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Top French university loses funding over pro-Palestinian protests

The Paris region authority sparked controversy on Tuesday by temporarily suspending funding for Sciences Po, one of the country's most prestigious universities, after students took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:32 CEST

Top French university loses funding over pro-Palestinian protests

Protesters demonstrate near the entrance of a Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris) building occupied by students, in Paris on April 26, 2024. Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP

“I have decided to suspend all regional funding for Sciences Po until calm and security have been restored at the school,” Valerie Pécresse, the right-wing 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 anti-Semitic hatred” and accused hard-left politicians of seeking to exploit the tensions.

Regional support for the Paris-based university includes €1 million earmarked for 2024, a member of Pécresse’s team told AFP.

On Tuesday, the university’s acting administrator, Jean Basseres, said he regretted the decision.

“The Ile-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 French daily Le Monde in an interview published Tuesday.

In an echo of tense demonstrations rocking many top US universities, students at Sciences Po have staged a number of protests, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, 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 demanding an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza at Sorbonne, another top French university.

Higher Education Minister Sylvie Retailleau said on Tuesday the French government had no plans to suspend funding for Sciences Po.

Speaking to broadcaster France 2, she estimated the state’s funding for the university at €75 million. She said there had been “no anti-Semitic remarks” and no violence had been committed during the demonstrations.

Both Basseres and Retailleau also said there were no plans to suspend Sciences Po’s collaboration with universities in Israel.

Critics on the left have denounced Pécresse’s announcement.

“It’s shameful and an absolute scandal,” said Mathilde Panot, the head of hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) deputies in parliament, adding the behaviour of the students was a “credit to the world and a credit to our country”.

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Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Two people have been killed and hundreds more injured, shops were looted and public buildings torched during a second night of rioting in New Caledonia – Nouvelle-Calédonie, in French – as anger over planned constitutional reforms boiled over.

On Wednesday, president Emmanuel Macron declared a state of emergency as the violence continued, with at least one police officer seriously injured.

What began as pro-independence demonstrations have spiralled into three days of the worst violence seen on the French Pacific archipelago since the 1980s.

Police have arrested more than 130 people since the riots broke out Monday night, with dozens placed in detention to face court hearings, the commission said.

A curfew has been put in place, and armed security forces are patrolling the streets of the capital Noumea.

So, New Caledonia is a French colony?

New Caledonia is, officially, a collectivité d’Outre mer (overseas collective). It’s not one of the five départements d’Outre mer – French Guiana in South America, Martinique and Gaudeloupe in the Caribbean and Réunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean – which are officially part of France.

As a collectivité, New Caledonia has special status that was negotiated in 1988 that gives it increasing autonomy over time and more say over its own affairs that the French overseas départements.

Home to about 269,000 people, the archipelago was a penal colony in the 19th century. Today its economy is based mainly on agriculture and vast nickel resources.

What has prompted the riots?

This is about voting rights.

Pro-independence groups believe that constitutional reforms that would give the vote to anyone who has lived on the island for 10 years would dilute the vote held by the indigenous Kanak people – who make up about 41 percent of the population, and the majority of whom favour independence.

New Caledonia’s voter lists have not been updated since 1998 when the Noumea Accord was signed, depriving island residents who arrived from mainland France or elsewhere since of a vote in provincial polls, enlarging the size of the voting population.

Proponents of the reform say that it just updates voting rolls to include long-time residents, opponents believe that it’s an attempt to gerrymander any future votes on independence for the islands.

The Noumea Accord – what’s that?

It was an agreement, signed in 1998, in which France said it would grant increased political power to New Caledonia and its original population, the Kanaks, over a 20-year transition period.

It was signed on May 5th 1998 by Lionel Jospin, and approved in a referendum in New Caledonia on November 8th, with 72 percent voting in favour.

The landmark deal has led to three referendums. In 2018, 57 percent voted to remain closely linked to France; in October 2020, the vote decreased to 53 percent. In a third referendum in 2021, the people voted against full sovereignty with another narrow margin.

And that’s what the reforms are about?

Yes. The reforms, which have been voted through by MPs in France, but must still be approved by a joint sitting of both houses of the French parliament, would grant the right to vote to anyone who has lived on the island for 10 years or more.

President Emmanuel Macron has said that lawmakers will vote to definitively adopt the constitutional change by the end of June, unless New Caledonia’s political parties agree on a new text that, “takes into account the progress made and everyone’s aspirations”.

Autonomy has its limits.

How serious is the unrest?

French President Emmanuel Macron urged calm in a letter to the territory’s representatives, calling on them to “unambiguously condemn” the “disgraceful and unacceptable” violence.

New Caledonia pro-independence leader, Daniel Goa, asked people to “go home”, and condemned the looting.

But “the unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France take control of them,” he added.

This isn’t the first time there’s been unrest on the island, is it?

There has been a long history of ethnic tensions on New Caledonia, starting in 1878 when a Kanak insurgency over the rights of Kanaks in the mining industry left 200 Europeans and 600 rebels dead. Some 1,500 Kanaks were sent into exile.

Clashes between Kanaks and Caldoches in the 1980s culminated in a bloody attack and hostage-taking by Kanak separatists in 1988, when six police officers and 19 militants were killed on the island of Ouvea.

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