The Sixties student movements in France and the United States: A comparative analysis

The 1960s witnessed college and university campus unrest on an unprecedented scale. In 1968 particularly, students across the world were simultaneously rebelling against authority in countries as diverse as Mexico, Germany, India, France, Japan, and the United States. It is somewhat surprising therefore, that few scholarly works have addressed the subject of the Sixties student movements in the form of a comparison. This study takes two of the countries involved, France and the United States, compares the internal ideological developments of the students movements in each country, and assesses the impact of differing traditions of radicalism on the ideology and behaviour of the students.;A thesis is developed which suggests that the American student movement paid little attention to past radical traditions in its attempt to devise a critique of society, and thus lacked any real ideological depth, instead concentrating its energies on addressing the immediate injustices of others. The French student movement on the other hand was always referring back to its revolutionary traditions, was constantly redefining itself ideologically, and therefore did not suffer the same problems of instability which so characterised the development of the New Left in the United States.