Students clash over Israel at elite French school

PARIS — Feuds between student activists at top U.S. universities following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza have been making headlines across the pond. A similar feud, meanwhile, is unfolding in France.

Members of right-wing and far-right student organizations clashed with student activists from the left-wing France Unbowed movement on Monday ahead of a conference by the movement’s firebrand, three-time presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, at elite French university Sciences Po.

Mélenchon was allowed to hold his Sciences Po conference after events at other universities and public venues were cancelled by academic and public officials over alleged security concerns. The France Unbowed movement, which has made its opposition to the war in Gaza a central theme in its European election campaign, denounced what it called “censorship” and an “extremely worrying precedent for our democracy.”

The movement has been embroiled in controversy over the past six months after refusing to label Hamas a “terrorist” organization, instead describing the Oct. 7 attack as a “war crime.”

Sciences Po counts French President Emmanuel Macron among its alumni and is known as a breeding ground for the French political class. A few dozen members of the Unbowed student branch there faced off with activists from UNI, a student union with traditionally strong ties with the conservative Les Républicains party and the Nemesis collective, an Islamophobic far-right group that officially promotes women’s rights.

“Unbowed France and the far-left are corrupting universities,” UNI representative Yvenn Le Coz told reporters.

The anti-Mélenchon students chanted calls to rid universities of “Islamo-leftism” as the opposing activists replied with anti-fascist and anti-Israel slogans.

As Mélenchon made his way toward the university a man confronted him, accusing the 72-year-old politician of being “complicit of Hamas.” The ensuing conference was also briefly interrupted by protesters.