The Gaza conflict has seriously degraded, for months, the atmosphere at the prestigious Sciences Po, the university center in Paris specializing in political science and international relations. Yesterday evening the riot police had to intervene to put an end by force to the blockade by students of the main access of the institution, which is based on the left bank of the Seine, in the bourgeois district of Saint-Germain -after.
Hours earlier there had been moments of strong tension between pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israeli demonstrators. The security forces managed to separate them and keep them at a distance. The pro-Israeli were members of the collective Nous Vivrons (We will live). They were men and women between 40 and 50 years old. They carried banners with slogans like “Free Gaza from Hamas!” Another group carried flags of the Hebrew State and photographs of the hostages still in Gaza.
France is a country very sensitive to the latest events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The country is home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities, exacerbating tensions. It was logical that Sciences Po became a place of heated debates and protests, and even more so seeing the example of campuses in the United States. But things led to daily insults and intimidation.
The situation has coincided with a deep crisis in the educational institution, whose director, Matthias Vicherat, recently resigned due to a personal scandal. The Arabist Gilles Keppel, one of the highest French academic authorities on the Arab and Muslim world, was very concerned about the instrumentalization of the university for political purposes and the lack of authority of those responsible for the center. Kepel particularly targeted Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La França Insubmisa (radical left), accused for years of practicing the so-called “Islamo-leftism”, with electoral purposes, to win votes in the suburbs with a high proportion of immigrant population. The proximity of the European elections cannot surely be dissociated from what is happening at the moment.
The management of Sciences Poes committed last night to an internal debate and to annul the disciplinary procedures initiated against the demonstrators.
The Institute of Political Studies of Paris (IEP), popularly known as Sciences Po, was founded in 1872 after France’s humiliating defeat against Prussia. Today it has 15,000 students, and half are international. President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal were among his students.
