Student Revolt, City, and Society in Europe

From the Middle Ages to the Present

Pieter Dhondt, Elizabethanne Boran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351691024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Due to the strong sense among the student community of belonging to a specific social group, student revolts have been an integral part of the university throughout its history. Ironically, since the Middle Ages, the advantageous position of students in society as part of the social elite undoubtedly enforced their critical approach. This edited collection studies the role of students as a critical mass within their urban context and society through examples of student revolts from the foundation period of universities in the Middle Ages until today, covering the whole European continent. A dominant theme is the large degree of continuity visible in student revolts across space and time, especially concerning the (rebellious) attitudes of and criticisms directed towards students. Too often, each generation thinks they are the first. Moreover, student revolts are definitely not always of a progressive kind, but instead they are often characterized by a tension between conservative ambitions (e.g. the protection of their own privileges or nostalgia for the good old days) and progressive ideas. Particular attention is paid to the use of symbols (like flags, caps, etc.), rituals and special traditions within these revolts in order to bring the students' voice back to the fore.

1 Students as Agents of Change?

Pieter Dhondt and Laura Kolbe

In June 2015, Tessa de Vet, a student in the humanities at the University of Amsterdam, reflecting on half a year of campaigning and occupation of the Maagdenhuis, the administrative centre of the university, asked herself the question: “What did we achieve, during the past half year?” Her response was telling: “In my opinion most important is that we reintroduced a critical voice. […] Now, there are debates on the national level about the university establishment, what it is, and what it should be. […] Probably you would criticise me as being a typical student in the humanities who is not producing any kind of profitable return. In that case, I would only like to reply to you that I herewith proudly accept my nickname”.¹

The long-lasting student revolt in Amsterdam is just one example of a whole range of recent demonstrations and protest movements in Europe in which students have agitated for university reform, a new political setup, or a revision of the relationship between the university and its surrounding city. In 2012–2013, for example, the Post-Crash Economics Society, a group of economics students at the University of Manchester, began a campaign arguing for a drastic reconsideration of the content of the economics syllabus and teaching methods at their university. In March 2015, their colleagues at the London School of Economics joined the budding movement against the neoliberal university by occupying the administration’s meeting room. In Ukraine, students participated in high numbers in the wave of demonstrations and civil unrest during the winter of 2013–2014, demanding closer European integration and the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych. And finally, as a typical manifestation of a recent ‘town and gown’ conflict, the alliance ‘Students against high rents’ tried in November 2013 to shake up local politicians in Berlin by camping in pyjamas in front of the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall), in order to denounce the lack of student housing.

So, the well-known expert on student activism, Philip G. Altbach, is absolutely right in claiming that student activism “is inherent in the nature of the academic community” and “will continue to be a powerful force”, both on campus and in society.² Somehow, a critical attitude towards society is even expected from students. According to the Council of Europe, one of the objectives of higher education is to prepare students for life as active citizens in democratic societies, to teach them not to take anything for granted, and to encourage them to adopt an innovative approach towards current (global) challenges. Even though the training of students as critically thinking individuals was seldom an explicit aim of the university, it certainly was a regularly noticed side effect of a university education. Of course, this inevitably leads to a paradoxical situation because students are simultaneously supposed to prepare themselves for sustainable employment and to conform to the prevailing customs and traditions of the society in which they are living.

Moreover, notwithstanding its supranational dimension, the university as an intellectual corporation has always had a perceptible influence on its locale and society. The complexities inherent in the interaction between town and gown were already evident during the Middle Ages. Two lifestyles—that of the academic community and that of the civic community—existed side by side. The emergence of the mass university of the 1960s obviously had a great impact on the university-society relationship. Universities became centres of revolt and unrest, and relations between students and citizens became strained. Universities, thus, came to represent an element of instability, often leading to the establishment of a permanent or semipermanent youth countercultural movement in university towns.

Add to that the strong sense among the student community of belonging to a specific social group and it is not surprising that student revolts have been an integral part of the university throughout its history. Students have always enjoyed an atypical social position in which they almost exclusively came into contact with fellow students in their daily life, an interaction that served to heighten differences with non-student outsiders.³ Ironically, since the Middle Ages, the advantageous position of students as part of the social elite undoubtedly enforced their critical approach. First, it made them realise that they had the capacity to change society. Second, it contributed to a large degree of tolerance towards student protests. In general, the elite finds it difficult to employ stringent measures against its own children.

Obviously, this does not exclude examples of severe repression of different forms of student activism by the authorities, but, nevertheless, the comparatively mild punishment of students violating the norms and laws of society clearly helps to explain the profound impact of student revolts in European history. The concrete impact of all of this on educational institutions, political structures, or ‘town and gown’ relationships is not always easy to measure because, although students often functioned as the precipitating force for social and political change, they were not always in control of the outcomes of their actions. On the one hand, they brought public attention to specific issues, yet, on the other, they seldom possessed the substantial procedural knowledge, experience, and networks required for implementing their demands on the larger social or political stage.⁴

One of the reasons why it is difficult to determine a real long-term impact of student revolts is because of their, by definition, transitory nature. Owing to the rapid succession of age cohorts, passing on the torch of the student movement from one generation to the next was an exception rather than the rule. According to Tom Junes in his recent book on student politics in communist Poland, student activism was even incited on generational rather than on class-specific grounds.⁵ In their collective volume that questions whether there was indeed a ‘European’ youth revolt in the 1980s, Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen likewise focus on the generational identity of the group of youngsters in general.⁶ However, without denying the importance of this generational aspect, many of the contributions in this volume show the crucial importance of a shared student identity as an explanation of various manifestations of student violence (particularly those in part II).

This edited collection studies the role of students as a critical mass within their urban context and society through examples of student revolts from the foundation period of universities in the Middle Ages until today, covering the whole European continent. The revolts examined here were aimed against society as a whole, against specific groups within society, and/or against specific institutions, be it the university itself, the urban milieu, political or professional authorities, or financial benefactors. Both in the existing literature and in this volume, many different labels are used interchangeably for the kinds of manifestations initiated and organised by students: ‘revolts’, ‘protests’, ‘violence’, ‘movement’, and ‘activism’. In our sample, the focus is on ‘student revolts’ a) in which a group of students was involved (in contrast to individual actions); b) for which these students had a specific intention (included here are protests, which, although they might have been started accidentally, later developed a broader agenda); and, finally, c) revolts which were perceived by students or those parties they were protesting against as leading to specific consequences, be they positive or negative.

Concerning the topic of student revolts, a large number of publications exist that focus on the phenomenon of May 1968.⁷ Obviously, this milestone in student activism is included in this anthology as well, but unique in our approach is the combination of some archetypical examples of the 1968 student revolt (such as in Paris, chapter 7, or Milan, chapter 29), with much more unusual case studies in which, for instance, the students’ demands were supported by the academic and/or political authorities (such as in Groningen, chapter 9, or Helsinki, chapter 27). Apart from the overwhelming interest in 1968 and its consequences, the subject of student revolts has received only limited attention, with the exception of in the somewhat older titles of Altbach and Seymour Martin Lipset. More recently, Manja Klemenčič at Harvard University has developed this as one of her key research topics. Supplementary to this more sociological research (which focuses on more recent periods), our volume is characterised by a cultural-historical perspective, offering a long-term approach and discussing more diverse types of student revolts throughout European history. With regard to the medieval and early modern manifestations of student protest, research is much more scattered. Indeed, as an exception to the rule, Mark Edelman Boren starts his book Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject (2001) in the foundation period of European universities, but, by page 28, he has reached the nineteenth century. In a somewhat superficial and encyclopaedic fashion, he offers a useful overview of various student movements across time and space, in which, however, the voices of the students themselves are largely absent.

By contrast, it is precisely one of our ambitions to bring the students back to the fore. Therefore, particular attention is paid to the use of symbols (like flags, caps, etc.), rituals, and special traditions by the students during these revolts. The aim is to open up university history to a wider audience and show how students reacted to the challenges facing them. A dominant theme is the large degree of continuity visible in student revolts, especially concerning the (rebellious) attitudes of and criticisms directed towards students. Too often, each generation thinks they are the first. One certainly does not have to wait until the emergence of the ‘classical’ student movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century to find examples of collective action by students, under their own leadership, to influence society.⁸ Already from the Middle Ages, students often put aside their own interests and engaged themselves with broader social or political issues, as is shown, for instance, in the Oxford episode of violence against the retinue of the Earl of Warwick in 1423 (chapter 18). From that time onwards, the national context of student revolts became increasingly more important.

Moreover, we want to make clear that student revolts are definitely not always of a progressive kind, but that, instead, they are often characterised by a tension between conservative ambitions (e.g., the protection of their own privileges or nostalgia for the good old days) and progressive ideas. Many of the contributions in this volume present less familiar, less researched, and somewhat surprising, but, at the same time, still quite common kinds of student protest. Taking into account the immense number of student revolts in European history, any kind of comprehensiveness in this regard is absolutely out of the question, but, through our rigorous selection, we aim to provide a diverse view of the phenomenon and give a good basis to the general ideas of the volume. A typical example is the “curious” case of Innsbruck, which counters the common assumption that students tend towards ‘left-wing’ radicalism rather than conservatism. Although, in the starting phase, students were indeed supporting the revolutionary ideas of 1848, they gradually adopted a more conservative and loyal attitude towards the Austrian emperor (chapter 20). Obviously, numerous other chapters still support the classic maxim that, “If you are not a leftist or socialist before you are 25, you have no heart; if you are one after 25 you have no head”.

Common to all the chapters is that one should be aware that only seldom were students acting as one uniform and homogeneous block. Their protest against academic, political, or professional authorities usually involved a lot of mutual discussions and consultations about how to proceed. Indeed, group pressure within this specific community was often extremely high and even part of their particular identity. However, other case studies prove that sometimes internal struggles among the students lay precisely at the basis of the conflict (e.g., with regard to student violence in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, chapter 5) or that, during protest movements that lasted for a longer time, the student community gradually split between more moderate and radical groups (e.g., in Iaşi in the 1880s, chapter 25, or in Leuven in the 1970s, chapter 28).

The general concept of each contribution is to start from a specific event in which students protested in one way or another and to place this in a broader context, in order to make clear its importance and relevance. In contrast to the great majority of publications in the field of university history, often on the occasion of a jubilee, this volume does not provide a chronological overview of the history of a particular institution.⁹ Instead, by thematically focusing on the appealing theme of student revolts and dealing with it in a broad chronological and geographical perspective, the aim is explicitly to offer a different, comparative approach in the historiography of European universities, crossing the boundaries of the individual institutions and looking to their interaction with the surrounding city and society.

The book is structured in four thematic parts, which enable us to show the continuity across time and space in the methods and means used by student protesters, in the defence of their separate social identity, in their political ambitions, or in their attitude towards city and society. Even though, unavoidably, there is some overlap and many chapters could have been placed in another section, each particular article enforces the general arguments of the specific part it is placed in.

Part I, “Forms of Action”, aims to highlight the creativity of students in the staging of their identity through words, slogans, symbols, gestures, and noise. What were the different forms of collective action developed by students to protest and how did they evolve? What were their offensive devices (spiritual, intellectual, real weapons)? What were the effects (violence, emotions, public opinion, etc.) produced by these actions?

One of the students’ ambitions in using these particular methods was to emphasise their separate “Student Identity and Radicalism”, the central topic of part II. To what extent can student revolts be regarded as typical actions within a certain youth phase (students are no longer subjected to the discipline of the secondary school, but at the same time they do not have adult responsibilities yet), or were they really the consequence of a specific student identity? How did the students consider their own position within society? Did they (as privileged members of society) have some kind of responsibility towards society (e.g., to look at ongoing developments with a critical eye, and, if necessary, react in a radical way)? And finally, to what extent did students develop their own identity as a separate group from other members of the university community, and, at the same time, do so in such a way that increased unity among students as a group?

In addition to protecting their own social identity, students have often protested against miserable classroom conditions, bad teachers, minimal technical fac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1 Students as Agents of Change?
• Part I Forms of Action
• Part II Student Identity and Radicalism
• Part III Political Agenda and Mobilising Forces
• Part IV Students and Urbanity
• List of Contributors
• Index