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