Inspired by student leftists in the United States, pro-Palestinian activists have spread their blockades of French universities nationally after taking on the Sorbonne and the Sciences Po in Paris over the past week.
Pro-Palestinian activists occupied several provincial Institutes of Political Studies (IEP) — more commonly known as Sciences Po — throughout France on Tuesday, with students blockading entrances to the research universities in Lyon, Menton, Rennes, and Strasbourg.
It follows similar actions in the United States on the campuses of major universities such as Colombia in New York City and Harvard. It also followed the occupation of Paris’ Sciences Po last week and the blockade of the prestigious Sorbonne University on Monday, which forced school administrators to cancel exams and classes.
According to Le Figaro, the activists waved flags condemning Sciences Po research universities in France of being complicit in the supposed “genocide” in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s military operation to root out Hamas from the area after the October 7th terror attacks waged on the Jewish state by the Islamist Palestinian group.
At the Sciences Po in Rennes, students stacked chairs outside the gates of the university while waving Palestinian flags and a banner reading “Sciences Po Rennes supports Palestine.”
A young woman at the demonstration said on social media that the student group “voted to block the IEP in support of the Palestinian people and in support of all the mobilized students, in the United States, at Sciences Po Paris etc.”
Banners and a Palestinian flag in front of the science po strasbourg school with the words “stop genocide” and “israel genocide, science po accomplice” in Strasbourg, France, 30 April 2024. (Photo by Tobias Canales / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP) (Photo by TOBIAS CANALES/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
Students in Strasbourg — the home of the European Parliament — blocked off the entrances to the local IEP with trash cans and construction site barricades. The Strasbourg activists were joined by National Assembly member Emmanuel Fernandes of the far-left La France Insoumise party, which has long backed the anti-Israel movement in France.
The leader of the LFI in the French Parliament, Mathilde Panot, spoke out again in support of the student blockades, saying at a rally in Paris on Tuesday: “They would like the genocide in Gaza to take place in silence. They failed. All over the world, people are rising up to denounce it, from Columbia to Sciences Po.
“Glory to the youth who embody the honour of our country and the world! I am proud to speak out for peace and international law. No political attack and police or judicial intimidation will make us bend. A genocide is underway, it is our honour to denounce it tirelessly.”
President of French leftist La France Insoumise (LFI) group at the National assembly and MP Mathilde Panot, addresses the crowd during a rally “against the criminalisation of voices of peace” organised by the LFI, following a police summons for Panot and another party member, in Paris on April 30, 2024. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP) (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP via Getty Images)
Last week, Panot was summoned by French police for an interview amid an investigation launched into figures making an “apology for terrorism” at the behest of the Ministry of the Interior.
The far-left party has, in turn, accused the Macron government of “authoritarianism” and political censorship, with former LFI presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon saying that the leader of the opposition party in the National Assembly was “summoned to the police for her ideas,” adding: “French democracy is seriously fractured. The world looks at us stunned.”
Nevertheless, the campus pro-Palestinian protests appear set to continue expanding throughout France, with the student-led Inter Sciences Po Palestine Mobilization Committee calling for “all universities in France to mobilize to denounce the genocide underway in Gaza.”