Macron’s government steps into antisemitism controversy at top French university

PARIS — The heightened tensions on U.S. campuses between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel student factions following the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza have made their way across the Atlantic — landing at one of France’s elite universities: Sciences Po.

Accusations of antisemitism surfaced last week at Sciences Po, French President Emmanuel Macron’s alma mater, during a Palestinian solidarity event on its Paris campus. A Jewish student said she was refused access to a protest staged by pro-Palestinian students after being called a “zionist” — a claim which the protesting students vigorously pushed back against.

The French government was quick to react, stressing the gravity of the incident, but it has since been accused of having hastily reacted to a murky situation and of having breached academic independence.

Less than 24 hours after the alleged antisemitic incident, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal showed up unannounced at a board of directors meeting for the National Foundation of Political Science (FNSP), which handles Sciences Po’s administrative and financial strategy, and said that the university’s leadership would need to implement measures to counter an “active and dangerous minority.”

The university’s deans and research center heads subsequently spoke out against the prime minister’s surprise visit, expressing “in the strongest terms (their) indignation” in a statement published on Monday, saying that “no political figure should take actions that undermine the principles of academic independence and freedom.”

Fears of importing American-style campus wars, complete with political proxy fights stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, appear to have fueled the government’s speedy intervention.

“I will never let a French university become the mouthpiece for a North American ideology which, under the guise of modernity, promotes intolerance, rejects debate, and curbs freedom of expression,” Attal, also a graduate of Sciences Po, said Tuesday during a question period in parliament.

Unclear circumstances

The controversy at Sciences Po was spurred by the French Jewish students union (UEJF) saying that one of its members had been barred from entering an auditorium which was occupied by pro-Palestinian protesting students at a solidarity event on March 12.

“UEJF students are being targeted as Jews and zionists,” the organization wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The accusations drew widespread condemnation. Macron denounced them “unspeakable and utterly unacceptable statements.”

But a week later, the circumstances remain unclear.

In a statement, Sciences Po’s pro-Palestinian student organization said “no student was prevented from entering the amphitheater because of their religious background” and that “those denied access were individuals known to have photographed and filmed pro-Palestinian students … putting them at great risk of online harassment.”

In an interview with Le Parisien, the student who had allegedly been refused access said she had not heard anyone targeting her as a Zionist but that this had been reported to her by someone in the room. She was eventually able to enter the auditorium, she added, but “only stayed a few minutes” as “the atmosphere was too heavy.”

The UEJF and the pro-Palestinian Comité Palestine Sciences Po did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

The dispute surrounding the facts of the alleged incident has further led to criticism against the government’s swift reaction, perceived by some as an overreaction and overreach on the government’s part.

“By reacting hastily to unverified information… (Macron and Attal) have once again contributed to the hysterization and polarization of public debate,” a Libération column read.

“It’s been very irritating to see a distorted image of the university, its students and teachers being circulated,” Maxime Pontey, General Secretary for Nova, Sciences Po’s top student union, told POLITICO.

“The UEJF’s allegations are very serious and an investigation has been opened, I have no doubt that the justice system will get to the bottom of what happened,” Pontey said. “In any case, political authorities have perhaps caved to media pressure.”

American-style culture wars? Non, merci!

Macron’s government views campus feuds in the U.S as a cautionary tale for what could come about in France, a nation that vehemently rejects identity politics.

Caroline Yadan, a member of Parliament for Macron’s party Renaissance, said her group would request a parliamentary hearing to receive testimony from the heads of French universities about the rise of antisemitism on campuses — the same way the heads of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT were heard by the House education committee in Washington.

Pro-Palestinian student protests on campuses in the U.S. have been at the center of antisemitism accusations and led to hearings and a subsequent investigation last year by the House of Representatives’ education committee.

The backlash from these hearings eventually led to the resignation of several prominent academic figures, including Harvard President Claudine Gay and the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, both of whom struggled to articulate if “calling for the genocide of Jews” would go against school policy.

“Since I first arrived here as an undergraduate in 1973, I cannot recall a period of comparable tension on our campus and across our community,” Harvard’s interim president Alan Garber wrote in a letter addressed to the university’s community earlier this year.

Benjamin Haddad, a spokesperson for the Renaissance group in parliament who spent many years working in the U.S., said Sciences Po’s culture was to “forge freethinking universalists” and not “the culture of woke-ism and identity politics of American campuses.”