Student Rebellion: Vision of the Future or Echo from the Past?

In order to limit my subject and to concentrate on the most interesting or familiar cases, I shall not discuss Latin-American universities, for two reasons. These universities have known student unrest for a long time, and have granted their students a role in the administration-a right which is demanded by some protesters and which is spreading throughout the West. Secondly, the relative underdevelopment, the influence of the United States, the example of Cuba, and the mediocrity and authoritarianisrrt of a great many established regimes suggest probable interpretations. Similarly, African universities give their students a Western education, separate them from their milieu, teach them criticism and the critical spirit. How could the students fail to perceive the gap between the society they live in and the society whose ideal plan has been taught them through the culture they have received? How could they fail to revolt when the best jobs, those in government bureaucracy, are held by the preceding generation, and when economic progress offers graduates, most of them nonscientific, no chance of promotion in the private sector? I shall therefore limit myself to student revolts in the indus-