Emmanuelle Ducros 8:55 a.m., March 13, 2024

Every morning after the 8:30 a.m. news, Emmanuelle Ducros reveals to listeners her “Journey into absurdity”, from Monday to Thursday.

Yesterday, at Sciences Po, a pro-Palestinian demonstration took place.

She caused a political uproar.

Yesterday there was a “day of European university mobilization for Palestine”.

Around sixty Pro-Palestinian activists took over a legendary Sciences Po amphitheater in Paris, the Boutmy amphitheater.

Renamed the Gaza Amphitheater. The “occupation”, in their words, lasted four hours, and brought together up to 150 people.

Predictable slippages.

Stunning photos and testimonies.

The activists held a conference with their faces masked against a backdrop of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs.

Atmosphere from another time.

Jewish students at the UEJF were verbally attacked, with words described as “discriminatory and accusatory” by the management of the establishment.

A member of this Jewish student union was turned away on the grounds that she is “Zionist”.

The word of the anti-Semites so as not to say “Jew” and fall under the law.

This is all serious.

The red lines have been crossed.

The demonstration was not declared and even less authorized by management, which places it completely out of the ordinary.

It is also not officially endorsed by anyone, since the leaflets distributed are not signed.

The rules of academic pluralism and freedom of expression were flouted, unworthy comments were made and ostracizations pronounced.

Lamentable spectacle in a school which claims excellence.

Management finally reacted.

Yes, after an angry visit from the Minister of Higher Education, Sylvie Retailleau, in the afternoon.

Which judged it “intolerable and shocking that Po science students could suffer the slightest discrimination, the slightest incitement to hatred”.

The words are strong.

After that, the official press release from Sciences Po seems... elliptical and ethereal.

He condemns “the action and practices used”, regrets “the discriminatory remarks made against a particular student association”.

All in weightlessness, without mentioning any specific fact, or context, or Gaza, or Jewish students.

The management refuses to minimize, reminds that it must weigh its words, not use the term anti-Semitism incorrectly.

She urges a disciplinary committee to sanction.

But ultimately, this inability to name things earned Sciences Po a second round of criticism.

This story must serve as an electric shock

What happened yesterday in one of our most beautiful schools resembles what American campuses have been experiencing since the pogroms of October 7.

A liberation of anti-Semitic speech and actions, hidden behind the disguise of anti-Zionism.

The academic authorities must quickly bring back reason, moderation, and a love of open debate among the brilliant Po sciences students.

That we have to endure the threatening authoritarianism of activists, the confiscation of places and speech, it is a failure of our university elites, a new defeat of enlightenment.