Gaza protests: French students demand an end to ties with Israeli universities

Student protests against Israel have entered their second week in France. A town hall event Thursday at the prestigious Sciences Po school in Paris ended with the administration refusing to create a working group to investigate ties with Israeli universities, which students across France want to see cut over the war in Gaza. It is just one demand of many that are motivating students across France and beyond to keep protesting.

The provisional administrator of prestigious Sciences Po school in Paris, whose graduates include President Emmanuel Macron, has rejected student demands to create a working group that would investigate its ties with Israeli universities. At a town hall event on Thursday that followed student protests at the institution in Paris’s 7th arrondissement (district) last week, Jean Bassères said that the school needs to consider whether to "take positions on major political issues" but that a review of broader school policy was not on the agenda.

Students said they were "disappointed" by the event, according to FRANCE 24’s James André, reporting on the ground, with a spokesman for the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po saying that "none of [their] requests" had been met.

Among the Committee’s list of demands are ending links with institutions that pursue “Zionist ideologies”.

The union also called for a ceasefire in Gaza in an Instagram post alongside a video of an enormous Palestinian flag that was unfurled and carried in the street in front of Sorbonne University during a protest on Monday.

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