Student Revolt in 1968

Student Revolt in 1968 examines the origins, course and dissolution of student protest at three universities in the 1960s - the Freie Universität Berlin in West Germany, the campus of Nanterre in France, and the Faculty of Sociology at Trento in Italy. It traces how student revolts over space, speech, sociology and cultural democratisation catalysed a dynamic protest movement within universities in the mid-1960s that expanded dramatically beyond the University in 1968. Differing visions of democratisation - mass access to education, the dissolution of high culture, the democratic control of the university - clashed and competed in a radical revaluation of the meaning of university education and democratic culture. The study also evaluates the most ambitious experiments in higher education in the 1960s - the 'Critical Universities' of West Berlin and Trento - which sought to establish democratic control of higher education before dissolving in the politics of social revolution, and offers a new and clear-sighted perspective on the 1960s

'Exciting for its transnational approach alongside keen attention to local specifics, Ben Mercer's study explores the widely varied, contradictory, and transforming meanings of democracy and democratization in the student protest in West Berlin, Nanterre, and Trento. Mercer opens up the narrative of '68' as it has been written and rewritten, contemporaneously across weeks and month - and ultimately across decades - challenging simple terms of 'successes' and 'failures'.' Belinda Davis, Rutgers University, 'An ambitious, original and subtle investigation of the student movement in three European universities - Nanterre, Trento and the Free University of Berlin - which sheds new light on questions of political and cultural democratisation in the 1960s. Just when you thought that there was nothing new to say about 1968, Ben Mercer makes this must-read intervention.' Robert Gildea, University of Oxford, 'A thoughtful analysis of student protest around 1968 in three major Western European countries. Mercer's comparative study will be a welcome addition to many syllabi on the Global 1960s and essential reading for students and scholars of democratization after 1945.' Anna von der Goltz, Georgetown University

Ben Mercer is Lecturer in the School of History at the Australian National University, Canberra. He is the author of numerous journal articles including in French Politics, Culture & Society, the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Journal of Modern History and a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 (2016).