Sciences Po Grenoble: the teacher accused of Islamophobia suspended for defamation

New twist in the case between Klaus Kinzler, a teacher from Sciences Po Grenoble accused in March of Islamophobia, to his management. The German teacher was suspended from his duties by the management, which accuses him of having held, since, “defamatory remarks“, we learned Monday, December 20 from corroborating sources.

The decision of the director of the IEP Sabine Saurugger, revealed by Le Figaro, targets interviews granted in early December by the teacher, Klaus Kinzler, to the site of the weekly Marianne, daily Opinion and the chain CNews. In his interviews, the teacher described the IEP as an institute of “political re-education“by accusing a”majority“of colleagues, followers according to him of the theories”woke“, to indoctrinate the students and the management of the IEP to let it go.

On December 13, in an interview with Marianne, the director had defended the establishment. “Mr Kinzler criticizes a number of facts which are not correct. He says in particular that the management never protected him. Sciences-Po Grenoble is an establishment where freedom of expression and freedom of education are at the heart of the academic project“, she said. The professor has, according to the principal,”seriously unrecognized in several obligations“, in particular as regards”professional discretion“.”It is necessary to seize the disciplinary council“, she adds in the decree which suspends him for four months.

For their part, Klaus Kinzler’s lawyers denounce a “witch hunt“, their client having been”forced to speak in order to defend oneself“after being implicated”in the public square“.”It poisons my life but maybe you have to go all the way to find out who has the right to say what and in what situation“, declared the teacher, evoking a possible recourse before the administrative court. Contacted, the direction of the IEP did not wish to react to”an internal measure“.

At the origin of the case, at the end of 2020, Klaus Kinzler and a colleague historian had exchanged vehement emails about a day of debates entitled “racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia“, a term which he disputed the scientific character, while criticizing Islam. On March 4, Mr. Kinzler and another teacher had been the target of posters accusing them of” Islamophobia “, posted by students and relayed on social networks by unions.

The director of the IEP had condemned “very clearly” these posters, while believing that Mr. Kinzler’s way of speaking about Islam was “extremely problematic”. On November 26, 16 of the 17 IEP students prosecuted before a disciplinary body were acquitted, while the Minister of Higher Education had recommended sanctions against them. Only one was the subject of a suspended temporary exclusion.

This sanction led the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez (LR), to suspend the funding granted to the establishment by the community.

In a press release, Laurent Wauquiez justified his decision to suspend regional funding – around 100,000 euros per year excluding investment in projects, according to the executive – by a “long ideological and communitarian drift”, which according to him comes from “to take a new step” with the suspension of the teacher. According to him, “a minority confiscated the debate” within the establishment, “without the management taking the measure of this worrying drift”.