Let us listen to the lesson of Martin Luther King, who wrote:
“The movement does not seek to liberate blacks at the price of the humiliation of the whites. It wants to liberate American society and to help all people to liberate themselves.”
Let us listen to this lesson; it is addressed to us, as well as to other people: have we fully secured this liberty? Have we broken forever the chains of stupid national pride? Have we fully understood that the respect for oneself is never gained by the contempt for others? And do we believe that everyone who lives on our soil is assured justice, brotherhood, and freedom?
The true, the only homage worthy of the great men whom we honor this evening would be, thanks to them, such a conscience among ourselves.
Camus would have, no doubt, stood to applaud his scientist friend.
TO THE BARRICADES, AGAIN
King’s lesson of nonviolent protest would, however, soon be overshadowed. In May 1968, just a few weeks after King’s assassination and Monod’s eulogy, Paris and the whole of France were convulsed by protests and riots that came very close to a full-scale revolution. Monod was thrust into (or, perhaps more accurately, stepped into) the political spotlight, as well as the line of fire.
The revolt was precipitated by the closure of the University of Paris at Nanterre on May 2. A series of confrontations between students and the administration over the preceding weeks had provoked the occupation of an administration building, the suspension of classes for a week, the arrest of a student leader, and then closure. On Friday, May 3, enraged over the lockout of their campus, Nanterre students ventured into the Latin Quarter and rallied in the courtyard at the Sorbonne.
They were joined by Sorbonne students. Late in the afternoon, the rector of the university called the police, who moved aggressively to clear the courtyard. The confrontation spilled out into the Latin Quarter. The students counterattacked with paving stones and anything else they could pry loose and hurl at the police. More than five hundred students were arrested and more than one hundred police and students were injured.
The next day, it was announced that classes at the Sorbonne were also suspended. The Students’ Union (Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, or UNEF) reacted by calling for a march on Monday, May 6, to protest the police intervention at the Sorbonne, the presence of which was a violation of university rules, and to demand the reopening of the university.
More than 20,000 protestors marched to the Sorbonne and were met by a solid wall of police who were determined to hold their ground. Violence erupted again as the police used tear gas and water cannons to try to disperse the marchers. Hundreds more students were arrested and many injured.
The government was taken by surprise by the ferocity of the student rebellion. The uprising reflected much more than youthful zeal. The harsh police tactics unleashed the students’ deep resentments over the antiquated French higher education system. The universities were badly overcrowded, understaffed, and managed by a central bureaucracy that had no accountability. Vast numbers of students were flunked out or quit before attaining a degree. Since a university degree was necessary for securing a good job, disillusionment with the entire system was widespread.
Monod and other professors had long campaigned for university reform. In his inaugural interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, Monod had made a candid and devastating assessment of the state of French universities. Monod was keen to ensure that the surge of national pride over the Pasteur trio’s Nobel Prizes did not extend to giving credit where no credit was due. He made it very clear that no credit belonged to the current government, or to the preceding ones, for that matter. Monod said that French science was “underdeveloped” in comparison with other Western countries. He attributed France’s problems in science to the stagnation of the centrally controlled universities, and the policies governing them that dated all the way back to Napoleon. Monod, for instance, could not even create a course without the approval of the Minister of National Education. The accumulated result of such bureaucracy was the stifling of young talent. Monod’s candor had earned him no friends among de Gaulle, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, or the minister of national education, Alain Peyrefitte.
Monod feared that, even with violence having erupted in the streets, the government still did not grasp the growing magnitude of the crisis. On Wednesday, May 8, he headed a delegation of professors from the Faculty of Sciences that went to the National Assembly. Their aim was to deliver an urgent message to Peyrefitte. Monod asked that the minister state publicly that the students arrested during the demonstrations would be given amnesty. The minister replied politely that the government was intending to do so, but that he could say nothing before the matter was deliberated by the Council of Ministers.
None of the members of the National Assembly seemed to sense the seriousness and urgency of the situation either. “These so-called representatives of the people understand nothing,” Monod told the press.
Monod figured that since the delegation from the Sorbonne failed to make an impression at the Assembly, then perhaps a public appeal to a higher authority from him and fellow Nobel laureates might be heard. That same evening of May 8, Monod telephoned Alfred Kastler, Nobel laureate in Physics, to ask him if he wished to join Monod, Jacob, Lwoff, and François Mauriac in addressing a telegram to President de Gaulle. Kastler agreed. The telegram read:
General de Gaulle, President of the République Palais de l’Élysée
WE URGE YOU TO MAKE A PERSONAL GESTURE TO APPEASE THE STUDENT REVOLT—STOP—AMNESTY FOR THE CONVICTED STUDENTS—REOPEN THE FACULTIES—STOP—DEEP RESPECT
SIGNED JACOB—KASTLER—LWOFF—MAURIAC—MONOD
Copies of the text were also sent to French press agencies, newspapers, and radio.
Having provoked no response, Monod sought other ways to get the government’s attention and to prevent further violence. The students amassed again on the evening of May 10. At eight o’clock Monod tried to convince the rector of the Sorbonne to threaten the minister of education with his resignation should the government not accede to the students demands. The rector was hesitant.
The protestors then started building dozens of barricades all over the streets of the Latin Quarter. Monod pushed the rector again. All of Paris, indeed all of France, was following events by radio. Correspondents were all over the Latin Quarter. Monod suggested that the rector deliver an ultimatum to the minister over the radio. The rector could not bring himself to do so.
Students injured in skirmishes with the police sought refuge at the university. Monod realized that the rescue services could not get through the blocked streets. He called Agnes Ullmann and asked her to go to the hospital at the Pasteur, get first-aid supplies, and bring them to him at the Faculty of Science (at the Halle aux Vins) at the university.
Ullmann told Monod, “OK, but how can I get over there?” She knew there was fighting on the boulevard Saint-Michel. “I don’t know where my car can pass.”
Monod got angry, the first time in her eight years in Paris when she had ever heard him angry. He told her, “Listen. If you did it in ’56, you can do it now.”
Ullmann was not very happy with her assignment, but she went to the hospital, got the supplies, and found a way through the streets. She got out of her car and made it past the students and to Monod. She stayed at the university through the night.
At a quarter past two in the morning of the eleventh, the police launched coordinated assaults on the barricades. Tear gas filled the streets. Cars were flipped over and set ablaze. Molotov cocktails were flying through the air. It was a full-scale riot.
Monod and Jacob telephoned Minister Peyrefitte. It was an exasperating conversation. Lacking any sense of urgency while the battle raged, the minister took his time to explain his position. Peyrefitte did not speak of the students, but of restoring law and order. He was clearly much more afraid of de Gaulle’s reaction than of the riot itself. Monod cut him off at one point and told him, “Mr. Ministe
r, your political career counts little next to the responsibilities you are assuming.”
Monod joined the rebels on the barricades. He wanted to take a public stand on the side of the students. He phoned Alfred Kastler in the middle of the riot: “Are you in agreement with our declaring now that we are entirely on the side of the students?” Kastler agreed: “Entirely.”
Monod went to see Peyrefitte to give him one last warning that he, Kastler, Jacob, and others would declare their loyalty to the protestors. The minister was unmoved. A short while later, among the barricades and injured students, Monod’s declaration went out by radio: “In the present circumstances, it is not possible for men such as Kastler, Jacob, and I not to be near the students. The situation is tragic. The exits are blocked. It is necessary to leave a way out for the students and their injured.”
Monod was horrified by the violence and desperate to see to it that the injured received treatment. When he heard that a young woman had been injured by tear gas in the area of the rue Gay-Lussac, Monod made his way to the street, found the student with bandages wrapped around her eyes, and took her by the hand. Early Saturday morning, newsmen caught the image of the Nobelist, still in his shirt and tie, escorting the student to safety.
Monod escorting a wounded student from the Sorbonne during the student unrest of May 1968. Monod played a leading role as an intermediary between the students and the government. (Archives of the Pasteur Institute)
FOUR HOURS OF battle left hundreds injured and the streets of the Latin Quarter strewn with burnt-out automobiles, broken glass, and smoldering piles of debris from the barricades.
Later that day, on the afternoon of the eleventh, Monod presided over a meeting of the Faculty of Sciences. He proposed a brief motion for consideration: “The undersigned professors declare that as of this afternoon, Mr. Alain Peyrefitte, minister of national education, no longer has their confidence.” The motion passed with all but seven votes. It was the first such no-confidence vote in the history of the university.
That evening, Prime Minister Pompidou announced on national television that police actions would cease and that the Sorbonne would be reopened.
The concessions were a victory for the students, but the government’s response was too little, too late. Unrest spread outside the university. In sympathy for the students, labor unions called a one-day strike and demonstration for the following Monday, May 13. On that afternoon, several hundred thousand workers and students marched from the Place de la République to Place Denfert-Rochereau. In the provinces, students demonstrated at France’s nearly two dozen universities, and there were clashes with police in Nantes, Clermont Ferrand, and Le Mans. Revolt was in the air, and spreading quickly.
When the Sorbonne reopened, thousands of students occupied it and began a continuous stream of debates on the reform of the university. Monod was the only chair-holding professor present during the all-night session that began on May 13. One of the students proposed that Monod address the student body. It was a risky situation. The tenor had shifted among the students as more and more of them began to perceive the professoriate as part of the establishment against which they were rebelling, rather than as allies. Monod, with all of his prestige and titles, was suspect.
At three in the morning, Monod told the students that what they had made happen was “prodigious and exceeded the imagination.” Then, with an uncharacteristic trembling in his voice, he said that it was now incumbent upon the students that they succeed. He added that he preferred that the first revolution occur within the university rather than there being an immediate general revolution apart from the university.
The students gave him a huge ovation.
Events outside the university, however, escalated. By midweek, strikes had spread to many industrial plants across the country. Then more workers walked off their jobs such that by the weekend the trains and subways were crippled, Air France canceled all flights, and mail delivery ceased. On Monday, May 20, up to ten million French workers, nearly two-thirds of the country’s workforce, were on strike demanding higher wages, shorter workweeks, and better benefits. The economy ground to a halt. The student crisis had become a social crisis, and would soon be a political crisis that threatened to bring down de Gaulle’s government and the Fifth Republic.
Throughout the demonstrations and riots, de Gaulle had remained absent and silent. He finally returned from a trip to Romania and tried to quell the unrest. But the general was himself perhaps the greatest symbol of the Old Guard—of the rigid, paternalistic French establishment. On May 24, he addressed the nation on television and radio. He admitted that the recent events had signaled a need for change in society, but he warned that change must be orderly: “Otherwise we will tumble through civil war to the most ruinous adventure and usurpations.” He pledged to hold a referendum in June on some as-yet-undefined measures to reform the universities and to address worker issues.
De Gaulle’s vague intentions not only failed to stem the unrest but also fueled another night of rioting across the city. The stock market was set ablaze, barricades were built at the Bastille, and the police responded again with tear gas and nightsticks. De Gaulle’s failure raised serious doubt as to whether his government could survive the revolt.
Realizing its misstep, the government immediately agreed to large wage increases to appease the workers. Then de Gaulle made a much bolder move: he dissolved the National Assembly and called for elections in June.
As the days went by before the elections, the general public grew weary of the everyday disruptions and the violence. The rebellious students were losing the public’s sympathy and patience. After a month of unrest, Monod and Jacob published an appeal in Le Monde in which they exhorted students to focus on the constructive challenges that lay before them. Monod penned the Camusian statement that served as the declaration’s headline: “Si les barricades peuvent être parfois nécessaires, elles ne peuvent être permanentes” (If Barricades May Sometimes Be Necessary, They Cannot Be Permanent). Monod and Jacob urged the students:
There comes a moment, and it has arrived, where courage is not found in the street, but in declaring opposition to attempts at destruction.
That is why today we solemnly call upon all those teachers and students, faithful to the hopes of May, to express and organize through their continuous presence in faculties and schools, their will to construct together the new university and the future society, which will not emerge from a trash fire.
There would be no more barricades. Two days later, the police retook control of the Sorbonne and cleared out the students who had occupied it since May 13. The general strikes ended, and attention turned instead to the general elections. The French voters, shaken by the upheaval and seeking to restore some order, gave de Gaulle’s right-wing party, Union pour la Défense de la République (Union for the Defense of the Republic), its first-ever absolute majority in the Assembly.
MONOD HEEDED HIS own advice to the students and teachers. He spent much of his time and energy in the months following the May uprising securing the reform of the university. Monod and a few colleagues had won the endorsement of the Faculty of Sciences for radical changes, and he continued to press for comprehensive, national action. Sweeping reforms of the universities were passed into law in November.
As for the making of a better future society, that prospect presented a dilemma to Monod. The visibility precipitated by the Nobel Prize, his public commitments and appearances, his activism during the May–June unrest, and his near daily presence in the newspapers during that time had made him a significant figure on the national political landscape. One possible path for pursuing his political commitments was to seek office.
Indeed, some of his longtime political friends, most of whom had also distinguished themselves in the Resistance, tried to persuade Monod that he should run for president in the spring 1969 election. With his scientific eminence, his war experience, his charisma, and his leadership qualities—it was not an im
possible idea. But when Monod told Agnes Ullmann about it, she blurted out, “They are crazy!”
“No, no, they put it seriously,” Monod replied. “Maybe I will think about it.”
He did not run. But he had been thinking a great deal about what science could offer for the betterment of society. And that he was willing to campaign for.
CHAPTER 35
CHANCE AND NECESSITY: SISYPHUS RETURNS
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Human, All Too Human
LONG BEFORE HE RECEIVED HIS NOBEL PRIZE, JACQUES MONOD had advocated that scientists bore special responsibilities. He once wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “Whenever objectivity, truth, and justice are at stake, a scientist has the duty to form an opinion, and defend it.” And for more than two decades Monod had acted on his convictions. In the Lysenko episode, no one was better positioned than scientists to expose Lysenko as a fraud and to alert society at large to the dangers of blind obedience to Soviet ideology. All that was required was a bit of courage—to face the ire of Communist colleagues—and objective scientific reasoning.
On the other hand, Monod rejected the common perception that a scientist had any duty to contribute to human comfort and happiness. Rather, he thought that the most important contributions of science were what often made humans uncomfortable, in what challenged their perceptions of themselves. He told an interviewer for the BBC: “There’s always the tendency of the layman … of trying to strike from a fundamental scientist some statement about the applications of his work. This stems, I think, from a basic misconception as to the role of fundamental science, which exists in modern societies in particular: that the object of science is to be applied and create technology, when in fact technology and applications are by-products. I feel the most important results of science have been to change the relationship of man to the universe, or the way he sees himself in the universe.”
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