1 - The Genesis of Student Radicalism in Ethiopia

Abstract

The Quest for Expression: State and the University in Ethiopia under Three Regimes, 1952 – 2005 by Randi Rnning Balsvik. Addis Ababa University Press, 2007, 190 pp. ISBN: 978-99944-52-08-8
Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960-1974 by Messay Kebede. University of Rochester Press, 2008, 235 pp. ISBN: 978-1-58046-291-4

Between 1974 and 1991, Ethiopia passed through two revolutions in which students played an uncommon role. That history has been extensively analysed by scholars, including former members of the international Ethiopian student movement. The two books under review are the latest additions to the growing literature on this subject, without which Ethiopian history of the last half century cannot be fully appreciated. The books are qualitatively different: while one is merely descriptive and uninspiring, the other is interpretive and provocative, bound to cause considerable controversy especially among Ethiopians.
Balsvik’s The Quest for Expression, which seeks to examine ‘the democratization process in Ethiopia’ under three regimes, is a continuation of her pioneering and first substantive scholarly work on the Ethiopian student movement. It is, however, less weighty. Slightly less than one-fifth of the book is a rehash of the first, and more than half of it deals with issues, such as the Red Terror, which are well covered in other works. Only about a third of the volume offers new material but hardly any fresh insights...