The four generations of Maghrebi students who have passed through the Cité Universitaire have had a lasting impact on the political fortunes of their countries. From nationalism to leftism, many students from the three countries of French North Africa were trained in political activism in Paris, from the early 1920s to independence, and up to the 1980s, as part of the policy of “cooperation” between France and the new Maghreb states. This history is rooted in the colonial sphere, then in that of increasingly open opposition to the authoritarian nationalist regimes in place in the Maghreb in the early 1960s. The Houses of Morocco and Tunisia, and the aborted project to create a House of Algeria, illustrate the close relationship between student movements on both sides of the Mediterranean. State control, elite training, and political protest were all intertwined by students who, in the French capital, had acquired the means to assert themselves against the colonial authorities, and later against the independent Maghreb states. The houses of Morocco and Tunisia were home to a significant number of the elite, some of whom went on to occupy important positions in the political, economic, and cultural spheres.