1968, 40 Years Later: Student, Worker Protests Sweep France, Leaving Indelible Mark on the Country, and the World

It began when university students in Paris occupied the area of the Sorbonne and Nanterre universities in response to a dispute over visiting rights to a female students’ dormitory. The protests grew into a call for wider university reforms and greater personal freedoms that led to three weeks of mass demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest heavy handed police treatment. In a show of solidarity, ten million workers, or roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, went on strike. It marked the biggest general strike in French history. This is one of the 1968 student leaders being questioned at a a news conference in Paris.

bq, Danny Cohn-Bendit, French student leader.

The protests reached such a point that President Charles de Gaulle created a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest. He dissolved the National Assembly and called for new parliamentary elections.

George Katsiaficas is a professor of Humanities and Sociology at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He is the author of numerous books including “The Imagination of the New Left: The Global Analysis of 1968.”

George Katsiaficas, Professor of Humanities and Sociology at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He is the author of numerous books including “The Imagination of the New Left: The Global Analysis of 1968.”