The management of Sciences Po accuses the German professor Klaus Kinzler, targeted by accusations of Islamophobia last March, for having recently made “defamatory remarks” in the press. Many politicians reacted including the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer.
The suspension by the IEP of Grenoble of one of its teachers, targeted by accusations of Islamophobia last March, restarted this week a heated controversy around the establishment and freedom of expression, in the midst of the presidential campaign .
The management of Sciences Po accuses the German professor Klaus Kinzler of having recently made “defamatory remarks” in the press about the case, calling for a response “of a disciplinary nature”.
In reaction, the LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, cuts the funding of Sciences Po by the community. A decision hailed on the right and on the far right, but criticized by regional environmentalists and socialists.
On Wednesday, the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer qualified as a “formal error” the measure taken by the IEP against the teacher and said “certain that the priority is not to sanction this gentleman”.
Emails and posters
The affair begins with an exchange of vehement emails, at the end of 2020, between Klaus Kinzler and a colleague historian, about a day of debates organized within the framework of a “Week for equality and the fight against discrimination” , under the heading “racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia”.
The German professor disputes the use of the latter term, which is not scientific in his eyes, while expressing his reservations about Islam. “I don’t like this religion very much,” he said in emails published for a while on his website, adding that it sometimes scares him “frankly”, “as it scares many French people”.
The teacher then acknowledges in an apology email that he “got carried away at times”. But the climate is getting worse. On March 4, posters attacked Klaus Kinzler and another colleague by name: “Fascists in our lecture halls (…) Islamophobia kills”. Their photos were posted on social networks by student unions. The next day, the management of Sciences Po reported the facts to the Grenoble prosecutor’s office, which opened an investigation for “public insult”, considering it “a real danger” to do so. that “these teachers be threatened”.
“I think we should all take the measure of what happened with the despicable assassination of Samuel Paty”, comments on March 7 the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin, referring to this teacher beheaded by a young Islamist a few months earlier for showing caricatures of Muhammad to his students. The Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, for her part, orders an inspection mission.
On March 8, the management of Sciences Po “condemns with the greatest firmness” the posters. On the 9th, the main student union of the IEP calls for sanctions against the teachers, failing an apology. The 10th, the director Sabine Saurugger believes, in an interview with AFP, that the tone of Mr. Kinzler in his emails was “extremely problematic”.
On May 8, Frédérique Vidal calls for sanctioning the students involved. The report of the inspection mission underlines that “all the actors in this affair committed errors of appreciation, clumsiness, breaches and more or less serious mistakes”. But for the administration, the main culprits remain the students who have accused teachers of “Islamophobia” and / or relayed “rumors” on social networks.
On November 25, the disciplinary section of the University of Clermont-Auvergne, where the case was disoriented, acquitted 16 of the 17 students implicated and pronounced a “sanction of temporary exclusion” suspended.
Klaus Kinzler describes Sciences Po Grenoble as an institute for “political re-education”
“This impunity is a call to intolerance”, denounces Klaus Kinzler on December 8 in the newspaper “L’Opinion”. He describes Sciences Po Grenoble as an institute of “political re-education”, with students “indoctrinated” by colleagues “followers of woke theories, decolonialists, communitarians, anti-capitalists”.
While the teacher multiplies critical interviews, the management suspends him for four months in a letter dated December 15, accusing him of having failed in his “professional obligations”, pending a disciplinary council.
This sanction revives the controversy. Laurent Wauquiez cuts regional credits, Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Eric Ciotti applaud.
Valérie Pécresse says she is “worried” about freedom of expression; 40 personalities and academics denounce “formatting and propaganda” in a column published by Le Figaro; Richard Malka, Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer, compares the IEP to a “little Pakistan”.
The management of the establishment castigates “inept” accusations by denouncing a political “instrumentalisation”.
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