Student Uprisings Research Articles

Comparing the South African and Brazilian student uprisings (2015–2016): Similarities, Circulations, and Distance

ABSTRACT South Africa and Brazil are notorious for having some of the highest levels of (racialised) inequality on the planet, and dysfunctional education systems failing millions in their aspirations for a better life. Over 2015-16, student protests erupted across Brazilian and South African schools and universities, challenging these conditions through strikes, occupations, on-campus and street protests, and intellectual production. This paper builds on a World-Systems theoretical framework to understand the similarities, circulation, and distance between the two contemporaneous movements. In Brazil, the ‘Primavera Secundarista' high school occupations dealt primarily with local political dynamics, such as school closures, and intersectional forms of oppression. In South Africa, the ‘Fallist' university mobilisations demanded free, decolonised education, alongside addressing issues of outsourcing and institutional racism. In the first section, I give a comparative overview of these student movements’ similarities, situating them in their context and highlighting the key concerns and political and pedagogical practices of student activists in each. While these movements did not generally engage with each other, there were some important points of interaction, discussed in the second section. While highlighting these points of connection, I also advance an argument in the third section for why there was nevertheless relatively little direct engagement between these contemporaneous movements that otherwise had so much in common. The points of connection and disconnection between these similar movements offers insights about the functioning of the contemporary World-System and the modes of transnational circulation between movements therein, with lessons for transnational understandings of social movements, especially South-South movements.

Između bliskog i nepoznatog: jugoslovenski socijalistički model u debatama francuskih komunista nakon studentskih pobuna 1968. godine

The paper analyses the debate among French communists over the Yugoslav socialist model, both before and after the confrontation between the leaderships of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ) and the Communist Party of France (KPF) during the 1968 student uprisings. Employing a comparative methods and historiographical research of archival sources, the article attempts to critically reconsider these issues. It investigates the sudden spike of interest among French communists in the historical evolution of the Yugoslav socialist model amidst the dispute within Europe’s extreme left. It also explores the level of understanding among French communists about the evolution of SKJ party politics and Yugoslav sociopolitical reality.

The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History by Brian Jones (review)

The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History by Brian Jones (review)

Zambia’s Support for the African National Congress’s Radio Freedom in Lusaka, 1967–1992

ABSTRACT This article explores the contribution Zambia made to the liberation struggle in South Africa by hosting the ANC’s Radio Freedom in Lusaka. It relies on a combination of archival evidence (audio and documentary sources) from both countries, and interviews conducted with the broadcasters and other media workers of both Radio Freedom and the Zambian national broadcaster. The article argues that Zambia offered immense support to Radio Freedom in the form of broadcasting equipment, working space and airtime on the external services of the national broadcaster. While it waxed and waned in the early years, this assistance increased considerably in the aftermath of the Soweto student uprising of 1976, which enabled the ANC to have a sonic presence among its supporters back home, where listening to this radio was illegal. The support given to Radio Freedom was not isolated but part of a wider struggle and solidarity with the liberation movements in the Southern African region fighting white minority rule. Through Radio Freedom, the ANC was able to shape the course of the unfolding struggle and internal political developments and to attain the cultural hegemony of the Charterist tradition over the Africanist and Black Consciousness camp.

Between obedience and resistance: transforming the role of pupil councils and pupil organisations in Sweden (1928–1989)

PurposeThe overall aim of this article is to discuss the conditions and character of collective protest in schools. When do pupils as a collective gain the ability to express critical views on the policies of schools, and what is that criticism about? Using Sweden as an example, I discuss this question by studying the collective organisation of pupils from the 1920s to the 1980s.Design/methodology/approachThe article discusses and compares two phases of pupils' collective organisation in Sweden: one dominated by pupil councils, one by national organisations. The article discusses how pupil councils at individual schools arose in the wake of the 1928 grammar school charter, and illustrates its influence using a case study of a grammar school in Stockholm. Furthermore, the article investigates how national organisations, first formed in 1952, expressed their concerns about national school policies.FindingsThe first phase (ca. 1928–1951) was dominated by the idea of discipline, and the main task of pupil councils was to help teachers in maintaining discipline. The second phase (ca. 1952–1989) was instead characterised by a heightened focus on protests and democracy. From then on, the main idea was that pupil councils and national pupil organisations should change the school, making it more suited to the needs of the pupils.Originality/valueThere is much research on university students and student uprisings. However, much of the previous research on the student voice is related to the upheavals of the long 1968. By concentrating its efforts on a limited time period when protest was more obvious, previous research has arguably not been able to discuss transformations over time.

‘The unofficial curriculum is where the real teaching takes place’: faculty experiences of decolonising the curriculum in Africa

This paper analyses faculty experiences tackling global knowledge asymmetries by examining the decolonisation of higher education in Africa in the aftermath of the 2015 ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ student uprising. An overview of the literature reveals a rich debate on defining ‘decolonisation’, starting from a critique of Eurocentrism to propositions of alternate epistemologies. These debates are dominated by the Global North and South Africa and their experiences of curriculum reform. Our focus is on the experiences of political scientists in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. These countries share the same Anglophone political science traditions but represent different political trajectories that constitute a significant condition for the discipline. The 26 political scientists we interviewed acted toward increasing local content and perspectives in their teaching, as promoted in the official strategies of the universities. They noted that what was happening in lecture halls was most important. The academic decolonisation debate appeared overambitious or even as patronising to them in their own political context. National politics affected the thematic focus of the discipline both as far as research topics and students’ employment opportunities were concerned. Although university bureaucracies were slow to respond to proposed curricula changes, new programmes were approved if there was a market-based demand for them. International programs tended to be approved fastest. Political economy of higher education plays a role: dependency on foreign funding, limited national resources to conduct research and produce publications vis-à-vis international competition, and national quality assurance standards appeared to be most critical constraints for decolonising the curriculum.

The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History by Brian Jones (review)

The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History by Brian Jones (review)

Erkân-ı Erbaa: 30 Mayıs 1876 Bürokratik Darbesi'nin Organizatörleri

Sultan Abdülaziz’in hükümdarlığının son yıllarında sık sık sadrazam ile vükela değişikliği yaşandı ve Balkanlarda isyanlar görüldü. Tanzimat hareketinin gereği olan reformların devam ettirilmemesi Yeni Osmanlı muhalefetini doğurdu, kendisinin yerine alternatifler aranmasına yol açtı. Hem Abdülaziz’e karşı şahsi hınçları hem de devletin içinde bulunduğu kötü vaziyetin ortadan kaldırılmasını Abdülaziz’i devirmekte gören Erkân-ı Erbaa adlı dörtlü komite teşekkül etti. Karakter yapıları itibari ile birbirine benzemeyen ancak Abdülaziz’i devirme emelinde birleşen bu zevat, iktidar değişim aracı olarak darbeyi yeniden gündeme taşıdı. Medrese talebelerinin ayaklanması ile Seraskerliğe Hüseyin Avni Paşa, Meclis-i Vükelâ üyeliğine Midhat Paşa, Sadarete Mehmed Rüşdü Paşa, Şeyhülislamlığa ise Hayrullah Efendi getirildi. Bu durum devlette bürokratik olarak önemli mevkilere kavuşmuş olan Erkân-ı Erbaa’ya darbe emellerine ulaşmak için büyük bir fırsat verdi. Nitekim bu makamlara gelmelerinden on sekiz gün sonra tertipledikleri darbe ile Abdülaziz tahttan indirildi ve yerine Veliaht Murad padişah yapıldı. Erkân-ı Erbaa darbe konusunda hemfikir olsa da devlet yönetimi konusunda farklı düşüncelere sahipti. Bu görüş ayrılığı tahta geçirdikleri V. Murad’ın hastalığı ile birleşince siyasî ve idarî istikrarsızlık meydana geldi. Bu cümleden olarak darbe eyleminin tabiatı gereği, ortaya çıkan iktidar paylaşımı ve idarî düzenin yeniden kurulma meselesi beraberinde siyasî bir kargaşa meydana getirdi. Öte yandan 30 Mayıs 1876 Darbesi’nin bürokratik elit diye nitelendirilen Erkân-ı Erbaa tarafından başarılmış olması yakın dönem siyasi tarihimizde yaşanacak darbe hareketlerine ilham ve cesaret verecek kötü bir geleneği başlattı. Çalışmanın temel referans noktasını Abdülaziz’i deviren Erkân-ı Erbaa’nın kimler olduğu, darbe eylemine neden kalkıştıkları, bu eylemi nasıl gerçekleştirdikleri oluşturmaktadır. Bu bağlamda Erkân-ı Erbaa’nın kendileri ve darbe eylemine kalkışma nedenleri hakkında farklı görüşlere yer verilerek bir sentez geliştirildi. Makale sonucunda elde edilen bulgulara göre, 30 Mayıs 1876 Bürokratik Darbesi’nin Osmanlı Devleti’nde meydana gelen darbeler arasında benzer özellikler taşıdığı tespit edildi.

Critical Curating as Decolonial Practice: Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories and Meanings—Anatomy of an Exhibition

This article offers an analysis of Protests and Pedagogy: Representation Meanings and Memories an exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Sir George Williams Affair. The article revisits the curating process through critical, decolonial and resistive approaches and allows a rare glimpse into the archival records related to the 1969 event, Canada’s most notorious student uprisings, when students took over the seventh-floor faculty lounge and ninth-floor computer centre to protest anti-Black racism in the classroom at Sir George Williams University. By revisiting these events fifty years later, the exhibition asked, What do these archival materials say to us today? The exhibition challenged existing cliched accounts of the affair through deliberate practices of subversion. In exchange, it highlighted lesser-known narratives, through images, sounds, newspaper accounts, official documents and oral testimonies that offer alternative curating methodologies that brings the archives to life.

Marcuse's gaze towards the Paris and Berlin student movements in May ‘68

마르쿠제는 1968년 반란하는 학생들의 우상이었다. 더불어 학생 저항운동의 적극적인 지지자로, 시대의 격동과 반란의 현장에서 목소리를 내고 소통하는 철학자였다. 마르쿠제는 68년 5월 파리에서 격동의 현장을 목도하고곧장 베를린으로 날아가 학생들을 만났다. 뒤이어 자신이 교수로 있는 미국샌디에이고 대학으로 돌아와 5월 23일 ‘68년 학생반란’을 주제로 강연과 대화의 자리를 마련한다. 본고는 그 경험과 강연을 토대로 1968년 5월 파리와 베를린의 학생운동에 대한 마르쿠제의 시선을 재구성하고 분석한다. 기존 연구에서는 마르쿠제와 학생운동의 관계를 단순한 상호지지로 파악하는 측면이 있지만 필자는 다르게 본다. 우선 마르쿠제는 학생운동을 적극적으로 지지하는 한편, 특히 베를린 학생운동의 거친 행동주의에 대해 상당히 비판적이었다. 그 의미는 ‘기대와 우려’라는 키워드로 설명될 수 있었다. 또한 마르쿠제가 독일학생운동의 전투적 행동주의를 비판하지만, 마르쿠제 스스로의 생각과 주장 속에 학생들의 전투성과 행동주의를 고무한 딜레마가 내재했다고 본다. 나아가 파리의 학생운동에 대한 마르쿠제의 기대와 낙관은 그 운동이 결국거대한 총파업으로 이어졌기 때문이었던 반면, 베를린 학생운동이 보인 거친 행동주의에 대한 우려는 다수 주민의 지지를 받지 못했던 탓이 컸다. 하지만 베를린 학생운동 역시 자신의 방법으로 마르쿠제의 ‘위대한 거부’ 를 추구했고, 그것은 정치적 의제를 넘어 일상생활의 영역까지 아우르는 ‘총체적 문화혁명’의 기획이자 ‘새로운 혁명’의 준거점이었다. 물론, 독일학생과 노동자들의 짧은 연대는 프랑스의 거대한 총파업 연대와 나란히 비견하기 어렵다. 그러나 두 나라 학생운동이 공히 대학 안팎에서 치켜든 저항의 깃발과 해방의 기획은 자체의 성공과 실패를 넘어 다양한 사회 분야를 관통하며 다면적으로 영향력을 미쳤다. 마르쿠제 역시 초지일관 학생들의 열정과 대의를 향한 성원을 거두지 않았다.Marcuse was the idol of the revolting students in 1968. He was an active proponent of the student resistance movement and a philosopher who spoke and communicated in the field of turbulence and rebellion of the times. He witnessed the turbulence in Paris in May 1968 and flew to Berlin to meet students. He subsequently returned to the University of San Diego, USA, where he was a professor, to give a lecture on the subject of Student Uprising of 1968 on May 23rd. In this paper, I reconstructed and analyzed Marcuse s perspective on the student movements in Paris and Berlin in May 1968. In previous studies on this topic, the relationship between Marcuse and the student movement was simply understood, but the author understood it differently. First of all, while Marcuse actively supported the student movement, he was particularly critical of the harsh activism of the Berlin student movement. Its meaning could be explained with the key words expectations and concerns . Also, although Marcuse criticized the militant activism of the student movement in West Germany, I think that there was a dilemma that inspired the militantism and activism of the students in Marcuse s own thoughts and arguments. In addition, Marcuse s expectations and optimism for the Paris student movement were due to the fact that it eventually led to a huge general strike, while his concerns about the harsh activism of the Berlin student movement were due to the fact that it did not have the support of the majority of the residents. However, the Berlin student movement also pursued Marcuse s Great Refusal in its own way, and it was a project of a total cultural revolution that went beyond the political agenda and encompassed the realms of everyday life and was the reference for a new revolution . Of course, the brief solidarity of German students and workers was hardly comparable to that of the great French general strike. But the project of resistance and liberation held up by the student movements in both countries inside and outside the university penetrated various social fields and exerted a multifaceted influence. Marcuse also did not reap the enthusiasm and support for the cause of the students.

The Wave of ’68. Portraits of Rebel Students in the Italian Press

This paper investigates the representation of university students in the collective Italian imaginary during ’68 through the contemporary articles published in La Stampa and Stampa Sera describing the student uprisings at the University of Turin (Italy). The paper draws on a large amount of articles published in the daily newspapers La Stampa and Stampa Sera (nearly 400, from January to June 1968, the most dynamic phase of the protests) to highlight how journalists constructed the narrative of the rebellion by criticising the image of the rebel students, using words loaded with negative meanings and delegitimising their claims without any effort to understand their motivations. The image of the students that emerges from the articles over the period of time considered is negative, constructed to underline the destructive nature of the demonstrations against the political and social system of Italy in the 1960s. There was an unfailing tendency to highlight the rioting, disturbance of lessons, and physical and verbal attacks against teachers and the police, and the language used were reminiscent of that employed in times of war. The daily national press of the time is a rich source of material, with considerable interpretative and explanatory potential; in reconstructing the events day by day, it enables us to conduct an in-depth investigation into the ideology and the imaginary at play in a given space and time. It explores corners of the history of education that escape official recording and reveals the focus of interest and the priorities of the media groups.

SOVIET POWER REGARDING KAZAKH CREATIVE INTELLIGENTSIA (80-90 YEARS OF THE XX CENTURY)

The article discusses the paradoxical policy of the Soviet government in the 80–90s of the twentieth century in relation to the creative intelligentsia. The author also pointed out that the problem of the threat of loss of national identity was acute at various meetings and congresses of the Kazakh creative intelligentsia before perestroika, during the thaw and stagnation. It is known that with the deepening crisis in society and the escalation of social and ethnic tension in 1986, an uprising of Kazakh students in Almaty followed. This December uprising, which shocked the world, proved that a new generation with a high level of national identity, measured by the honor of the people, came to the Kazakh land. The article also analyzes the views and actions of the young generation, especially the Kazakh youth studying in Moscow, who gave a worthy answer to the political system. And also the actions of Mukhtar Shakhanov did not go unnoticed.

Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism by Jelani M. Favors

Reviewed by: Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism by Jelani M. Favors Vanessa Garry Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism. By Jelani M. Favors. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. xii, 354. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-4833-0.) From their inception, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been used by Black faculty as safe spaces to promote race uplift and foster generations of student activists. Jelani M. Favors uses student voices in newspaper articles and scrapbooks as a lens to explore HBCUs' purpose and the [End Page 926] development of student activists, as well as to discern how faculty's teachings and experiences influenced student uprisings against Jim Crow. The HBCUs featured in the book include the Institute for Colored Youth (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania), Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T University, and Favors covers the operations of the institutions between 1837 and 1974. The narratives reveal how the arm's-length engagement of the founding white governing bodies of HBCUs resulted in administrators and faculty surreptitiously expanding the curriculum to address race consciousness. The flash-point events and students' uprisings included in the narratives demonstrate the strategy worked. Three aims of the book are an examination of the faculty's and administrators' intentions regarding the second curriculum, an analysis of its impact on students and surrounding communities, and an assessment of how it shaped the growth and dissemination of the civil rights movement. Favors argues that the second curriculum sowed the seeds of idealism and resistance. The author adeptly narrates how the faculty's teaching of content wrapped in culturalism slowly ignited students unflinching boldness to confront Jim Crow in ways the generations before them did not. For example, the Alabama State University narrative unfolds with Harper Councill Trenholm assuming the presidency of the university after the death of his father, George Washington Trenholm. At the start of his tenure, H. C. Trenholm embraced the New Negro movement by supporting Carter G. Woodson's Negro History Week campaign. It required all faculty to teach their discipline coupled with African American history—a strategy embraced by students. Faculty's inculcations resulted in bold activism such as the Alabama State University students' boycott in 1951 that shuttered the nearby white-owned grocery store of Sam Green, who was accused of raping his fifteen-year-old Black babysitter, Flossie Hardman. This was a preview of activism that characterized the civil rights movement. Favors deftly supports his thesis with skillful storytelling, narrow focus, and well-documented details. An artful storyteller, Favors writes with a distinct sense of place and a cast of prominent historical actors (who were sometimes professionally interconnected between the HBCUs). In fact, the author is so skilled at storytelling that it was disappointing to reach the waning of the civil rights movement due to white institutions' recruitment of HBCUs' talent and the drop off of students' organizing owing to overlapping missions and lack of leadership. However, the epilogue creates a transition closing the gap from then to now. The author narrows the focus to the development of student activism using rich data to amplify student voices and to illustrate how activism morphed from African Americans striving for respect in the nineteenth century to ultimately demanding equal rights at great peril during the 1960s. Favors fills a gap in the HBCU literature because his book highlights the students' voices who are usually understudied. The author supports his claims with a plethora of resources such as archival data found in HBCU libraries and state historical societies, countless interviews conducted by the author and others, websites, government publications, dissertations, and numerous local and HBCU news-papers. Historians, teachers, social scientists, and students will find this book an [End Page 927] essential resource for studying HBCUs. Furthermore, it gives a blueprint for what freedom or equality looks like today and in the future. Vanessa Garry University of Missouri, St. Louis Copyright © 2020 Southern Historical Association

Liberated Capitalism

An interview with Henryk Szlajfer by Grzegorz Konat. Szlajfer was a leading figure in the student uprisings in Poland in March 1968. He was expelled from the University of Warsaw and was arrested and imprisoned for political dissent. He later conducted research in political economy focusing on the theory of monopoly capitalism, where he made major contributions, and coedited The Faltering Economy with John Bellamy Foster.

Roots, rhizomes and resistance: remembering the Sir George Williams student uprising

This article is a critical reflection, half a century on and offered from the Caribbean, about allegations of racial discrimination on the part of a professor that prompted the 1969 Sir George Williams affair in Montreal. It provides an overview of the factors that instigated the student uprising; details the response and aftermath that ensued; offers a focus on the role Black women played in the direct action; and illustrates how the incident was influenced by and had links to the West Indies. In addition, it historicises 1960s–1970s Trinidad and Tobago to explain how the political convictions and demonstration of the students inspired movements and galvanised solidarity for transformative change in the country post-independence. It highlights the translocal connections and metaphorical rhizomes that exist not only in the Caribbean diaspora, but across student protests, youth mobilisations and revolutionary struggles globally. The article is an act of diasporic remembrance on the uprising’s fiftieth anniversary, as well as a recognition of the significance it continues to have in the West Indies today, particularly in Trinidad and Tobago.

Queer intimacy during seditious times: revisiting the case of Ramchandra Siras

In this essay, I theorize a relation between sexual and caste politics to consider the interfacing between two suicides on university campuses that made public headlines for different reasons: the Dalit student Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad, and the gay Marathi professor, Ramchandra Siras at Aligarh Muslim University. In analyzing these two cases together, I want to ask what it might mean to retrospectively re-think Siras’ case through the language of political and public desire that Vemula’s case at the University Hyderabad (UOH) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student protests present. To textually ground my arguments, I analyze the recent film Aligarh (Mehta:2016) praised for its sympathetic portrayal of Siras whose legal fight for privacy (and subsequent suicide) when he is caught having sex with another man constitutes the text’s central premise. Through an analysis of the film, I inquire into the occlusions that calls for queer privacy are predicated on. I thus ask: what is lost from queer analytical frames when public domains are disavowed in favor of rights to privacy? In triangulating the notion of privacy with queer politics (via the Siras case) and questions of caste and communalism (through the Vemula case and subsequent student uprisings), this essay gestures toward an articulation of queerness that would move beyond single-issue calls for judicial protection and instead reconsider the “seditiousness” at the heart of a sexual politics.

Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran

Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran

Reception and Perception of May 1968 in Greece

How is May ’68 received in the public space? How has it been perceived in the collective consciousness in Greece since that day? To investigate the image of May ’68 portrayed by the mass media (public space) and the idea that young Greeks have of it today (collective memory), I relied on three categories of sources: i) Analysis of the texts referring to the events; ii) Interviewing former students who participated in the uprising against the Dictatorship at the Polytechnic in 1973; and iii) Discussions with today’s students to see whether or not they have an image of May ’68, and if so, what it is. This paper is made up of five sections. In the first I provide an overview of the situation in Greece in 1968, in the second I briefly set out the main positions on May ’68 of well-known French social scientists, and in the third I discuss how the period was perceived and the weight of its role in the uprising of Greek students at the Polytechnic in 1973. In the fourth section I paint a brief picture of how May ’68 has been viewed in Greece from the fall of the dictatorship in 1974 to today. Finally, in the fifth and final section, I summarise how today’s students perceive the events.

Youth as Engaged Cultural Workers: Benito Juarez High School and the Legacy of Student Uprisings on the Lower West Side of Chicago

Abstract Between 1968–1974, Black and Latinx youth on the Lower West Side of Chicago led walkouts citywide to protest racist policies and terrible school conditions, and one of the legacies of student and community activism is the founding of Benito Juarez Neighborhood Academy High School in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Art educators Nicole Marroquin and Paulina Camacho collaborated on a critical action research project with Benito Juarez High School students for 4 years. Together they explored this complex and unwritten history of the Froebel and Harrison High School uprisings, and groups of students used documentary photographs, newspaper accounts, and firsthand reports to develop artwork, performance, and public interventions in the neighborhood. They examined the role of youth in protecting and enriching our democracy, analyzed how we can recuperate culturally affirming histories that support creative responses to the discriminatory policies in our schools, and discussed how schools can continue to be sites of youth liberation and empowerment.

State, university, and society: higher educational development and university functions in shaping modern Thailand

The case of higher educational development in Thailand is intriguing in the sense that the country, with the deep religious root of Buddhism, was never colonized; however, the shadow of Westernization in the higher education system is strongly evident. The functions of Thai higher education have played a crucial role in shaping the country’s modern society in political, economic, and social aspects. The five terms of the state, the university, society, changing environments, and higher education functionality are adopted as a conceptual ground of the investigation. The intertwined roles and power relationships of the three actors—the state, the university, and society—surrounding by the changing environments at global, regional, and local levels have largely influenced and determined the functionality of universities in the country’s development. The paper investigates the actions and interactions among these three factors under the changing environments that have shaped the major shifts and incidents of the country’s development. It highlights the universities’ functions in modern Thai society in the different eras. With the conceptual framework, the historical account of Thai higher educational development is analyzed through six phases: (1) Buddhism and Thai higher learning; (2) the threat of colonialism; (3) the Siamese Revolution and the end of absolute monarchy; (4) the Cold War and the military regime; (5) the Student Uprising, democracy, and soaring population; and (6) the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 and the forces of globalization.