ABSTRACT
When 1971 ended without the decision on the international front that Sadat had promised, a protracted set of student demonstrations began. 1 When Sadat gave a rather lame excuse for his failure to deal with the Israelis, the protest seems to have grown nastier. By and large, these were leftist students protesting passivity on the international front, but other factors seem to have contributed to the hostile atmosphere. On 17 January Aziz Sidqi was appointed Prime Minister and Sayyid Marei became First Secretary of the ASU. While both men had long been associated with the socialist revolution — the former with the public sector and the latter with agrarian reform — they both had rather conservative reputations. This was the first cabinet that Sadat had formed since the events of May and it seemed to antagonize the students.
