Paris (AFP)

The first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure judged "scandalous" and "intolerable" Thursday that student unions "prohibit speaking" those who do not think like them after the controversy at Sciences Po Grenoble.

"Everything must be done to maintain academic freedom for teachers everywhere and to allow debate all the time," he argued on BFMTV and RMC.

"I find it scandalous that there are sometimes students, student unions, who allow themselves to prevent a conference, to forbid such and such speaking on the pretext that what they have to say does not correspond to what than you think. It is intolerable, "he insisted.

The deputy for Seine-et-Marne stressed that universities, "in Grenoble as elsewhere", are "places of freedom".

The Grenoble Institute of Political Studies (IEP) has been in the throes of a sharp conflict since the posting at the beginning of March of the names of two professors accused of Islamophobia, "insults" for which a judicial investigation was opened on the report of establishment.

At the origin of these accusations in particular, an exchange of vehement emails on the notion of Islamophobia, in November and December, between a German teacher, whose name was mentioned on the posters, and a historian.

The main student union, the Union Syndicale Sciences Po Grenoble, has persisted and has since signed, demanding sanctions against the two professors.

Olivier Faure underlined to be "against this term of Islamophobia, which does not correspond to anything".

"There is racism against French people or Muslim foreigners, it is obvious, but Islamophobia would mean that we can no longer including contesting Islam as we can contest Judaism, or Catholicism, or Protestantism , or Buddhism, ”he said.

"I hope that we cannot speak of Islamophobia any more than we speak of Islamo-leftism", he added in reference to the controversy born from the words of the Minister of Higher Education Frédérique Vidal having used this term.

"Islamo-leftism" is "a very generic term and again a condemnation against free thought (...), an extremely vague concept, which gives the feeling that there is an objective complicity, even active, between a part of the left and terrorism, and frankly this meaning is monstrous, "he denounced.

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