mounted a disinformation campaign against the school (see www.sfgate.com).

  BUSH AND FREE SPEECH AT OSU

President Bush's June 14 speech on the "culture of service" at the Ohio State commencement was said by his flacks to have been inspired by Adam Smith, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. OSU's civics lesson to grads was to tell them if they protested the President's talk they'd be arrested. When Bush arrived at the event, ten students rose and turned their backs; some were expelled by police.

  NOT IN OUR NAME

A little-reported statement by prominent writers, actors and academics protests that the United States has "declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression." Titled "Not in Our Name," the statement enumerates US depredations against peace and human rights (see nionstatement@hotmail.com). We reported on the founding of the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace (Brit Tzedek v'Shalom). The first meeting of the New York City chapter will be June 24, 7-9 pm, New School University, 66 West 12th Street (hemshekh@aol.com).