Policing has inevitably been an issue whenever student struggles have reached a certain pitch of struggle. In many cases, heavy-handed policing has provided a spark to the movement.
At the University of California in Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement (FSM) was kick-started when civil rights activist and alumnus Jack Weinberg was arrested 1 October 1964 for defying a campus ban on soliciting support for “off campus political and social action.”
According to participant and veteran civil rights and feminist activist Jo Freeman: “The police brought a car onto Sproul plaza and after he went limp, carried him to it. Students spontaneously surrounded the car to keep it from moving and deflated the tires. The police temporarily retreated while thousands of students took over the Plaza.
“The car was held hostage for 32 hours. With Jack inside, the police car became the platform for a continual rally.”
The FSM continued the campaign against the university’s draconian restrictions, and was bolstered by management’s decision to charge four students with a breach of university regulations.
Following a rally, featuring folk singer Joan Baez, around 2,000 students occupied the Administration building for the second time that term. In the middle of the night, Democratic Party Governor Pat Brown ordered police to clear the building. 773 people were arrested and the FSM called a student strike in response.
Pressure from the FSM, and from grad students and sympathetic faculty members, led to the largest Academic Senate in memory voting for no restrictions on speech and assembly on campus, though skirmishes continued over the details for some time to come.
On 14 November 1973, a student uprising began at the Athens Polytechnic against the military regime of the Colonels in Greece. The students barricaded themselves in and broadcast messages across the city from a make-shift radio station constructed from laboratory equipment.
They were joined, both inside and outside the campus, by thousands of workers and young people.
In the early hours of 17 November, the crackdown began. At 3am, an AMX 30 Tank crashed through the gates of the Polytechnic.
A total of 24 deaths were reported, all of civilians from outside the institution, including a five year-old boy. Hundreds more were injured. The uprising put an end to the brief period of “liberalisation”, and martial law was restored in a counter-coup by junta hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis.
In exposing the fractures and factionalising within the regime, this incident destroyed the myth of the junta as a united and idealistic movement to save Greece from a corrupt political system. It was a factor in the eventual fall of the regime months later.
In 1982, with memories of the repression still raw, the Greek government introduced “academic asylum” laws. It became illegal for police to enter university property without the permission of rectors, and students were guaranteed protection against state brutality and arrest.
Following the murder by police of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Athens in 2008, and subsequent demonstrations and riots, the right-wing agitated for the removal of the laws.
The PASOK government of George Papandreou repealed the laws on 24 August 2011, as part of an education shake-up which also introduced UK-style administrations in universities ending the election of vice-chancellors by students and academics.
