Marxism Caucus: Marxism, the University, and the Legacies of 1968

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Dialogue Format

Abstract

1968 holds special significance for thinking about Marxism and the university in a state of emergency and emergence. Across Europe, Asia, and the U.S., students rose up in opposition to the Vietnam War, imperialist foreign policy, segregation, and capitalism. This series of campus organizing – including the general strike of students and workers in France, the San Francisco State strike for ethnic studies led by students of color, the occupation of Columbia University, and the Zenkyōtō campus movement in Japan – created the very idea and possibility of radical student activism, and of the university as a site of struggle. Moreover, with the rise of new social movements like the civil rights, Black Power, LGBT, and second-wave feminist movements, student activism in the sixties engendered crises not only for the right but also the left, sectors of which transitioned from class-based to identity-based struggles, and from hierarchical to decentralized modes of organization. In light of these historical shifts, Marxists explored anew questions of revolutionary strategy, philosophy, and theory.



On the 50th anniversary of 1968, the Marxism Caucus proposes a praxis-oriented roundtable to assess the current state of campus activism within and with respect to the neoliberal university subject to outsourcing, downsizing, privatization, and commercialization. As the student actions of ’68 created emergencies and openings for reconsidering the agents, methods, and meanings of social transformation, this roundtable will think about how and why campus organizing today (re)conceptualizes the content, scope, history, and sites of political struggle and coalition building. Participants will also reflect on the institutional history of student movements and of Marxism in the university, and on the lessons that can be drawn from the global student rebellions of 1968 for those of us in higher education to understand and challenge imperialism, settler colonialism, militarization, racism, and economic exploitation.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• Jodi Melamed, Marquette University

Panelists

• Jennifer Marley, The University of New Mexico

• Alan Wald, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Joshua I Heckman, The University of New Mexico

• Benjamin Balthaser, Indiana University-South Bend