The pro-Palestinian mobilization continued on Friday April 26 at Sciences Po Paris, where students began to block the main entrance to the school, noted Agence France-Presse (AFP). Palestinian flags hanging on the railings, slogans in favor of the Palestinian struggle… Students who had spent the night in the establishment were visible Friday morning, keffiyehs on their heads, in the windows of 27, rue Saint-Guillaume, historic headquarters of the school .
Trash cans and construction equipment obstruct the main entrance to Sciences Po Paris, which has a vast campus in the center of the capital, split into several locations. A few dozen students are present in the street.
Contacted by AFP, the management of the establishment could not be reached. A press conference by the Sciences Po Palestine Committee is scheduled for Friday morning. The committee calls in particular for “the clear condemnation of Israel’s actions by Sciences Po” and “the end of collaborations” with all “institutions or entities” deemed complicit “in the systemic oppression of the Palestinian people”. He further calls for an end to “the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus.”
Wednesday evening, around ten tents had been set up in the courtyard of another building of the establishment, located 1, place Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, before the police came to dislodge the activists and sympathizers of the Palestinian cause .
“That we show solidarity with the Palestinians, that we show rejection of the crimes committed in Gaza, it is natural, it is even dignified and it is noble,” Raphaël judged on Friday Glucksmann, head of the list of the Socialist Party (PS) and Place publique in the European elections of June 9, on BFM-TV. “Then what atmosphere do we do it in? Are we inclusive? Do we tolerate debate? Are we able to organize discussions with those who do not share [this] point of view? So far, until proven otherwise, this is not the case. And so we have a problem. And the management of Sciences Po has the right to decide to evacuate,” added Mr. Glucksmann, also a former student of the establishment.
Hundreds of arrests on American campuses
The president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), Yonathan Arfi, estimated on Friday on LCI that this movement was “dangerous, because the university has a symbolic function in our societies. What happens in universities does not only concern the student world, but radiates throughout our political and intellectual life and produces effects on a generation. This mobilization only concerns “a few dozen students”, however affirmed Mr. Arfi, “struck” to see that the images of the student mobilization “are less massive than in the United States”.
The mobilization at Sciences Po Paris comes at a time when several American universities – including the prestigious Harvard, Yale and Princeton – are mobilized, and sometimes occupied, to protest against the war in Gaza.
Columbia University in New York postponed Friday’s midnight deadline (6 a.m. BST) for pro-Palestinian students to evacuate the campus, which was occupied to protest the war in the Gaza Strip. she announced.
Dozens of arrests took place last week, after university officials called on the police to put an end to an occupation accused by several figures of stoking anti-Semitism. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations then continued on Wednesday on campus. More than two hundred demonstrators were arrested Wednesday and Thursday at universities in Los Angeles (California), Boston (Massachusetts) and Austin (Texas), where some two thousand people gathered again on Thursday.