The “April” Dictatorship’s Policy in Universities and Students’ Activism and Resistance against the Dictatorship, in Greece
The “April” Dictatorship’s Policy in Universities and Students’ Activism and Resistance against the Dictatorship, in Greece

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes the main components, ideological features and practices that constitute the (overall) educational and specifically, the higher education policy of the “April” Dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974).The analysis of the relevant research material shows that this policy was characterized by:• the intention to redefine the relations of the Universities with the (“occupied”) State,• the coordinated effort to insert specific ideological authoritarian interpretations in the discourses and policies for higher education and consequently, in the reform efforts of the Dictatorship,• the institutionalization of a new economy of power based on control technologies which favored the formation of (ideologically over-determined) discipline and extended state intervention into every aspect of the Higher Education Institutions,• the construction of a surveillance, punishment, control and discipline framework, strictly demarcated and authoritarian.Simultaneously, the above-mentioned policy aimed a) at the extensive criminalization of behavior, as well as of the “non-nationalistic” and ideologically “un-orthodox” thinking in universities and in other Educational Institutions, b) at the reduction of any degree of teaching staff and students autonomy, and c) at the promotion of some alleged- ostensible, seemingly “liberal”, measures and proposals. The ultimate objective was both these specific measures and the overall (authoritarian) higher education policy to become feasible (legitimizing-permissible strategy) and subsequently implemented.In addition, students’ (persistent, influential and multi-level) resistance (at the level of both discourse and political action) to the higher education “reforms” attempted by the April Dictatorship, as well as against the Dictatorship per se and subsequently against the state and constitutional infringement, will be also analytically examined and contextualized.

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