The Paris regional authority has temporarily suspending funding for Sciences Po, one of France’s most prestigious universities, after it was rocked by pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
“I have decided to suspend all regional funding for Sciences Po until calm and security have been restored at the school,” Valérie Pécresse, the rightwing head of the greater Paris Île-de-France region, said on social media on Monday.
She took aim at “a minority of radicalised people calling for antisemitic hatred” and accused hard-left politicians of seeking to exploit the tensions.
Regional support for the Paris-based university includes €1m (£850,000) earmarked for 2024, a member of Pécresse’s team told Agence France-Presse.
The university’s acting administrator, Jean Bassères, said he regretted the decision. “The Île-de-France region is an essential partner of Sciences Po and I wish to maintain dialogue on the position expressed by Mrs Pécresse,” he told the French daily Le Monde.
In an echo of demonstrations at many top US universities, students at Sciences Po have staged a number of protests over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the US, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.
University officials called in police to clear a protest last week. On Monday police broke up a student protest at Sorbonne, another top French university, demanding an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
The higher education minister, Sylvie Retailleau, said on Tuesday that the French government had no plans to suspend funding for Sciences Po.
Speaking to the broadcaster France 2, she estimated the state’s funding for the university at €75m. She said there had been “no antisemitic remarks” and no violence had been committed during the demonstrations.
Bassères and Retailleau said there were no plans to suspend Sciences Po’s collaboration with universities in Israel.
Critics on the left denounced Pécresse’s announcement. “It’s shameful and an absolute scandal,” said Mathilde Panot, the head of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party’s deputies in parliament. She said the behaviour of the students was a “credit to the world and a credit to our country”.
Panot and Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian activist who is running on LFI’s list for the European elections, were questioned on Tuesday in an investigation into suspected justification of “terrorism” over comments on the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.
Several hundred people staged a solidarity rally in support of the two women on Tuesday morning.
“In what democracy are counter-terrorism methods used against political activists, community activists and trade unionists?” Panot, 35, told her supporters, who chanted “resistance” and waved Palestinian flags.
Hassan, 32, said: “I want to tell the pro-Israeli lobby organisations behind these complaints that they will not silence us.”
The war started after Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,535 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Palestinian militants also took about 250 hostages on 7 October. Israel estimates that 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 believed to be dead.
