He steps up to the plate in the face of controversy.
The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, invited this Thursday morning on the Télématin set, estimated that Sciences-po - where a Jewish student was prevented from accessing a pro-Palestine conference on Tuesday and where the phrase "don't let her to return, she is a Zionist” would have been pronounced – was “a school of excellence which has turned upside down”.
For him, Tuesday's event "is not anecdotal."
“It cannot become, even on the part of a minority, an Islamo-leftist bunker,” he insisted.
According to Gérard Larcher, “the underlying question of an ideology” which is “taking over the universities” arises.
🔴🗣 "Sciences Po is a school of excellence which has shifted. It cannot become an Islamo-leftist bunker"
Gérard Larcher looks back on the recent incidents on the Sciences-Po Paris campus.
#Les4V @gerard_larcher pic.twitter.com/vVyDAnwDok
— Telematin (@telematin) March 14, 2024
“Can you be a French student of Jewish faith and study peacefully on campuses in France, beyond Sciences-po?
“, he asked.
“The university and the grandes écoles must be a place of debate, expression and free opinion.
» “In our French universities and at Sciences-po, ideology, Islamo-leftism, wokism have too often replaced debate and plurality of opinions!
Students are refused entry and certain teachers are banned.
We let them fall!
», Supported Gérard Larcher on X (ex-Twitter) just after his interview.
“It should challenge us, shock us”
Also questioned on the subject on Public Senate this Thursday morning, government spokesperson Prisca Thévenot affirmed that “our university establishments [were] places of debate”.
“Preventing a student from accessing a place of debate should challenge us, shock us,” she added, while refusing to speak of a “problem” and calling for the conclusions of a “problem” to be heard. investigation ".
“Yes, there is a rise in anti-Semitism in France,” she said.
#Antisemitism at Sciences Po Paris: "An investigation has been launched, we must be able to see if there is an active minority", details @priscathevenot who recalls that at the moment "there are acts of antisemitism".
#BonjourChezVous pic.twitter.com/JwvAaVVeBb
— Public Senate (@publicsenat) March 14, 2024
The situation of the prestigious establishment was raised in the Council of Ministers this Wednesday, where the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, denounced “unspeakable and completely intolerable” comments reported during Tuesday's pro-Palestinian mobilization.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Minister of Higher Education Sylvie Retailleau “went
(Wednesday
) to the board of directors” of the Fondation de Sciences-po “to underline the seriousness of the facts and the absolute necessity that the University remains a place of teaching” and “healthy debates respectful of the values of the Republic”, also indicated the school management in a press release on Wednesday evening.
Read alsoSciences-po, Harvard, Stanford… The Israel-Hamas war sets campuses in France and the United States ablaze
She referred “the public prosecutor for acts of an anti-Semitic nature, on the basis of article 40 of the code of criminal procedure”.
The establishment, “crossed by the conflict in the Middle East and its disastrous consequences on civilian populations, notes and regrets a hardening of relations between its student communities and the establishment of an unacceptable deleterious climate”, writes Sciences-po. Paris.