While the University of Lausanne sees one of its buildings taken over by pro-Palestinian activists, its neighbor, EPFL, has threatened its feminist association Polyquity with suspending its right to hold events and displays on campus for a period of six months for having organized last Tuesday a conference on “decolonial feminism” in connection with Palestine.
According to its organizers, the event took place “in calm and respect”. It had been accepted by the responsible body of EPFL the week preceding the event. In a press release, they say they do not understand the reaction of EPFL, which informed them of its intention. “To our greatest surprise, EPFL claims to have made ‘hateful and threatening’ remarks, which all the public present can deny,” they write.
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The group, at the origin of the #PayetonEPFL campaign and which claims to be the only feminist association on campus, evokes a “never before seen measure” which follows the denunciation of a group of pro-Israeli Jewish students.
“Tense international context”
In an open letter addressed to the management, the latter criticize in particular the speaker, Paola Salwan Daher, for having denounced “the instrumentalization of cases of sexual violence to legitimize Israel’s colonialist policy”, but also for having used the terms “apartheid regime” or “reproductive genocide”, or even for having encouraged international solidarity with Palestine.
>> See the 7:30 p.m. report:
Contacted on Friday, EPFL replied that this conference, contrary to what was announced when the event was requested, was “clearly of a partisan nature”. The institution believes that “in a tense international context”, it must do everything possible “to avoid an escalation and thus preserve campus unity and a peaceful working climate.” A position is expected within 10 days, before EPFL makes its final decision.
In addition to Polyquity, EPFL indicates that it met on Tuesday with Unipoly, an environmental association shared by EPFL and UNIL. She pointed out to him that several articles published in his newspaper Le Canard Huppé “offended part of the community” and violated the regulations relating to associations, in particular their apolitical nature.
