Pundits constantly invoke the upheavals of 1968 as a warning against student radicalism.
But the history of “1968” is better understood as the story of a generation that objected to a vast gulf between democratic promises and discriminatory realities.
What has entered our collective memory as “1968” was the culmination of student-led protests that erupted in around 60 countries at the same time. This was a truly transnational phenomenon, and those who protested certainly perceived of themselves as part of a global movement. 2/
These protests had country-specific origins and contexts – but there are some really striking transnational parallels and similarities. The key actors, those at the center of the protests, were part of a younger generation that had come of age after the Second World War. 3/
The campus was the epicenter of the “unrest” that was animated by a longing to overcome the status quo, as the students were convinced the elites in power were betraying the ideals and promises they constantly invoked to perpetuate and legitimize the existing system. 4/
The frustration had a variety of sources and causes. In Senegal, for instance, students pointed to the promise of independence from colonial rule that stood in contrast with the reality of continued cultural and economic dependence on France. 5/
In Egypt, the frustration resulted from the gap between the Nasser regime’s promises of “development,” of modernizing the country – and the fact that the social and economic circumstances had remained dire for most Egyptians. 6/
If we zoom in on the “West,” it was the frustration over the gap between the promise of liberal democracy and the reality of a society and political system that certainly was quite democratic for some groups and something else entirely for others. 7/
The gap between promises and proclamations on the one hand and existing power relations on the other was particularly stark in the United States, where “All men are created equal” contrasted violently with the reality of a racial caste society. 8/
A global superpower that was presenting itself on the world stage as the oldest democracy in existence and a beacon of freedom for people everywhere was, in reality, a society in which the individual’s status was significantly determined by race, gender, religion, or wealth. 9/
The central demand that spoke to the generational frustrations of millions and convinced them to protest even if they had nothing much to do with the inner circle of protest organizers was to close that gap, to end the hypocrisy, to finally realize the promise of American democracy. 10/
Protesters across the world saw the Vietnam War as irrefutable proof of the system’s hypocrisies. America was sending its children to die and to kill in support of an authoritarian regime, all in the name of a “freedom” it was denying so many of its own citizens. 11/
The vast majority of young people who were politicized by the protests of the 60s didn’t become terrorists or just retreated into hedonism. Many actually channeled their frustration into new political ventures - their energy fueled the social movements of the 70s. 12/
Whatever social, racial, and political progress we have achieved since the final third of the twentieth century: The protests of the 60s have had a lot to do with that. To reduce their legacy to “Nixon won” is simplistic and disingenuously reductive. 13/
Students were at the forefront of the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, South African apartheid in the 1980s, the Iraq War in the early 2000s. All of these protest movements were, at the time, widely derided as manifestations of leftwing radicalism. 14/
It does not follow from this pattern that all left-coded student protesters are inevitably correct in their diagnosis and always justified in all the actions they take – or that all their specific demands are necessarily helpful and constructive. 15/
But we must grapple with the role large student protest movements have consistently played in recent U.S. history: As a corrective, reminding the nation that it was failing to live up to its own promises and aspirations, at home and abroad.
Add comment