Editing John Searle (section)

===Politics===
While an undergraduate at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]], Searle became the secretary of "Students against [[Joseph McCarthy]]".<ref name="ditext.com">{{Cite book|chapter-url=http://www.ditext.com/searle/campus/1.html|chapter=The Anatomy of Student Revolts|title=The Campus War|first= John R.|last=Searle|year=1971|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230527154127/http://www.ditext.com/searle/campus/1.html|archive-date=2023-05-27|via=Digital Text International|access-date=2024-11-14}}</ref> McCarthy at that time served as the [[Seniority in the United States Senate|junior senator]] from [[Wisconsin]]. In 1959, Searle began teaching at Berkeley, and he was the first tenured professor to join the 1964–65 [[Free Speech Movement]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/Free+Speech+Movement-1.htm |title=Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired – Web Platform Services |website=socrates.berkeley.edu|date=January 2, 2018 }}</ref> In 1969, while serving as chairman of the Academic Freedom Committee of the Academic Senate of the University of California,<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=http://www.ditext.com/searle/campus/4.html|title=The Campus War|chapter=The Faculty|first=John R.|last=Searle|year=1971|via=Digital Text International|access-date=2024-11-14|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073222/http://www.ditext.com/searle/campus/4.html|archive-date=2023-04-04}}</ref> he supported the university in its dispute with students over the [[People's Park (Berkeley)|People's Park]].

In ''The Campus War: A Sympathetic Look at the University in Agony'' (1971),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ditext.com/searle/campus/campus.html |title=The Campus War |access-date=2012-03-24}}</ref> Searle investigates the causes behind the campus protests of the era. In it he declares, "I have been attacked by both the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] and...several radical polemicists... Stylistically, the attacks are interestingly similar. Both rely heavily on insinuation and innuendo, and both display a hatred --one might almost say terror-- of close analysis and dissection of argument." He asserts that "My wife was threatened that I (and other members of the administration) would be [[assassination|assassinated]] or violently attacked."<ref name="ditext.com" />

In the late 1980s, Searle, along with other landlords, petitioned Berkeley's rental board to raise the limits on how much he could charge tenants under the city's 1980 [[Rent control in the United States|rent-stabilization ordinance]].<ref>See ''Searle v. City of Berkeley Rent Stabilization Bd.'' (1988) 197 Cal.App.3d 1251, 1253 [243 Cal.Rptr. 449]</ref> The rental board refused to consider Searle's petition and Searle filed suit, charging a violation of due process. In 1990, in what came to be known as the "Searle Decision", the California Supreme Court upheld Searle's argument in part and Berkeley changed its rent-control policy, leading to large rent-increases between 1991 and 1994. Searle was reported to see the issue as one of fundamental rights, being quoted as saying "The treatment of landlords in Berkeley is comparable to the treatment of blacks in the South... our rights have been massively violated and we are here to correct that injustice."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2004-12-14/article/20296?headline=Letters-to-the-Editor |title=Letters to the Editor. Category: Features from The Berkeley Daily Planet |date=December 14, 2004 |work=Berkeley Daily Planet |access-date=April 21, 2017}}</ref> The court described the debate as a "morass of political invective, ad hominem attack, and policy argument".<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol77/iss4/5|title=Whatever Happened to Landlord-Tenant Law?|first=Gerald|last=Korngold|date=January 1, 1998|journal=Nebraska Law Review|volume=77|issue=4}}</ref>

Shortly after the [[September 11 attacks]], Searle wrote an article arguing that the attacks were a particular event in a long-term struggle against forces that are intractably opposed to the United States, and signaled support for a more aggressive [[Neoconservatism|neoconservative]] [[Interventionism (politics)|interventionist]] [[foreign policy]]. He called for the realization that the United States is in a more-or-less permanent [[war|state of war]] with these forces. Moreover, a probable course of action would be to deny [[terrorist]]s the use of foreign territory from which to stage their attacks. Finally, he alluded to the long-term nature of the conflict and blamed the attacks on the lack of American resolve to deal forcefully with America's enemies over the past several decades.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/pdf/terrorism.pdf |title=Terror.doc |access-date=2009-01-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080515215424/http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/pdf/terrorism.pdf |archive-date=2008-05-15 |url-status=dead}}</ref>