Tours: Cancellation of a conference on Franco-Israeli academic partnerships

The University of Tours banned a conference on Franco-Israeli academic partnerships, planned for Thursday evening by the Solidaires Etudiants union, for “risk of disturbing public order”.

The union decided to maintain the meeting in front of the establishment, AFP learned.

The university indicates that a reservation request had been submitted and accepted for a “fairly neutral” subject before leaflets and publications announced “another subject”, notably the participation of an activist engaged in a future flotilla for Gaza.

The president of the university, Philippe Roingeard, therefore canceled the reservation by order and banned the public meeting, citing a “serious risk of disturbing public order”, she added.

The establishment also justifies this decision by a request considered late, the possible presence of external people and the absence of indications on the identity of the speakers and the number of participants.

Described to the university as a “public meeting on the links between French universities and arms companies and foreign universities”, the conference was announced on the networks social as relating to “Palestine, the flotilla and university partnerships with Israel”, with the presence of an activist engaged in a future flotilla for Gaza.

Denouncing “an attack on academic freedoms”, the union decided to maintain the conference in front of the university, in a place which it ensured did not fall within the domain of the establishment, Nathalia told AFP Renaudin, president of Solidarité Étudiantes Tours, who assures that she does not fear “any overflow”.

“We suspect that if we had talked about Italy or Germany, for example, on the subject of foreign universities, this would not have posed a problem,” she lamented.

The conference agenda also includes a discussion on the partnership between the University of Tours and the company STMicroelectronics, which the union described as “accomplice of the Israeli genocide”.

A wording that could lead to “defamatory comments” targeting research staff, argues the university in the order consulted by AFP.

This ban comes in a context of increased vigilance around student meetings.

In mid-February, the Minister of Higher Education, Philippe Baptiste, affirmed that there would no longer be “meetings” in universities as soon as a risk of disturbance to public order was identified, after the death of Quentin Deranque, an activist far-right, beaten to death on the sidelines of a conference by controversial LFI MEP Rima Hassan at Sciences Po Lyon, and died two days later in hospital.