Fifty years ago, students in the Latin Quarter of Paris rebelled against authority. Their anger was directed against not only a university system that was probably too conservative and elitist, but also against the chief of state.
In spite of the democratic election, the president of the republic, Gen. Charles de Gaulle, ruled with the imperiousness of a monarch. He also respected the bourgeois order and individual property rights, allowing social inequalities to persist despite an economic boom. Hence, millions of workers joined the student movement in a general strike. These were the origins of “the events of May 1968,” as the French call them.
