All over the world, campuses are regularly places of protest. But contrary to what one might believe, the phenomenon does not date from the 20th century. In reality, student protest movements appeared as early as the 15th century. Since then, universities have also been the places where the great social movements that have marked history started. Interview with Chloé Maurel, historian of social movements.
From a historical point of view, when did the first student protests and movements born in universities date back?
From the end of the Middle Ages, in the 15th century, in the Latin Quarter in Paris, at the Sorbonne (university created in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon, one of the oldest universities in the world), students periodically launched protest movements, either to defend their tax exemptions, or to protest against the suppression of judicial autonomy and the submission of the university to the authority of the Parliament of Paris. Thus in 1444-1445 the Sorbonne was blocked for six months because of these demands. It was also when, from time to time at this time, a student was arrested by the police – or worse killed by police sergeants – that the other students at the Sorbonne went on strike, as for example in 1453.
In May 1968 in France and generally in the spring of this year, in many countries around the world, social movements emerged from the benches of the amphitheaters. What is the historical context of these movements and what are the most notable examples?
In May 1968 in France, the student protest movement was born from a seemingly minor incident: the student protest at the University of Nanterre (created in 1964) against the ban on boys visiting students. girls in their dorms. The student movement then expanded to demands against the overly rigid authority of the society of the time towards young people, and converged with a strike movement of industrial workers.
The student movement of 1968 quickly became globalaffecting for example Germany, Yugoslavia, the United States, and many other countries such as Japan and even several African countries, as analyzed for example by the historian Françoise Blum.
We can also cite, closer to our time, the school and student strike for the climate, launched by the young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg from 2018.
Many student protests which aroused the rest of the population made it possible to obtain the satisfaction of demands, and even changes in society. Can we cite the movements which did not succeed and which ended in bloodshed?
Yes, for example between April and June 1989, the peaceful demonstrations of Chinese students on Tiananmen Square in Beijing (the largest square in the world): these students demanded more democracy, freedom of expression, and protested against corruption of the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Chinese government decided to repress them bloodily, sending tanks, which caused a real massacre: nearly 200 dead and thousands injured. Moreover, information about this event is still censored in the PRC to this day.
We can also recall, around twenty years earlier, another dark event in the history of the Eastern bloc during the Cold War: the repression, by Soviet tanks, of the “Prague Spring” student movement in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1968. Students, enthusiastic and full of hope in the face of the more flexible attitude of the new Czechoslovak leader, Alexander Dubcek, eager to establish “socialism with a human face”, demonstrated in the streets to demand more freedoms . The repression, decided by the USSR, of this student protest movement was extremely brutal: in the early morning of August 21, 1968, armored troops totaling 300,000 men (the armed forces of five countries of the Warsaw Pact: USSR, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and GDR), as well as thousands of paratroopers, invade Czechoslovakia by decision of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The toll of this ferocious repression is at least 90 dead and several hundred injured.
In these two events, the brutality of the repression stopped the students’ momentum of protest by force.
In your opinion, why do the strongest and most resounding protests in the streets appear in university establishments?
Universities are spaces of freedom and learning of autonomy and critical thinking for students, the latter become politicized and socially aware, they feel a collective feeling, through associations, meetings, general assemblies, organized in universities, so they live a empowerment and, characterized by the idealism that is often characteristic of young people, do not hesitate to get involved in causes linked to human rights or humanitarian law, such as the protest against the Vietnam War in the 1960s or the situation of the inhabitants of Gaza in 2024. These student movements have been studied by historians like Ludivine Bantigny, David Fischer, and researchers from the GERME (Study and Research Group on Student Movements) like Robi Morder and Jean-Philippe Legois .
Currently, in several large American universities or in France, moreover, certain students are protesting against the war in Gaza, which has led to the intervention of the police in the USA or the banning of certain student meetings in establishments in France. Can we compare them with the movements at the time of the Vietnam War? Can we expect an amplification of movements taking into account current geopolitical tensions in the world?
Yes, we can completely compare and relate the current protest movements against the fate of the inhabitants of Gaza to those born around 1968 against the Vietnam War, the situation is similar.
However, the situation is much more tense and divisive today, because there is, particularly in the United States, on campuses, very strong tension between Jewish students and pro-Palestinian students. The fact that Harvard University President Claudine Gay, the first black woman to president Harvard, was personally attacked and forced to resign in January 2024 (even though she had only been in office since December 2022) , illustrates these divisions.
We must also keep in mind that, in today’s world, other conflicts, just as, or even more deadly and unjust, are taking place, without attracting as much attention or protest from young students: in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan in particular, with massacres and thousands of deaths, and that there are catastrophic humanitarian situations like in Mayotte and Haiti, or that of refugees and exiles who die by the thousands in the Mediterranean every year, and that this, on the other hand, does not give rise to massive student protest movements. The capacity for student protest is therefore selective and focuses on certain specific situations.
Chloé Maurel is a doctor in history, specialist in the UN and international organizations, associate researcher at the Sorbonne (Sirice), author of Major speeches at the UN (Edition of Croquant, 2024).