Pro-Palestine students blockade Macron’s university in Paris
Pro-Palestine students have occupied the Paris university attended by Emmanuel Macron.
The students at Sciences Po are calling for the university, attended by the French president and Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, to “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus”.
With keffiyehs on their heads, Palestinian flags hanging from the railings and slogans in support of the Palestinian struggle, students who had spent the night in the school could be seen on Friday morning in the windows of its historic headquarters in the seventh arrondissement.
In scenes reminiscent of the university protests across the US, rubbish bins were used to blocked the main entrance to Sciences Po Paris, which has a vast campus in the centre of the capital, divided into several locations. A few dozen students were in the street.
Students also called for an end to what they called “the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus”.
The occupation comes a day after police dislodged around 60 other students who had occupied another building and set up tents in a courtyard.
“After discussions with management, most of them agreed to leave the premises,” university officials said in a statement, saying the protest was adding to “tensions” at the university.
But “a small group of students” refused to leave and “it was decided that the police would evacuate the site”, it went on.
Sciences Po, which counts five other heads of state and 12 prime ministers among its alumni, said it regretted that “numerous attempts” to have the students leave the premises peacefully had led nowhere.
The school’s Student Union said the decision by university officials to call in the police was “both shocking and deeply worrying” and reflected “an unprecedented authoritarian turn” and that students would continue to mobilise “despite repression”.
On Friday, Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) described the pro-Palestine student protest movement in France as “dangerous”, while stressing that there was “nothing massive” at Sciences Po Paris.
“It’s dangerous because universities have a symbolic function in our societies. What happens in universities doesn’t just concern the student world, but affects the whole of our political and intellectual life and has an impact on a generation,” he told LCI, the rolling news channel.
Many top US universities have also been rocked by protests in recent weeks.
Mr Arfi pointed out that at Sciences Po, the protest involved only “a few dozen students” and that he was “struck” by the fact that the student mobilisation was “less massive than in the United States”.
“But it’s working, it’s taking the whole campus hostage, it’s preventing academic freedom and creating a climate of intellectual terror among some Jewish students,” he said.
Tensions at the school have already sparked comments from Mr Macron and his prime minister in a country home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.
Last month, prosecutors were urged to investigate anti-Semitism allegations after pro-Palestine activists tried to keep a Jewish student out of a debate on Gaza.
A 20-year-old Sciences Po undergraduate, who is a member of the Union of Jewish Students of France, said she was prevented from attending the event by masked activists. “You, you are not going in,” she claims she was told. Another member of the union present at the time said they heard organisers say: “Don’t let her in. She’s a Zionist.”
She said she was eventually allowed into the debate but left quickly “because the atmosphere was too heavy”.
She said anti-Semitism at Sciences Po had become a “real problem” since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7.
“On a daily basis, I hear jokes, even on the Holocaust. I have heard things like: ‘She’s going to be hit by a rocket’, or ‘You are going to get a free ticket to Poland’,” she said.
In a statement, the Sciences Po Palestine Committee said it had been “unjustly targeted by baseless allegations of anti-Semitism by the far Right”.
It said the woman had been told to stay out of the debate not because she was Jewish but because she had “harassed and intimidated … pro-Palestinian students” in the past, notably by filming them without their authorisation. The committee said other members of the Union of Jewish Students of France had been in the lecture theatre during the debate.
Mr Macron said Jewish students had faced “unspeakable and perfectly intolerable” insults. His claims were denied by the Sciences Po Palestine committee, which organised the debate.
On Friday, Raphaël Glucksmann, a French Socialist whose list is polling to come third in European Parliament elections and an alumnus, distanced himself from the protesters.
“It’s only natural that we should show solidarity with the Palestinians and reject the crimes committed in Gaza, it’s even dignified and noble,” Mr Glucksmann told BFM TV.
“That said, in what atmosphere do we do it? Are we inclusive? Do we tolerate debate? Are we capable of organising discussions with those who don’t share our point of view? And so far, until there is proof to the contrary, this is not the case. So we have a problem. And the management of Sciences Po has the right to decide to evacuate,” he added.
