UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1383
ROSEN, MICHAEL

ROSEN, MICHAEL (1948-)
Undergraduate
At UW: 1966-1970

Interviewed: 	2015
Interviewer: 	Troy Reeves
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce & Troy Reeves
Length: 	2 hours, 44 minutes
Series: 	Vietnam Era at UW-Madison (1st 2 interviews); Capitol Protests, 2011 (3rd int.)

Abstract: In his May 2014 & May 6, 2015 interviews with Troy Reeves, Michael Rosen reflected on his undergraduate years at UW-Madison. He devoted particular attention to the development of his political views during his years at UW and how he was involved in a number of key social movements there during the 1960s, such as the “Dow Riot,” the draft resistance movement, and the Black Students’ Strike. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program, specifically within the “Vietnam Era at UW-Madison” series.

In his May 20, 2015, interview with Reeves, Michael Rosen talked about his involvement in the 2011 Capitol Protests, which was conducted for inclusion in the “Capitol Protests, 2011” oral history series. 

Key Words: University of Wisconsin-Madison; George Mosse; Dow Chemical riot (1967); Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Harvey Goldberg; alcohol on campus; Wisconsin Draft Resistance Union (WDRU); Democratic National Convention 1968; “Black Thursday” (UW-Oshkosh Black students’ demonstration, 1968); Willie Edwards; Black Students’ Strike (1969); Milwaukee; MATC; Wisconsin State Capitol Protests (2011); Governor Scott Walker.

First Interview Session (May 7, 2014): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:23	Question: When did you come to UW and why? Answer: Rosen talked about being a student from 1966-1970, which was a natural choice since his parents had gone to UW. He recalled being a Badger fan very early. 

00:02:52	Follow up: Had you been to Madison before coming? Answer: No; he talked about driving through the Midwest to get to Madison and being impressed by the industry of northeastern Indiana and Chicago. When he arrived at UW, he was impressed by the size of everything, citing the impression Camp Randall made on him.

00:04:54	Question: Had you been involved in politics/activism in New Hampshire? Answer: He explained how he’d been elected president of his class during his junior year, a year during which Cold War conflicts surfaced. He talked about conflicts going on between the very conservative NH legislature and townspeople, and cited the example of defending his younger brother when he held an anti-Vietnam poster and nearly getting run out of the town when he expressed opposition to the prevailing conservative views.

00:09:23	Question: Did you have any inclination to get involved in student activism at UW? Answer: Not really; but he’d read Ramparts, Wright’s Native Son, and Griffin’s Black Like Me in HS, and, being Jewish in a very Anglo-Saxon area, was sensitive to discrimination. Asked by the interviewer about this discrimination, he related his discomfort with strong Christian religious references in Boy Scouts and having someone taunt him calling him “Jew-girl”. He also said his father’s WWII experience sensitized him to the fact that discrimination existed and moral people should fight it.

00:14:41	Question: Classes freshman year? Answer: He only recalled European Social History with George Mosse; he explained why. He related several memories about Mosse that demonstrated Mosse’s interest in his students. Follow up: Were you intending to major in history? Answer: He said he didn’t know what he wanted to major in his first year.

00:17:11	Question: Hangouts that year? Answer: He talked about the dining hall, the Brat House, and the Rathskellar. Follow up: Did you stay in Madison that summer? Answer: No; he went back home.

00:18:28	Question: The (1967) “Dow Riot”? Answer: He talked about being at the riot, though not in the building. Having attended some SDS meetings and being politically active, he tried to get one of his friends out of the building, though he wasn’t particularly committed to that action. Follow up: How did you feel about it? Answer: Like many students, he said, he was outraged at the police’s behavior, noting that they weren’t trained for crowd control at the time.

00:21:57	Question: Where were you staying that year? Answer: He was in an apartment. Follow up: Were you deciding on a major? Answer: He recalled that Mosse’s class had ignited his interest in history, and he related French and African-American history courses that he took that year. He compared the styles and intellectual positions of Mosse and Harvey Goldberg, who was much more flamboyant and radical.

00:26:29	Question: Martin Luther King assassination? Answer: He recalled this being an important turning point for him, motivating him to become more of an activist. He talked about a phone call he made to his parents expressing these ideas. 

00:27:51	Follow up: Was there conflict with your parents over Vietnam? Answer: No; his parents were also opposed to the war. He talked about his father’s WWII experience and his protest efforts against Vietnam at UNH.

00:29:25	Question: Social life during this period? Answer: He related how his social venues shifted from bars and restaurants to people’s apartments, though he discussed the 3.2% beer on campus.

00:31:06	Follow up: But the King assassination was pivotal? Answer: Yes; after the Dow riot, he noted that the “SDS got obliterated” as its leadership got expelled, so a new group called the Wisconsin Draft Resistance Union developed. He listed some of the leaders of the Union—Paul Buhle and others—but noted that he didn’t consider himself leadership at the time.

00:33:31	Follow up: Summer 1968? Answer: During this summer, WDRU decided to do a “Vietnam Summer” patterned after “Mississippi Summer,” so he accompanied a friend to Waukegan IL to organize working class youth against the War. He recounted one encounter the movement had with police in the town, which led to his arrest. Follow up: Anything else from that summer? Answer: He recalled writing an article in which he argued that the content of a movement was important in organizing youth.

00:38:17	Question: The 1968 Democratic National Convention? Answer: He supposed he must have been at home in NH or in Madison, because he wasn’t there. His memory of it was of watching it and being politically outraged.

00:39:44	Follow up: What were your political leanings? Answer: Disgusted with the political system, he couldn’t remember if he voted that year. He recalled being enamored with Kennedy and upset by his assassination, but had become politically alienated during the Johnson ramp-up to Vietnam.

00:42:11	Question: How concerned were you about being drafted? Answer: The year they came out with the numbers, he remembered, he was susceptible to draft. But he failed his physical examination, which he said he prepared for with the help of WDRU.

00:43:34	Follow up: Fall of 1968? Answer: He was living in an apartment on Wilson St, and had become friends with some black students including Willie Edwards. Follow up: The Oshkosh movement? Answer: He said he went up to Oshkosh with some of his friends to try to build support for the movement, but Madison black students didn’t feel they had the organization to do more for Oshkosh students. 

00:46:00	[no question] Continuing to talk about the lead up to the Black Students’ Strike, he recounted how in February 1968, Nathan Hare from SFSU spoke at UW’s “Sympo-sium,” met with Edwards and encouraged him to take a more radical direction. Immediately after this, Edwards called a meeting to announce an upcoming strike.

00:49:55	[no question] He discussed calling the strike, experiencing some early successes, and making a “convoluted” speech calling for white students to support it. Toward the end of the strike, he recalled, some students engaged in some petty violence.

00:51:20	Follow up: The 13 demands? Answer: Rosen didn’t remember this meeting. He also talked about how this semester became a “pass/fail” semester, because after the Black Students’ strike came the TA strike. [Note: TAA Strike occurred the following spring (1970).]

00:53:30	Follow up: Other things you did to help the strike? Answer: He said he wasn’t involved to develop opinions, but rather to help mobilize white students.

00:55:42	Question: Talk about events in your senior year? Answer: He said he participated in these events, but he was getting ready to leave UW and was not thus integral to them. He discussed his reaction to the Sterling Hall bombing.

01:00:40	Question: What were you doing in Milwaukee? Answer: He got a job doing non-union construction immediately out of undergraduate. Follow up: Activism there? Answer: He explained how he got involved in some community activism while in Milwaukee. They discussed the irony that he wasn’t involved in a union in Milwaukee, and he explained how during the 1960s, unions were not perceived as particularly progressive.

01:04:31	Follow up: Reflections? Answer: Rosen said that his time at UW shaped him both as a professional and an activist.

01:06:51	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (May 6, 2015): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:41	Question: Where did Michael Rosen (MR) live his freshman year at UW? Answer: MR lived in (now old) Ogg Hall; he recalled attending his first anti-war meeting there. He explained why he chose not to join that group nor become involved in anti-war activities his first year on campus. 

00:02:42	Question: Did you eat at the residence hall dining? Answer: I ate at the dining near Ogg Hall.  He listed other places near Ogg where he ate, including a McDonalds and the cafeteria (not the Rat) inside Memorial Union. He also noted that 18 year olds could drink 3.2% beer on campus (and elsewhere). 

00:05:00	Question: Athletics events on campus? Answer: MR talked here about being interested in joining the campus soccer club team; he even went to the tryout. He explained why he chose not to try out. He then talked about playing soccer later in life after his son started playing. He recalled going to one football game his senior year; he went to seeing the opponents quarterback (Purdue’s Bob Griese) more than the Badgers.

00:8:30	 Question: Did you partake in political activism?  During the Vietnam Era, did MR socialize for the sake of socializing? Answer: Not really, he essentially said here that he hung out with people who had similar ideas, and his study in history gave him access to professors who shared his views too. He listed others professors here, not just Mosse and Goldberg. While they did party and enjoy themselves, there was always an undercurrent of progressive and anti-war ideas.

00:13:30	Question: Did MR recall students confronting (verbally) professors during lectures? Answer: Again, not really. He said that Goldberg put on a show, so a student would have trouble speaking at all. He spoke here about the varied and interesting he could and did take while at UW, including Physics for Poets and Black Music classes.

00:17:10	Question: Did students interrupt classes? Answer: MR said he remembered those even a time when he interrupted a class himself (probably during the Dow Riot). He noted, with the exception of the Dow Riot, that these disruptions happened in the Spring. He spoke more here about Dow.

00:20:20	[No question.] MR spoke briefly about the events that triggered protests in the Spring of 1968, ’69, and ’70. He talked about his “day to day” organizing and how it compared (or assisted with) these larger Spring outbursts. He also listed a couple of people who worked in student government at UW in the 1960s and MR’s ties to them during his time in Milwaukee.

00:23:10	[No question.] These names led MR to an aside: his involvement, as a newspaper reporter, in the trial of a few Milwaukee cops who murdered a young black man (Daniel Bell) in the late 1950s. The case went to trial because one the cops, in the 1970s, came clean about what happened. This case led MR to reconnect with the then (1970s) assistant district attorney, Tom Schneider, who knew MR from their time in Madison in the 1960s. MR then offered a brief overview of Schneider’s post-UW biography. 

00:27:00	Question: Police v. National Guard? Answer: MR stated the difference this way: the National Guard monitored buildings, the police waded into the fray. MR then spoke of the Wisconsin Public Television’s documentary companion to the book, They Marched into Sunlight. He felt the Madison Police officers interviewed for that articulately well their thoughts about the protestors. This led MR to offer another aside: A man, last name Bogans (sic?), befriended MR particularly during the 2011 Capitol Protests. But during the Vietnam Era, MR found out that Bogans worked for the Madison Police and kept tabs on MR. MR always wanted to talk to him about this, but never has.

00:33:00	Question: Black Students’ Strike? Answer: MR reiterated much of what he said in the May 2014 interview, but he also discussed the tension he felt when he was invited to the first meeting (and why he felt that way). He also offered the reasons why Willie and Libby Edwards asked him to attend and to help. 

00:36:20	[No question.] He also added the reasons why he thought strikers resorted to minor property damage during the end of the strike. He then offered his thoughts on the successes of the strike; he also postulated on why the Black Athletes (primarily the football players) joined it. 

00:41:20	Question: Attitudes towards him by other students (because of his upbringing in NE)? Answer: He felt most students did not see him as a “Coastie.” (Note: MR did not use that term; the interviewer did.) He said he could feel ambivalent at his fellow students from New York and New Jersey, because they thought his home state, New Hampshire, was only a place to summer camp.

00:45:05	Question: Did he feel his being Jewish affected him on campus? Answer: Not at all, although he considered himself (then) a secular Jew. He learned about his mother and father’s experience at UW and talked about how and why there seemed to be a noticeable Jewish presence on campus and in Madison. 

00:48:55	Question: How did his time in Madison influence him? Answer: He learned, outside the classroom, how to organize. He learned, inside the classroom, how better to analyze “life,” as well his outlook on the world, again thanks to professors, such as Mosse and Goldberg.  

00:51:35	Question: Did UW give him friendships here too? Answer: Yes. MR talked about a current and long-time valued friend and colleague, Bruce Colburn, as well as another former classmate, who helped MR get a teaching gig and eventually assisted with MR’s current union leadership. He also said that due to his daughter’s graduate school experience at UCLA, MR has reconnected with quite a few former classmates, which he listed some of them, who live in Southern California. 

00:56:44	End of Second Interview Session

Third Interview Session (May 20, 2015): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:35	Question: Michael Rosen’s (MR) thoughts leading up the 2010 General Election? Answer: MR talked about a speech he gave at MATC (Milwaukee Area Technical College) in the fall of 2010 where he warned what would transpire (particularly for public employees) if Wisconsin elected Scott Walker as governor. He remembered saying, “Hold onto your purse or wallet.” He and the union (AFT Local 212) worked to elect Walker’s opponent, Mayor Tom Barrett.

00:04:34	Question: Confirm what he meant by “college”? Answer: MR confirmed that he meant MATC when he said “the college.” He then talked about the funding model for technical colleges historically, how it changed before the 2010 General Election, and how it has continued to change since that election. Basically, the onus to fund technical colleges moved away from state funding toward more property tax as the primary funding mechanism.

00:08:15	Question: MR’s memories from 2010 Election Day through the 2011 Budget Repair Bill? Answer: MR focused here on the contract that he and others negotiated in late 2010 and early 2011, which then stood as a contract after the Budget Repair Bill changed Act 10. MR also recalled being in touch the Peter Rickman at UW-Madison’s Teaching Assistant Association (TAA) and talked about mobilizing the students to play a leading role in whatever turmoil might arise when the legislative session started. 

00:12:00	Question: Budget Repair Bill? Answer: When he found out about it, he was taken aback about the collective bargaining aspects of it. He reminded the interviewer that, luckily, his local was protected because of the just-signed contract. When asked when he heard the protests had burgeoned, he recalled teaching a night class at MATC when he heard that the TAA would remain inside the Capitol to protest. MR and his team teacher went to Madison after the class to join in. When he walked in, he remarked to his co-teacher how it reminded him a bit of the protests he participated in while an undergraduate in Madison in 1966-1970.

00:15:30	Question: Did MR work with TAA or other UW-Madison folks during protests? Answer: MR did work with the TAA but also with other unions (SEIU & AFL-CIO). He then talked about his local’s members participated. When asked to speak more to comparing the 2011 protests to the Vietnam Era protests, MR found the more recent protests to be sparked by students (much like the 1960s/1970s) but then fed by the unionized middle class. 

00:19:20	Question: Strong memories of 2011 Capitol Protests? Answer: MR listed several, including several relating to his fellow faculty at MATC who participated and one about how he and a couple of colleagues got into the Capitol after the lockdown. He also noted a movie made by a colleague about his young family’s trips from Milwaukee to Madison to attend/participate in the protests.

00:24:30	Question: Memories from Post-BRB to recalls? Answer: MR noted that once the recalls started, the Local got onboard. Specifically, the worked to recall a state senator, whose district included part of MATC’s district. The recall failed, and MR felt it important to explain what happened in the next legislative session that affected greatly MATC. 

00:30:35	Question: Gubernatorial recall? Answer: MR and the Local worked hard on that recall. He explained that they tried to learn from the previous senatorial recalls by focusing on getting the youth and people of color out to vote. They mainly worked, then, in Milwaukee. 

00:32:38	Question: General thoughts about the last four years, particularly on how it has affected colleges and universities? Answer: Overall, MR felt very worried about public post-secondary education. He detailed why he felt that way, including the changes between UW when he attended in 1966-1970 and UW-Madison and the other colleges/universities today. 

00:37:19	Question: Final thoughts? Answer: He conclude by commenting on how Governor Walker’s “Big and Bold” agenda has become competing nationally and globally by “getting poor.” 

00:40:04	End of Third Interview Session

End of Oral History #1383