Arrest of Victor Dupont in Tunisia: academic freedom in danger

A completely exceptional situation, which raises the question of academic freedom in a country which maintains a tradition of historic university collaboration with France. How are researchers supported on their land and how can they be protected?

How to understand such an arrest?

A student who does not seem to present any atypical traits, Victor Dupont was even “very much part of Tunisian society”pleads Amin Allalhis co-director of research. “He is someone whose career path is quite ordinary given post-2011 Tunisia. He is part of the “boom” of social science studies in Tunisia.” His research subject, at the time of his arrest, focused on young people from Jendouba, a region located in the northwest of Tunisia. “He was interested in these people who became actors in social and political processes after the Tunisian revolution of 2011”. A subject all in all quite far from an approach which could pose a problem to the current regime, observes Amin Allal, distraught.

“A very strong security excess”

He hopes that this arrest is a historic incident, especially since the Tunisian university was in the process of establishing itself, over the years, as a stronghold of research in the Arab world: “the recent history of the Tunisian university is so important and profound that at one point, one could believe that Tunis was going to become a sort of Arab, if not Mediterranean, capital of research. Congresses, symposia there took place almost every day with the greatest transparency. In this context, finding ourselves in the spotlight of military justice seems to us to be an exception that we should really succeed in correcting very quickly..

Raise public awareness by “opening the black box of research”?

Hastening the release of Victor Dupont could involve greater awareness among French and Tunisian public opinion. “This would make it possible to stop an enthusiasm that we already sense and which combines the term sovereignty indiscriminately without even understanding what it could really cover.” Getting out of this alarming situation cannot be done. “that by taking into consideration the point of view of Tunisian researchers who are also experiencing the upheavals of authoritarianism and the questioning of these academic freedoms today, asserts Amin Allal. In my opinion, the best way to protect researchers is to be educational, that is to say, to open the black box of what can reappear, of what we do.”