A group of students classified on the left had promised the former prime minister a “welcome committee”. The Sciences Po Forum association deplored a “worrying decline in freedom of expression”.
She probably would have been heckled. Former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne saw her visit this Friday, November 8 to Sciences Po Strasbourg relocated due to the “militant pressure”announced the Sciences Po Forum student association in a press release. The Prime Minister was to go there for a “signing session” at 5 p.m., followed by a conference at 6 p.m. for “look back at his time at Matignon and what it involved”can we read in a publication of the organization which aims to “promote the debate of ideas” by inviting various personalities from political life or civil society.
“Following a call for mobilization from the collective “IEP Strasbourg in struggle” relayed by other Strasbourg trade union organizations, contesting the visit of the former prime minister, we were forced to hold this event outside the premises from school or to cancel it due to a security risk”specifies the association. It was ultimately the first option that was chosen, with a relocation to an auditorium located a kilometer further away.
“Welcome committee”
On its social networks, the collective “IEP Strasbourg in struggle”already in action during previous blockades and pro-Palestine assemblies, welcomed a «victoire» par «KO»before becoming disillusioned by writing on Instagram: “But hey… she’s received (in another auditorium) so… Always at 4 p.m.”before disclosing the address. On Wednesday, the group called for a “welcome committee of our very dear former prime minister”, “queen of neoliberalism and democracy”.
“Science Po Forum deplores this decision (of relocation) which questions a worrying decline in freedom of expression (…) being forced to give in to pressure from an activist minority amounts to subverting the primary mission of our school: to be a place of knowledge and exchange”writes the association.
At the end of October, Sciences Po Strasbourg had already been at the heart of the controversy after the announcement of the freezing of its relations with Reichman University in Tel Aviv. In question, the proposal by two students from the Solidarit'student list during a board meeting on June 25 of a motion to suspend partnership with this establishment which would actively engage “in a conflict which leads to the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians” in Gaza, according to them. The president of the University of Strasbourg, Michel Deneken, had stressed to the Figaro that he “totally disapproved of this resolution”. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barriot described the decision as“distressing”.
