Was 1968, indeed, the watershed year of resistance to the established order, the marker that linked the global history of student protests around the world? Were students’ marches and public demonstrations, indeed, the key events that should stand as the legacy of a tumultuous decade? Scholars have written extensively on the revolutionary implications of the acts of rebellious students who braved the streets in such places as Paris, Berlin, and Mexico City – and have used these models to depict “centers” of resistance that, at times, also shaped protests in “peripheral,” less familiar sites of action.

This panel seeks to revisit misleading center-periphery dichotomies that locate the history of the decade in the well-known geographical sites of resistance – focusing on student actions beyond public protests and the collective performance. Acts of protest targeted not only authoritarian politics, economic injustices, and censorship, but also the ways in which political leaders and educators developed and regulated education. This session will, thus, examine student loyalties and networks as the foundations of mobilization and politicization using case studies from Chile, Ethiopia and the United States.