ABSTRACT
Nineteen sixty-eight has gone down in history as the year of the global student revolution. This chapter provides some background information on the genesis and trajectory of Ethiopian student movement (ESM). The ESM evolved from rather innocuous beginnings to posing the main challenge to the imperial regime in Ethiopia. The external/inspirational factors explain the radicalization of the ESM rather than its genesis. A number of factors are subsumed in this category. The first was the influence of the scholarship students from other African countries that began to enroll in the University College of Addis Ababa starting in 1958. A second inspirational/external factor was the global ascendancy of the Marxist creed, in both its orthodox and New Left varieties. The chapter delineates the major indicators of student activism in 1969. It deals with the long-term significance of that year for student activism and the 1974 revolution that proved to be its culmination.
