Today. We are missing one panelist who got sick last night and cannot make it, unfortunately. We are going to go in the order that we are sitting and 10 minutes each for a short presentation. This is a roundtable, and then we open up to discussion with you guys and the four of us. Ok. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me . Like this . Ok. Not in a creepy way . Like this . Better . Ok. I want to i want to thank everybody coming today. Im currently working on a book manuscript about egypt, the modern history of egypt. And it operates from a premise that the egyptian people are a people that protest. And that has been well documented over since the early 19th century. We have this notion of continuity in student protests over the long history of egypts modern history. However, the reason for protests often is different. And so, what i hope to talk about today is the student and worker protests of 1968, and really what i am interested in in egypt is the conservative in 1967. H takes hold a lot of historians or political scientists really see the conservative turn in egypt as happening in the 1970s. There is a lot of cultural and historical evidence that would support that it happened much earlier. Today, what im going to talk to about is a couple of things, egyptian film, also music, and the sighting of the virgin mary in 1968, which is an interesting piece of the story. In egypt, relations with israel and britain were sour in the 1950s after the suez crisis. The United Nations troops that were placed between the two nations after israel, france attacked egypt as a result of the nationalization of the suez canal. I just want to give us some context. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s nasser, his tone and stance towards israel became increasingly hostile as he mounted allies in syria who for a short time were part of the united arab republic and jordan. In 1967, he received intelligence from the soviets that israel was planning to attack syria. With mounting pressure from the palestinians, the saudis and the jordanians and syrians ordered that the straits be closed in the red sea. Israels only way to get out into the red sea. This small access, the only access israel had to the red sea , so basically he was taunting them into war. Amidst mounting tension, on the sixth of june, Israel Attacked egyptian airfields and within a day had captured an egyptian town. He resigned in shame as israel he forces occupied Golan Heights and the west bank. He had built his political career that focused on the removal of israel from the middle east. His campaign against western economic and imperial domination, zionism had failed miserably. This was after a defeat in six days. Shortly thereafter, amidst protests about his resignation, he returned to power and began a war of attrition against israel , a stalemate that would result in another war in 1973 under sadat. Sadat accepted resolution 242 , which i will talk about in a minute, which recognized the state of israel under the terms of land for peace. The arabs would return the land. Israel would return the sinai to egypt, but not the west bank or the goal line or the palestinian territories. His defeat was not only a military defeat, but also ideological. It was a particular kind of leftism that no longer seemed to be a viable solution to stave off western encroachment and did not successfully combat israel. Egypt no longer sat at the helm of middle eastern politics as the deacon against american and israeli aggression. The defeat in 1967, coupled with years of oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, began an ideological shift in the region that would culminate most dramatically during the iranian revolution of in 1979. February 1968, Industrial Workers in and egyptian delta city outside cairo took to the streets and protested the leniency of the sentences handed down to the Egyptian Air Force generals who lost the war against israel in 1967. The air force was largely blamed for the loss. Shortly thereafter, partially and marxist solidarity, students and partially as result of a particular historical moment, students in alexandrias polytechnic all faculty of Alexandria University also protested the decision of the government to give these sentences to the men that shamed the nation. In egypt, there is a long history of protests, but when you have real action and power and when you see labor and students take to the streets. Inimilarly to what happened 2011. Student led protests begin in egypt in 1966 largely as a result of elite students that traveled and lived in paris. The of intellectual culture theents resistance in 1920s. The 1966 delegation was a first among the elite students in the Academic Community to politically organize and engage the regime in debate. The february protests signified the loosening of his grip on the masses and not the organizational power of the elite student body. While many in egypt a threat the arab world still put their faith in him, egypts Political Landscape was shifting ideologically. The organization of student erupted in 1968. Unlike november the february protests, these erupted as result of Student Satisfaction with educational reforms. Amount of times students could sit for exams and were meant to strengthen the higher educational system. However, some students claimed that the reforms targeted the egyptian workingclass body that needed more time, privilege the rich, and hindered social mobility. The protest turned violent at the university of alexandria, where the students took the governor of the province was taken hostage. The military drove out the students. In 1968, there were a number of protests led by students and Industrial Workers and there was the beginning of massive cultural production centering on the loss against israel in 1967. A folk singer and another poet forces to criticize the regime through music. A book, adrift on the nile, and a film chronicled the erratic lifestyle of a group of archetypal egyptians. The lifestyle included drug use, sexual promiscuity, and frequent parties. The young women in the film were archetype of egypts used that had been led astray by a lifestyle of drugs, marxism, and risque dress. The film was immediately banned. One film centered on a coffee shop with the same name. It was released in 1975 directly attacking nassers oppressive regime, the failure of 1967 and graphic policephicall interrogations. Film, art, critique focused on a theme of centrality and void. It left the door open for religion to recenter the political, cultural, and social space after a decade and a half of absence. All right. I will just talk about sort of the virgin mary. 1968 was the also, the resurgence or the return of islam as a viable Political Force in egypt in the late 1960s. Was the year that social unrest 1968 in protest plagued many parts of the globe. Rioting and student protests, rioting, and radical leftist political ideologies clashed with western governments. While protests dominated with students also appeared in the middle east and the third world, ideological divide dictated by the cold war did not exist in the same way. Ideologues in the ideologues in the middle east did not carry the same baggage with marxism and communism as did the u. S. And its allies. Marxism was not inherently secular nor did it manifest in monolithic understanding of the soviet union as the center of leftist gravity. Rather, in the middle east, marxism and its manifestations emerged to combat sectarianism in various forms. And really as a rejection to western imperialism. Western capitalism dictated and an uneven power relationship in which middle eastern nations remained economically dependent on the west as postcolonial subjects as a west continued to plunder them economically and support their greatest enemy. Nasserism failed, many began to look at other forms of political resistance to the west, mostly religion. In the same year that students protested and Industrial Workers rallied against the government, the virgin mary appeared on the outskirts of cairo. The first witness believed he saw a young woman who was about to commit suicide. Over a short time of thousands , hundreds of people gathered at the church and witnessed the event, including nasser and other government officials. People reported being healed by the virgin and some heard her speak. She appeared as herself based in light, and witnessed her appearance from 1968 until 1971. Newspapers covered the event , articles appeared in lebanon and france. The multiple versions of her that began in garnered a myriad 1968 of interpretations from secular and religious communities. Although many disagreed about the authenticity of the apparition, most agreed that it signaled a significant shift in Egyptian National consciousness. The coptic intellectual Community Covered this at great length and there was a lot of assessment as to why this happened. A little side note, it is the only recognized apparition outside of the west by the catholic church. What i want to leave you with is one of the things that was associated with the virgin mary is that supposedly she said you can come here and see me in egypt because you can no longer see me in jerusalem. It appeared that the virgin mary had taken a stance on the war in 1967, but also that her coming to egypt at that moment illustrates that something was changing. And that nasser and and that nasser and nasserism had failed the egyptian people and they needed in some way to reclaim who they once were through religion but in more complicated ways. The virgin marys appearance repositioned cairo as a Religious Center for christians and provided a legitimate space for muslims to openly worship. Some muslim and christian leaders seized on the operation to articulate their interpretation of the event. Some articulated that she had come to save egypt, particularly the youth. The questions i would like to address in the question and answer period is how do we understand 1968 . In egypt, it is a period when lots of things are possible. We have different forms of butism, leftist activism, we also have the beginnings of islam as a viable political alternative. Many historians have placed that much later. That it does not happen until the 1970s. That is largely influenced by the larger global cold war and an america centric understanding of the middle east. I would like to really flesh out those ideas and think about Student Movement and protests as being part of something much larger than just leftist politics. Thank you. [applause] before i begin, i would like to thank chelsea for putting together this sixpanel set of presentations that are rolling from this morning to tomorrow. Heroic work. Thank you. Today a little today about my work and my angle on of 1968. Tion my argument in my first book, guillotines, and was that an approach to postwar and 1960s history that began with attention to small groups of playful and radicalized artists would allow us to see otherwise familiar touchstones of the postwar era in a new and different light. It would identify political contention at the level of everyday life and the complex relationship of art and politics to such contentions. That is the approach i am continuing in in writing my second book, the art of revolution. I will be talking from that work today. In this new work, i am taking an intensified interest in the very question of a global 1968 global 1960s. Offer argument about how there can be diverse participation and local particularity within the phenomenon that is nonetheless global. That means a claim that goes beyond noticing that it is 1968 everywhere across the planet at the same time, like people get a calendar with the your circle. Rather, it is a strong claim that there is a politics in that 1968 might be glimpsed a diverse phenomena. Part of my approach to comparability turns on the question not of what might typify a time, but rather on contention, dissent, and on the untimely, something that doesnt seem to fit in the narrative of progress and redemption. Or conversely of suffering and response. And as it turns out, on the question of the political, of the new, the eventful, it is bound up with such issues. The director of a film was shot from june through september of 1968 and was an attempt to give cinematic form to the dense mix of politics, sex, theory and fantasy, and history coming together in an explosive combination in tokyo. Over snippets of political speeches and sounds of gunfire, the opening sequence displays the 24hour world clock times in eventful locations around the world. Beginning with 3 00 greenwich standard time, 10 00 p. M. In new york, 11 00 in saigon and thenng, 4 00 in paris, and the title turns to announce japans standard time, we see a wall clock whose glass is smashed with a rock in the hands stolen. The film begins by framing the present as a moment of urgent and as a moment to be seized and rewritten. My point in the beginning of this film moment is to highlight the way in which four people at the time, 1968 read as a moment of profound immediacy and of profound interconnectedness. Instead of a globe separated by not just distances, developmental and racialized assumptions about backward there was a perception of a shared and even help presence to which all might lay claim to Political Agency. The tables had been turned by colonial struggles that figured socalled third worlds from africa and beyond with profound connections and significance for everywhere else. Fabio will haveb something to say about the status of maoism and china. It is this connection to engage in Political Action was to understand oneself as some part of this transformative energy. Defined ones daily life replete with eventful miss and potential and to see new possibilities from the loosened grasp of the usual social determinations. In other words, this global synchrony and since of connections worked to make visible the limitations and strictures of the normative categories of social life. The usual determinations and forms of belonging were found to be wanting or indeed to be connected to wrongs both near at hand and distant, and the vietnam war was a major figure for that realization, including in places like mexico where the connection was far from obvious. Politicization was simultaneously intensely local and global at the same moment. It was also multidirectional apparatchik and discontinuous in its political solidarity. In japan, moved by such concerns, socalled ordinary people, typical students, citizens, the nonpolitical, all found cause to engage in activism and sought new forms adequate to their understandings of the moment. It particularly swelled the ranks of antihierarchal organizations, which offered a flexible, horizontal coalition. Any group could call it self that if they adopted the principles of peace in vietnam and opposition to the japanese governments complicity in the vietnam war. Each group would be responsible for their own policies and for communicating across the network. Groups like this formed the basis for the explosive spread nonsectarian joint structure and joint campus committees. These groups emerged in 1968, proliferated across hundreds of , more thancampuses 67 campus seizures. They called for their own self negation as students within a compromise educational system that itself required complete mental the, this university, to end its domination. In short, this 1968, in the sense of a global moment, truly begins in the space of restraint policing and daily eventful miss, diminished state legitimacy and intensified concern to the wrongs such legitimacy perfectly concealed. This politics inaugurated new engagements with personal reflections to bring forth new actions and collective identification. At this level, i think we should consider the questions of comparability, of how such politics become thinkable, and of the proper approach to address the nature of this politics. I would finally argue that the grasp of such a phenomenon requires particular care with our analytical categories. We could talk further about these problems. First, if the phenomenon in question is typified by what kristin ross has described as a the flight from social determinations, then, as she cautions, if we reinstall scribe it back within normative social categories like students, workers, and the like. We will effectively erase its essence. Secondly, demonstrations, which it typified this era, are often treated descriptively and on the basis of numbers. There are a lot of people on the street, it must be politics. And it is fine to notice such events, but we need to go further if we are going to think about what it is that mightve led people to Political Action. Or to put it another way, how you go from an empty street to a full street. My research has led me to argue for the importance of small groups in often abject communities and the nurturing of political concepts and practices, as well as the dialectic of force, violence, and legitimacy between protesters and agents of the state. Again, since the beginning of the Political Action involved if defection from normal social roles, we might pay particular attention to language, to the representation of violence and criminality, to abject groups, to media panics and the like for the signs of such nascent forms and contentions and new perceptions irrespective of numbers. Finally, and conversely, we might do well to set aside the usual narrative traps for alighting this politics, particularly in the figure of an argument of some tragic event that involves a handful of people whether it involved manson or the red army that somehow concludes or ends political possibility. Thank you. [applause] good morning, everyone. It is an honor for me to be here. I would like to thank those who organized this series of panels. On 1968. I truly feel honored to participate, to think about, to remember, to project 1968 specifically as we are marching into 2018. To my fellow to my fellow panelists, to those of you coming to listen this early morning, i thank you. We are talking on this panel about 1968 as a local and global event. How do we as historians negotiate 1968 as a global and local event particularly on its 50year anniversary in this time and place . And we all know what is happening in this time and place. The best way to negotiate 1968 from the prevailing global perspective of the American Mind, and i should say that a lot of my work deals with intellectual history, so i think the best way to negotiate 1968 from the prevailing global perspective of the American Mind , which is to say the prevailing global perspective of the white American Mind, which is to say the prevailing global perspective of the racist American Mind, is to recollect the blockbuster film that was released early in 1968. , a story rarely 1968ssed, has we negotiate as a global and local event on the human mind, or in my case, the global American Mind. My brief talk is entitled, planet of the whites. 1968, lbj 17, submitted his state of the union to congress and spoke to a raging congress representing a raging america. Many americans were not raging at the racial and equities voiced in the soon to be released conclusions of the commission. Many americans were not raging against with the report considered a hopelessly racist, mainstream media. Basked in has two long a white world with a white perspective. Many americans were not raging against our nation moving towards two societies, one black , one white, separate and unequal. President johnson did not speak to a crowd protesting against racism. Many americans were raging, and many politicians were raging like their constituents against years of civil rights and black power protests, decades of decolonization movements from latin america to asia to africa. Raging against the disruptive protests against cultural conformity, the vietnam war, all forms of inequality locally and globally. If they had to a certain extent been complaining for years, for 1968es, then i would argue was the year of the reactionary outburst validated by president johnson, and especially Richard Milhouse next in. President johnsons civil rights statement during his speech are , butd scattered applause when he thundered that the American People have had enough of rising crime and lawlessness, the applause was deafening and it carried on as he lifted a series of anticrime measures. After three decades of violent decolonization movements across after three straight summers of urban rebellions in the United States, some of those applauding the speech, both in the capital and around the country actually feared a violent antiwhite rebellion could be rushing from around the corner or had even arrived, and there are local and global fears were reflected in a new blockbuster film that broke Box Office Records weeks after johnsons address. I wish king kong had not then ade, for i could make it, Film Producer once said. To recap, the movie king kong shares the tale of a colossal island dwelling eight who dies attending to possess a a Film Producer once said. Young and beautiful white woman. From the beginning of racist ideas, when european explorers were simultaneously discovering the african and humanoid animal known as the eight in west africa, when in enlightenment philosophers were likening the human to the eight, when the producers of racist ideas were constructing the africans as the most inferior humans and the egg is the most superior animal, the african has been compared to the eight. The 1933 film king kong was nothing but a remake of the birth of a nation, failing the ng the physically powerful black men by casting ulm as the physically powerf eight that tries to destroy it white civilization and pursues a white woman before a dramatic climax, the lynching of the knee negro a. It was ahead of its time without ever saying a word about black people and white people or even race. Instead of remaking the birth of a nation yet again, arthur p in as found his king kong frenchmans 1963 novel. Excuse my french. Made eventually the planet of the apes. His film changed the plot and dialogue, but retain the basic story of the novel. , a white male astronaut and his crew are returning to earth after being away for more than 2000 years. Their ship crashes on a planet that does not look like earth. They began exploring and come mute white slaves before being rounded up and beaten by humanoid apes. Filmr spends most of the begging for his freedom. , and in onescapes of the iconic scenes in history comes upon a rusted and abandon statue of liberty. He realizes in an instant that earth has been taken over by civilized apes enslaving the primitive humans. The planet of the whites is no more. Seem to take apes the place of tarzan and king kong in racist popular culture, inspiring for pools between 19701973, comic books, video games, television series, merchandise, you name it, the franchise produced it. While tarzan and king kong screamed the racist confidence of car conquering the dark world, it was a dark world fighting for power in its own statues of liberty and the second half of the 20th century. In the racist mind, resisting africanamericans in a nonwhite world and resisting imperialism worldwide were not merely fighting for power and freedom, they were fighting to rule and enslave the white world. The american and western fear was essentially local and global. In 1968, black power for racist america meant black supremacy and white slavery. Just as 50 years later, black matter means black supremacy and white lights dont matter. The power of black lives matter to these people are running wild. By 1968, both democrats and republicans had popularized the call for law and order. Nixon made it a central plank of his campaign, just as donald trump did 50 years later. Law and order became a model for defending the planet of the whites. Found 81 gallup poll of respondents believe that law and order has broken down in the order rhetoricd was thereby used to defend Police Brutality and racist rhetoric and both the and brutality triggered urban rebellions that triggered more rhetoric and brutality. Fear of the planet of the apes came to dominate the racist american consciousness in 1968. Tor that would go on personify in criminals, protesters, welfare recipients, communist, deferred action recipients, and everybody gets the point. These fears came of course to dominate political campaigns over the next five decades. The fear of the planet of the apes was then actualized in 2008 s face who was superimposed on an eight came president of the United States. New rounde time, and of planet of the eight films became popular. It would make sense that his successor would pledge to make the planet great again. I just want to sort of sake that we of course are living in many ways thereby in the culmination of the history of fear that was fear thate in 1968, a was fundamentally global and local. A few. Thank you. [applause] me join my fellow everyone in thanking for putting this together. I will try to talk about china, or at least the role of china in the global 1968, which is part of what i have been writing about for a while. By stealing from a person who was kind enough to share with me this soon to be published work. One of the most glaring mistakes in translation, one with direct 2,ference to 1968, in 197 during the nixon visit, one person was talking with a reporter and allegedly commented it was too early to tell when evaluating the effects of the french revolution. To squote was supposed to it is often used today demonstrate the spirit of the Prime Minister and general, took an old civilization attitude of the chinese from their in this stream of dynasty and emperors in search of events two centuries earlier. The promise that the quote is wrong. He was not talking about the french revolution of 1789. He was talking about may 1968 in foure for years earlier years earlier. In that respect, he was right. It was too early to tell what the effects of 1968 were in 1972. Which was in many ways another turning point. The little vignette is not particularly relevant, but has obvious meaning. , hehe western imagination could not have been talking about something so close and so present has made 1968 with all its Global Implications because china was preoccupied with its own internal struggles. By revolution, which was 1972 was at a particular stage, is not often told in the same train. Vein. 1968 and innly in the 1960s as a reflection or refraction. 1968resence of china in could only be unimagined one. In the west, latin america, and maorazy red guards , china could books only exist in our heads. Not besuch, we could bothering about contemporary events in which china and maoism figured prominently. The problem is that china and maoism did figure prominently the 1960s and 1968 pretty much all over the world. What i have tried to argue so inc. Isch i dont particularly mindboggling, dont think is particularly was crucialg, mao in the upheaval of 1968 and existed across the global 60s peoplethe name of young putting on the carbs of the guards they imagine far away, although that was true as well, but maoism in china existed in the vocabulary for particular issues discussed across different historical realities. It seems to me undeniable and important that the 1960s were the only moment in recent history where china, specifically because of its , came tonary system chart the course of this political and economic change. Has identifiedm practices and processes shared across different situations. Make made this claim elsewhere in print, but there , andome specific points then we can discuss about them. I will be very brief. In 1968 and in the a60s, china did not name cultural or geographic location, but it was the name of a set of ideas and concern of worldwide relevance. As of not in the context today when we look at china and the rise of china has a superpower. It was china defining a set of ideas. It was sense, i think the only moment in which people asia embrace and think of and chinese in a way that was different, subjects with the right to thinking and political practice. Whichk it is a moment in china moved from objects to , political expense that could and should be shared. The pilgrimage of Many Americans blackropeans and activists to china makes weight more sense. Way more sense. Maoism presented itself as an alternative to capitalism in the american form and soviet planned economy or sovietstyle structures. Precisely at the time where globally, especially europe and america, the fact of the booms andhe 1950s were waning the system presented itself in a situation of crisis, and the inequalities came more starkly to the light. 1960ssis of the invested directly the political location privileged location u. S. , incs, and in the and by theitaly privileged location of politics, i mean the parties and the Political Parties of the left. 1968 is the crisis of the trade unions and the pcf. In 1968, not by chance with a massive demonstration outside the chicago convention, the democratic party, which was sort of the party of the left. That particular context, the cultural revolution appeared as an attack on the validity of any privileged location for politics and the ability to organize independently of the state. The cultural revolution was an antiparty of people. Maoism addressed issues that were crucial in the daily experience of students and thehers everywhere come of division of labor, transmission of learning come the connection with politics and knowledge. Moment inesonant in a which the figure of the students with the complexity has one of the leading figures of the 1968 protest. Point, thee last 1968 and cultural revolution centered on the question of the politics of the everyday, or the everyday as the location of politics. Say is the culture and the cultural revolution, practices that need to be changed by a more radical revolution in just a state or political revolution. 1968, thee of question of everyday practices was central. This was one point in which the intellectual on the left, the recognitiont in the that they were saying something valid politically and were not just complaining about the issue of everyday practices. I am being very quick cure because time is short. Basically i suggest that we have to place maoism in the global 1960s, and not as a model to be oflowed, not an exotic dream achieving equality, but rather as a central element articulating some of the issues of 1968. If we put maoism back in 1968 as a global event and in different localities, it will make more sense. Thank you. [applause] now we open for discussion. , so if cspan recording you want to Say Something, please go in the middle and speak to the microphone. It wont amplify your voices, but it will be recorded. Anybody can start. I will start. Good morning. Are in a room full of historians, and this is a question that those of us who history,atively recent stephanie also mentioned that political scientists have a certain way of discussing these issues, and all of us have tried to negotiate what our role is as a historian and have probably read sociologist or political scientists. Of the the role historian in trying to think about 1968 . Or you can talk about your field and experiences of using not just primary sources, but may be using political scientists as primary sources, so a very broad question. Thank you. I will answer. Kind of thinking about some of the things mentioned today, i think it is important to include the 1960s in history because of the term global. That we talkew way about things we used to call the west. A worldined as historian, and i am always interested in the ways the world, the west, engage with the actual world. One of the ways we have to do that is to look at how the global and local interact. It could not be that egypt has global significance, so it has to be engagement with the west, capitalism, and these less significant parts of the world. I hope my irony is not lost on anyone. I think it is important that historians take ownership i dont want to take ownership, but engage with this period. Teacher, my students, who are feeling unhappy and disillusioned at this moment for a variety of reasons, need to connect with this period for a variety of reasons. And so i think it is important , that weake this include this as part of a longer history of empire, of imperialism, western domination, and finally from my perspective what icn egypt, we need a more nuanced understanding of what is the left. Er, who was a big player in cold war politics, had a complicated relationship with the population on the left and right. Leftist,ntified as a but he had his own brand of notism that everyone did embrace, so there is a diversity and complexity that we need to understand, the complexity of movements, not only from the perspective of ely students, of elitepeople students, workers, people who are marginalized. That is why we should engage and discuss this period. I will add something. I agree with that. Generally, the past is a dimension of the far backno matter how in history we are talking about. We are all here now. Of, history is that form of our relationship with history, the so practice of history, is all about shaping the kinds of questions that we asked to under ask to understand that relationship. Doing that we can be attentive to voices and these moments and think, particularly about these methodological problems, where for example ordinary social science that wants to put things into very cut and dry categories, this is a particularly acute problem when dealing with Something Like 1968 where politics is moving away from these categories. Them back into students or students, workers are workers, and so on and so th, you just eat raised just erased the movement and emotion there. Youhe same way that understand china as a distant place geographically bounded and so forth, you lose the way this moment like many other things we could talk about our nonnational or have different kinds of belonging, the commune move movement is also very much about these defections from National Belonging and different kinds of relationships, but again, if we put back on the usual labels, we lose that and lose our ability to think about it. If i could add very briefly, i think our role as historians theo recognize that political ideology of americans, and i should say specifically as it relates to social issues, and even more specifically issues related to race, is largely determined by how they remember the 1960s. What i mean by that is that if you believe that racism ended the day that johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights act of 1965 and you were looking around at your nation, seeing people protest against racism, you are going to see them as the problem, as opposed to racism is itself. Or if you believe that the 1960s was an explosion of racial progress and we have continued to make progress over the last 50 years and we need to continue to make progress over bump that is donald trump, that will cause you to be will belly, you politically in contrast to those arguing no, actually we also experienced racist progress over the last 50 years, because in your mind you have only seen progress that exploded in the 1960s and continued marching to this day. Very briefly, i think how activists remember what strategies work in the 1960s typically are largely determine typically largely determine the strategies used today. I think many of american activists of many stripes believe that marches in the 1960s were effective at bringing about social change, and so that is why marches are so popular today. Believe it actually lead to change fundamentally in the 1960s. Add. Dont have much to i remember a few years ago when the president was elected in france, part of his campaign was about ending 1968. It was an entire thing about ending 1968, like the long legacy, which one could argue 1968 had ended way earlier and he was just being an idiot, but there is a historical problem of not simply remembering or evaluating 1968, but how to remember and how to study 1968 in a way that is not simply old foria for the the days when progress was made and we can make progress in the same way, but identifying quests for equality, specific problems. That stephanie pointed to 1968 as a point of a turn to the right, or a moment in which the opposite of what we think 1968 comes out, which is not particularly surprising, but an interesting point we dont think about. I think the problem is , icifically, especially now dont know, if we take long trajectories, specific moments politicswhat kind of was invited in this global 1968, what failed, what worked without nostalgia specifically . Aboutquestion is directly the global in the 1960s. As historians, especially younger scholars coming up do you the system, what think about the utility of an idea of looking at a global context in looking at these contextspecially in the of what is deemed resurgent . Ationalism politically when w how do we reconcile the return to an nationalist politics when we are looking as historians at things that dont necessarily fit in national boxes. Thank you. I think i can say briefly that the argument about the resurgence of nationalist politics in the United States is a little bit overblown. Just to give one example, even of course many people of course point two trumps slogan for this case of nationalism or similar slogans emerging in western europe among among far right parties. Thate dont realize is there is an underlying global dimension to the slogan. What makes America Great has been a global phenomenon. I think we forget about that. Is no longer the leader of the socalled free world because, how can it be the leader of the free world if it has a black person in that position . I just wanted to say that briefly. To 1968 andelates the 1960s more broadly, i think historians there were certain movements that were fundamentally local and global. I think it is our job to sort of show that complexity. To give an example, talking about mao, thinking about how the black panther party, as many d early w, raide by sellingy funds the red book in berkeley. That is a connection between local and global. National is global. , they are able to make rhetoric about internal things because they are in a world of nationstates, defined against each other in the way nativists arefascist movements intensely national and could not be more global. The larger point i would make is that part of life you have to of why you that part have to think of 1968 in a global perspective is that that is the actuality. On the one hand you will get conversations or forms of direct you have manyd mediated things. For is a moment that the first time there is satellite communication, photos, tv, all kinds of things happening. The other thing that is more widely recognized is that if you read or study history of different places in 1968 you will come across multiple actors saying very similar things. That have no idea about each other. Oft is a deep kind of level synchronicity you have to Pay Attention to. This is the reality of the situation. One thing i want to add, a ity of middle east context. 1968 is not over. Just declare jerusalem the capital and people went crazy, why . A cousin of 1967. Middle east contacts because of 1967. For middle east context it is not over. For empire,new term really. It is important to discuss this is not a placeit where things happen, it is a major part of the Global Dynamics of geopolitics and political realities happening today. It is something unfinished. Continuum of a something longer. A lot of people think it is cool to 2011to connect 1968 in egypt. Oppressed muslim people are demonstrating. They always have, you just werent paying attention or cared. It is important because it is still going on. It is a continual story that is unfinished. There is another connection and nationstate and comes aty that 1968 of specific moment nationals determination and anticolonial global anticolonial movement. It doesnt make much sense if you take away from that. That is another sort of longterm relationship. I missed part of the global , our, but Young Scholars panelists discussed and indicated that global cannot be homogenized. It has to be a temporality that homogenized. S not when you start to homogenized, just because you can say 1968 is the same year for everybody, doesnt mean anything. You havent said anything thereby. You have to then say more. I think all of you have spoken eloquently to that. Out and is very interesting is precisely this problem of a global temporality that is simultaneous but not homogenizing. Of 1968storians think as the moment of rupture. A marker of a particular and i think stephanie talked about how it is the moment that you can see the conservative reaction setting in. Ibram kendi talked about how it continues on and how we can continue to see for today. We, asndering how historians, we all deal with time because we have to. We all deal with chronology because we have to. Yet, time and a chronological sense,time in lineal says nothing on its own. How do we historians make temporality signify . I know that is a hugely abstract idea. I think 1968 is a good moment to allow us you have all said to , and i wonderis if we could think about that in , time isactness abstract and quite concrete in its lived realities. I wonder if we could think about how that and i dont think that we have to adjudicate whether 1968 is a moment of openness, a moment of closure, a moment of continuity, a moment of rupture, a moment of which is my favorite version of history. Repetition. I just wonder if you have anything more to say about that, the problem of temporality and history. That is a difficult question. For 1968, to me, it marked the ofent it marks the moment politicalle cohesiveness in temporality. People across different parts of are, not saying the same thing, it is not a homogenizing problem, but they potentially they can see each other. They can recognize each other as potentially involved in political issues and political battles that seem to be exactly contemporary. Ofis possible to think timeliness of the problem everywhere. Whether you are in paris, or you or a blacknghai, inther in oakland, or africa, whatever, there is the we arelity of thinking sharing a set of problems. We are thinking of the same time , about now of the present, which is for some reason shared. It doesnt happen all the time. Doesnt. Should, but it in 1968 you have at least the perceived temporality. Temporary cohesiveness based on politics. I dont know if it is more visible there, but that is one thing that makes it politically relevant to me. Ways, to study, if you want to look into the issue of timeliness and temporality of politics. Do you want to Say Something . Book, the history of racist ideas, i struggled with this question as related to this specific history. What i found through studying is conducting the research the way we have established racial temporality, for lack of a better term, has been this continuous march of racial progress. But, over time after the case was made that things are getting worse. How do you account for both and that very moment . One person saying it is better than it was a generation ago, another person saying it is worse, or the same person saying both . I found it is actually both. I wrote a narrative showing the racial progress and the simultaneous progression of racism. Now, each moment, 2018er you are 1968, 1978, that you have people on the ground experiencing racial progress and the progression of racism. The way this works is that as many of you would imagine activists have broken down barriers, broken down racist power. Racist powered did not simply go home racist power did not simply go home or to their sunny states in palm beach, florida. A remained and try to figure out new and more sophisticated barriers. We have seen that in the realm of voting over the last 50 years , probably the most obviously. I wanted to touch on the aboutut coo cohesiveness, that people could be at the same time literally and not be somewhere backward along the racialized developmental gradient regardless of where they were. The, in fact, some of leading focuses for action could be in places like china, africa, cuba, or on and on. Which, and inse in think this has an effect on how we speak about 1968 and categories. There was an intensely local, even personal, way in which activism was constructed in the sense of temporality. That now is the moment in which, at the same time that all of these social determinations are starting to loosen for people, that your moment now is when you will either continue practices that repeat and reenact forms of domination, or you do something different. Was it was felt and articulated by all kinds of people and all locations offerently, but the sense shared oppression was profound in one of the ways in which the temporality cannot. Anybody else have a question . That is a little low for me. Downu dont have to duck or you can stand and speak. You pointed out different movements paying attention to each other. Often when we are trying to teach this is is like this it is like a fire jumping around the world. I wonder if you could talk about collaboration, people to people exchanges crossing borders. And if you think this is a useful way to teach this to undergrads as a way for them to an alternative read of the past or an alternative future . If you could give examples or thoughts on that . Thank you. Think that is a very useful question. In some ways i guess that i would want to resist there is a kind of nominalist it approach nominalistic approach imagining the baton being passed is the only circulation of exchange. Maybe with the media we have more batons, or they are moving faster, or something. Whether we think of decolonization or the role of that we have to wrap our heads around a kind of set of what i think of as discontinuous solidaritys. There is discontinuous solidarities. There is a sensing of shared Political Agency without being able to assume that you know with this other person is experiencing and you really have really could somehow coop and can beience moved by it and move in parallel. I think that is maybe the most profound form of connection. , there is all kinds of strange micromovements. Is an artistthere ao goes from japan he is taoist, he makes his way to europe and is doing strange street performances while selling paintings in places like antwerp and amsterdam. ,is weird performances historians are discovering, actually came together with other weird street activists doing antismoking things and so forth to give a greenlight to the dutch provost, the provost movement. You have these little catalysts floating about in ways that are almost impossible for us to catalog entirely. Movements of people in all kinds of ways. We are probably going to be frustrated to try to put a net around at all. You can find some of these examples. I think that helps to make things thinkable as well. Can i answer really quickly . It is something that i think students grapple with. I start with the basic cause of that sounds novel, the world is connected. You have to look at the world like a mosaic tiled bathroom. Come together to make a bathroom. If you operate from that at the beginning and make Global Connections over time, which are become so, it doesnt daunting. If you operate from the world is connected, rather than now we are going to talk about the 1960s where everything is connected, but we never talked about that before, it makes difficult. I will tell a story. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who no who naasar assassinated. He went to school in ohio. Because he was black he experienced segregation and it put him off on the United States. Horribleke, this is a place that sells democracy globally but is one of the most ever been. Es i have then he radicalized and became the head of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is something i tell students and they say, i can understand that. The way to do it is to operate from a place where the world is ofnected and use vignettes people to help them understand something that is a very novel concept. Good morning. My name is no call gibson from the university of manchester. Im a phd student. Research deals with africanamerican homelessness in washington, d. C. From the 1960s to the present. The africanamerican poor were basically forgotten within the Africanamerican Community and ind for political expediency the creation of federal welfare programs. Im also finding class muddies the waters, not only for race, but the study of innercity policing of the homeless. As communities have developed ways of dealing with the africanamerican poor in the public square. How important is class to the study of 1968 . Saying it is this also in paris in 1968, very much a Student Movement of social and political capital. That is my question. Class in 1968, snippets of that. I think it is important for us to think about the intersection of class and race. When youre dealing with a racial class, as the black poor are, a racial component and class component, you are simultaneously dealing with a group, youre talking about a group of people who are both by racistace and capitalist policies, as well as racist and elitist ideals. One way we can understand it from an ideological standpoint is in a nation where people believe that poor people are , and in that same nation people believe that black people are lazy, then black poor people are going to be configured as lazier than black elite p or as they will be configured lazier than the white poor. Those racist ideas are not only going to be believed by the white poor, they are going to be believed by black elites. Black elites who consume those ideas about the black poor. Over the last 50 years, you have had a scenario in which because of the gains of civil rights and that has led to the emergence of the first major black middle class. A black middle class that largely consumed ideas that the reason why they moved into the black middle class was because of their own hard work, was because of their own educational prowess. Specifically stating that in contrast to the blacks who have not moved into the black middle class. Therefore, those black elites were gullible to racist ideas , black that black people Homeless People are homeless out of their own doing. Therefore, they were more likely to support policies that harm the black homeless population. I think, to say in closing, what black elites did not realize i think this is what middle income elites do not realize in general is that the racist soes that were largely , when we think about racist policies in the United States, studies show that the higher black people rise on the educational ladder, the more racialpolicy the more discrimination they are likely to face. Those racial discriminatory policies are justified based on racist ideas about the black for. These black elites hang themselves without knowing it. In the same way that we have white, middle income people who are basically voting for people who are squeezing out the white middleclass. I would like to say that i is an essential category. It is something that because of the package of the cold war, if you asked what is the social class, everyone is middle class. We dont like to talk about class, but it is missing from the discourse. It is how donald trump got elected. We dont talk about class. It needs to be interjected with race, class, and gender. Are imperative to understand the complexity of a human being and how they move throughout the world. The other reason i think it is important is that this category of student is a monolith. We think about student activists or workers. To provide nuance on workingclass students or poor Industrial Workers, this gives us a richness to the story that cannot be realized without it. I think people speak from their location and understanding what that is is an important beginning. I think it is also true that many times the economic dimensions of the 1960s drop out the poor persons campaign from Martin Luther king jr. s actions. We forget all of these important moments. On the other side, things like the economic attacks by the White Citizens Councils across the south. Part of what is of interest to withinhe ways in which people acquire a voice. Particularly people who werent supposed to have a voice. Workers were not supposed to say things, express things, have that subjectivity apart from official Union Locations and so forth. Moving the politics and the ability to speak in the 1960s, in some ways is an ways of whichhe ones own political subjectivity demands more than a little box therein. At the same the little box they are in, at the same time not forgetting what that is. Think it is particularly needed to say the 1968 presented a moment of crisis in class. It doesnt mean that class becomes irrelevant. Quite the contrary. As class becomes more in my ownd, locational studies, if you look you look at the classes, the workingclass is a huge problem. The revolution is a massive issue. France, in europe in general, poor represents who represents the working class . Who speaks for the workingclass . What are the workingclass demands . That breakroblems open massively. They existed before, but they break open. One way that the 1960s are is class becomes less important because we have other identities. Lgbt, i think that is kind of silly as an explanation. It points out a crisis of what class means. Again, it doesnt mean we have to discard class, but we have to think about class in a more complicated way. I want to add to that. Can you do it in front of the microphone . , classfact that china was articulated that class still that itn socialism and was a particular issue in the cultural revolution. What does it mean to say that socialism did not abolish classes, but reconfigured them . , extortedomentous and their lead if a cold, and contentious topic. One can say that the cultural revolution it was a momentous, extraordinarily complicated and contentious topic. One can say that the cultural revolution came from that. We can say that class exists in capitalism. Is what defines capitalism. In class exists in socialism, what does that say . That is a real problem. I just wanted to add that. We are out of time. Thank you, everybody, for coming. [applause] ofwe continue our coverage the American NationalHistory Association meeting and washington, d. C. You are watching American History tv on cspan3. We want to welcome ibram at americanfessor university and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and policy center. Your first year at the university. Thank you for being with us. Lets go back to