Drama and pressure, all in fifteen minutes flat. It was around 5:15 p.m., this Tuesday, March 12, in the boardroom of Sciences Po, located in the annex on rue de l’Université, in Paris, when Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, the president of the National Foundation of Political Sciences ( FNSP), the body that oversees the school, announces to its board of directors the imminent arrival of an unexpected guest. This is the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, accompanied by Sylvie Retailleau, the Minister of Higher Education. Unprecedented irruption, from professor’s memory. Never before has a member of the government attended such a meeting with essentially budgetary and technical issues. No one was warned, neither Audrey Azoulay, the director general of UNESCO, nor François Delattre, the French ambassador in Berlin, nor Alexandre Bompard, the CEO of Carrefour, participating in the “video” meeting: everyone discovers live visit from the tenant of Matignon.
Gabriel Attal does not come to comment on the resignation of Mathias Vicherat, the school director, which occurred at the start of this unreal day, around 8:30 a.m. Emmanuel Macron’s former classmate at ENA is referred to the criminal court for reciprocal domestic violence with his ex-partner. Although the head of government still indirectly says a word about it: the provisional administrator of the school, called upon to manage current affairs before the election of a new boss, and the next director, will have to respect a “road map ” precise. That of “respect” for the “principles of the Republic”. Failing this, the State could review its funding, the Prime Minister suggests.
Reaction to the “Gaza amphitheater”
He will never discuss the controversy in detail, but the Matignon tenant refers to the occupation of the Boutmy amphitheater, briefly renamed “Gaza amphitheater”, by pro-Palestinian activists, Tuesday March 12. The Union of Jewish Students of France claims that students perceived as Jewish or Zionist have been attacked or even prevented from entering. “The first elements available to us are particularly worrying and worrying,” comments Gabriel Attal. He announces that he will take these facts to court. “I reaffirm our determination that extremely firm sanctions be taken,” he said, according to several participants. In the process, the management of Sciences Po announced in a press release that it had referred the matter to the public prosecutor “for acts of an anti-Semitic nature in accordance with article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure”, and indicated that it had opened this Wednesday morning ” an administrative investigation.
That’s not all. The head of government’s short speech resembles a more general reprimand on the evolution of the school. “A famous expression says that fish always rots from the head. I think that’s what the French are saying to themselves”, he explains, in front of local decision-makers, after having reminded that ” Sciences Po is one of those schools which aims to train some of the State’s senior executives. And to again evoke these “French people” who “question very strongly” about “a form of slope and drift, linked to an active and dangerous minority at Sciences Po”.
Place of “wokism”
The controversies are known, between the attempt of certain students to prevent Alain Finkielkraut from accessing the premises, the inscription of anti-Semitic tags on the front of the school, witch hunts carried out against students or teachers… We do not we don’t know exactly what the Prime Minister is referring to, but it seems clear that he is targeting the place of far-left activism, sometimes described as “woke”. Gabriel Attal mentions two types of “problems”: firstly the fact that “when we hear about Sciences Po, it is for controversies”. Then, the observation that “we can no longer organize, I am told, a democratic debate at Sciences Po without having to notify the police headquarters so that police officers are present to ensure security”. And this while the IEP must remain “the place for the confrontation of points of view”, he pleads, recalling in passing his “immense respect” for an institution which “trained” him, between 2007 and 2013 .
Gabriel Attal completes his muscular intervention by directly weighing up a takeover of the establishment and its public financing: “The French expect that when public money is committed to financing institutions, we guarantee 200% that the principles Republicans are respected everywhere and at all times in these institutions. And therefore, there will now be an immediate link that will be made between the two.” Notice to the next candidates for management of the establishment.
In the immediate future, a provisional administrator must be appointed to take over the interim management, also relieved of its number two, Sergei Guriev, who resigned at the end of January. The school’s highest official, general secretary Alban Hautier, has only… one month of seniority. He previously worked at the Ministry of Finance. Several sources mention the profile of a senior civil servant outside Sciences Po, based on the model of State Councilor Jean Gaeremynck, holder of this transitional position after the death of Richard Descoings in 2013. The application procedure to replace Mathias Vicherat should , it lasts more than six months. That is, at Sciences Po, a sufficient interval to promise new twists and turns.
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