Chapter 11 traces the history of the 'critical universities' created in the wake of the peak of student mobilisation around 1968 – in particular, the Kritische Universität of West Berlin and the Università Critica of Trento. Plans for a université critique at Nanterre failed as conflict escalated rapidly and the French government moved most quickly to enact reform within higher education. These experiments attempted to draw on the mobilisation created by confrontations with police and society to transform the university. However, they were beset by problems of poor attendance, inequalities and divergences within the protest movements over the purpose and value of university reform. I argue that the internal contradictions of the movement and the politicising drive of events ultimately led to the collapse of these experiments.

Chapter 8 describes the protest movement at the Free University of Berlin, and in particular a series of conflicts over free speech. I argue that two versions of autonomy confronted each other in the Kuby Affair and the Krippendorff Affair at the FU, pitting a democratic self-conception of the student body versus administrative power. Speech provided the ostensible rationale for a struggle over student self-government, autonomy and democracy. The public use of criticism demanded by the protest movement sapped the FU rector’s authority in a cycle of provocation, overreaction and protest.