A challenge to the Normalien political program was not long in coming. In the early spring of 1968, there were rumblings of student discontent at the Nanterre University campus, just to the west of Paris. Predominantly, the students complained of living and study conditions at the university, which had suffered most from the poorly planned and rushed higher-education expansion in the early 1960s. But the sense of unrest was bolstered by widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, seen as exemplary of the Third World and communist resistance to the capitalist West. Posters of Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung could be found plastered around university buildings.

The events in Nanterre caused relatively little stir, but in early May the same complaints could be heard on the streets of Paris. As a sign of solidarity with the leaders of the Nanterre demonstrations, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who were facing a disciplinary hearing, some students organized a poorly attended protest at the Sorbonne on May 3. The Sorbonne Rector, Jean Roche, and the National Education Minister, Alain Peyrefitte, overreacting and fearing the expansion of the Nanterre disturbances, ran roughshod over the traditional privileges of the university by inviting the police to break up the gathering. The decision escalated the unrest, and, on the evening of the May 10, barricades were erected in the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, channeling the ghosts of 1848 and the Paris Commune. Violence erupted in clashes between the students and the increasingly unrestrained riot police, the CRS, who resorted to their batons and tear gas.