Like Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin or Alain Juppé before him, Bruno Retailleau is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris (class of 1985). Today, the leader of the Republican senators (LR) says he no longer recognizes a school that has become, in his eyes, “the factory of ideological stupidity”. Like the elected official from Vendée, the right does not have harsh enough words to comment on the recent events on rue Saint-Guillaume.
After several weeks of tension, the management announced, on Friday April 26, an agreement with its students mobilized for the Palestinian cause, by which it undertook to organize an internal debate and to suspend disciplinary procedures launched against demonstrators. Even before this debate, described as “town hall” – term used in the United States for a large public meeting –, organized Thursday May 2 by the management at the request of the Palestine committee of the school, LR denounced a “surrender” of the government and management facing the students at the origin of the blockages. “By canceling the disciplinary proceedings against them, management is giving a thumbs up to anti-Semitic demands”even accuses X Eric Ciotti, president of the right-wing party, himself a graduate of Sciences Po in 1988.
If the far right also castigates the attitude of the pro-Palestinian students at the origin of the blockages, it is the Republicans who set the tone and have made the occupation of the school a highly political subject. To hear the LR deputy for Pas-de-Calais Pierre-Henri Dumont, “the right-wing electorate is perhaps more sensitive to what is happening at Sciences Po than that of the National Rally, which is more popular”. In recent days, this other former student of the prestigious Parisian establishment (class of 2011) has made a series of media interventions to denounce “political and ideological drift” which, according to him, has been at work in recent years at Sciences Po Paris.
The internationalization of the school, launched under the direction of Richard Descoings in the 2000s, would have “transformed school demographics”. Mr. Dumont sees in actions in support of Gaza the consequences of “the alliance” between several groups: “foreign students mainly from the United States and the Middle East”, “daddy’s boys who want to treat themselves to a revolutionary thrill” And “a part of the suburban scholarship students”. Swithout forgetting, of course, “the entryism of La France insoumise [LFI] “.
“The red hand of LFI”
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