Yup. For one thing, it totally ignores the difference between student-led movements, and those where students were recruited as foot soldiers by autocrats (Mao, Hitler). Of those that were student-led, it ignores their historical context and motivations.
The Paris 1868 insurrection, for example, kicked off when the cops ignored a centuries-old tradition of leaving uni campus discipline to the Procter. The cooperation the later stages of the uprising engendered between students and industrial workers had huge positive impact on French politics and society, for decades to come.
@feld
It's take on the Vietnam outcome is profoundly wrong-headed. The US students could not predict or control the future atrocities by the Khmer Rouge et al. But they certainly could know about the actually existing atrocities being committed by their own country's military, and that many of their peers were coming home in body bags. And as it turned out, that was something they could control.
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