The uprising was in 1968
The student uprising in Paris happened in 1968, with its peak in May. In 1967 there were tensions at the university campus at Nanterre, on the western edge of the city, but they were small and mostly about student life and not about overthrowing anything. This article follows the sequence from 1967 to the May barricades, and it places each event in its right year.
Nanterre in 1967
The Nanterre campus of the University of Paris had opened in 1964, partly to relieve crowding at the Sorbonne. It was built on the site of a former military airfield, in a district of factories, shanty housing and, nearby, immigrant workers’ lodgings. The students who came from central Paris, as well as those living in the campus residences, found themselves in an isolated, unfinished environment of concrete buildings with few amenities and, at first, little to do. The faculty taught sociology and the humanities, subjects that attracted many students who would later become politically active.
Complaints in 1967 centred on the way the campus was run and on rules in the student residences. Boys and girls were housed in separate buildings, and men were not permitted to visit women’s rooms, a rule that many students found absurd in the 1960s. Students protested against it by occupying or entering the other side’s residences and by holding meetings. Reports also describe a movement among residents in the early part of the year, including strike action over rules and conditions. Details of the exact dates and the numbers involved vary between accounts, and it is safest to describe them as modest events that made students used to challenging authority.
Larger issues were also in the air. The government’s plans for reorganising higher education were unpopular, since many students feared tighter selection. Sociology students were influenced by a growing interest in critical theory, and a mix of anarchist, Trotskyist and Maoist groups was active at Nanterre. These themes belong to the wider scene in the Latin Quarter politics of Paris, where groups argued about the Vietnam War and the future of the left.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Daniel Cohn-Bendit was a sociology student at Nanterre, born in France in 1945 to German-Jewish parents who had fled the Nazis, and a German citizen. He was linked to anarchist circles and soon became a recognisable voice at meetings, known for his skills as a speaker and his talent for provocation. In 1967 he was one of many activists on campus, not a national figure. He became known to the public in 1968, partly because of his nickname “Dany le Rouge” (Danny the Red) and partly because the government later tried to remove him from the country.
January 1968: the Missoffe incident
On 8 January 1968, the minister for youth and sport, François Missoffe, came to Nanterre to open a new swimming pool. Cohn-Bendit confronted him publicly, complaining that a government report on young people had said nothing about their sexual lives. The minister’s reply is widely reported as an unflattering remark suggesting that he should cool off in the pool. The exchange was widely repeated, and it led to threats of disciplinary action against Cohn-Bendit. It is often treated as the point when Nanterre’s protests started to attract wider attention.
March 1968 and the 22 March movement
In March 1968 Nanterre and Paris turned to the war in Vietnam. A wave of international attention followed the Tet Offensive, which began in late January 1968. On 20 March a group attacked offices of an American company in Paris in protest at the war, and several members of a Vietnam committee were arrested. Two days later, on 22 March, students at Nanterre occupied a university administration building to demand their release. The group that formed was called the 22 March movement, and Cohn-Bendit was one of its best-known figures.
The Nanterre authorities and the government became alarmed. Meetings, disciplinary hearings and incidents continued, and on 2 May the dean closed the faculty.
May 1968: from Nanterre to the Sorbonne
The protests moved to the Sorbonne in the heart of Paris. On 3 May students held a rally in the courtyard, and the rector called in the police, who entered the university, a very unusual step, and arrested several hundred people. Crowds then gathered in the Latin Quarter, clashes followed, and the number of injured grew on both sides over the next days.
A large demonstration was held on 6 May. The night of 10 to 11 May became known as the night of the barricades. Students built barricades from cars, paving stones and other materials in the Latin Quarter, and the police cleared them in the early hours with tear gas and truncheons. The harshness of the response, which was seen by radio listeners as it happened, aroused sympathy for the students. Many people were injured, though accounts differ on the numbers, and no deaths were recorded that night.
Union leaders then called a day of action on 13 May. Workers and students marched together in large numbers, and the Sorbonne was reopened and occupied by students for weeks. A series of strikes spread across the country and, as the May 1968 strikes grew, the question was no longer a student one but a crisis of government. Cohn-Bendit was barred from re-entering France after a trip abroad, which fuelled further demonstrations.
The comparison with other countries
The Paris uprising was part of a wider student wave, but the other protests had their own features. In West Berlin, the West Berlin protests of 1967 were influenced by the Vietnam War and local politics. In the United States, Students for a Democratic Society was involved in campus protest and antiwar action. The French movement was unusual because of its link with the labour movement and with a general strike. Its slogans and graffiti, often borrowed from writers such as Guy Debord and the Situationists, whose book The Society of the Spectacle appeared in 1967, became part of its image.
What happened afterward
The government recovered its footing. De Gaulle dissolved the National Assembly and won a majority in elections in June 1968. The universities were reformed, and the old University of Paris was split into separate universities in the following years. Participants went in many directions, some into politics, some into academia and some into journalism. Cohn-Bendit later became a politician in Germany and in the European Parliament.
Historians still disagree about what the 1968 uprising achieved. What is clearer is that the story of Paris in 1967 is a story of preparation: small disputes on a new suburban campus that were later joined by much larger forces.