Int. J. Middle East Stud. 44 (2012), 755–774 doi:10.1017/S0020743812000852 Burleigh Hendrickson MARCH 1968: PRACTICING TRANSNATIONAL ACTIVISM FROM TUNIS TO PARIS Abstract This article examines the activism of Tunisian university students in the late 1960s. During the series of events surrounding the student protests of March 1968 at the University of Tunis, political activists across Tunisia and France forged communication networks or drew upon existing ones in order to further their political claims. The objectives of this article are to investigate the historical roots of these transnational networks in the colonial and postcolonial periods as well as to integrate Tunisia within the “global 1968.” Through an analysis of student protests and government reactions, I argue that ties with the former metropole shaped students’ demands and that a strictly national perspective of events is insufficient. In response to state repression, Tunisian activists shifted their struggle from global anti-imperialism toward the expansion of human rights on the national level. The networks proliferated over the course of 1968 and beyond as concrete realities shaped the direction of new claims. In the land of Jasmine, is it not possible for the state to establish certain democratic principles, the respect for which would enhance the prestige and authority of the government . . . and remove the degraded image of the country we want to love and respect? 1 —Guy Sitbon (1977) Few could have predicted that the self-immolation of twenty-six-year-old Muhammad al-Buazizi 2 on 17 December 2010 would set off the largest social movement in Tunisia since its independence in 1956, ending the twenty-three-year reign of President Zin al- Abidin bin Ali and sending shock waves throughout the Arab world. Since al-Buazizi’s act, intense media focus on the present has served to obscure the past historical context of Tunisian political contestation. Just as Guy Sitbon’s commentary cited above on political repression in the Bourguiba era (1957–87) resonates with characterizations of the Bin Ali regime in 2011, what the Western media controversially termed the “Jasmine Revolution” for its relatively nonviolent character can be tied to a lesser- known movement in the 1960s. This article builds on the history of political activism in postcolonial Tunisia by drawing attention to the first large-scale call for democratic freedoms by Tunisians in March 1968. Burleigh Hendrickson is a PhD student in the Department of History at Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.; e-mail: hendrickson.b@husky.neu.edu © Cambridge University Press 2012 0020-7438/12 $15.00