A teacher accused of Islamophobia at IEP Grenoble suspended, Wauquiez cuts his funding

0

EDUCATION – A professor from Sciences Po Grenoble, accused of “Islamophobia” at the beginning of the year, was suspended from his functions by the management which accuses him of having made, since, “defamatory remarks”, we learned this Monday, December 20 from corroborating sources.

This sanction led the president of the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Laurent Wauquiez, to suspend the funding granted to the establishment by the community. He also spoke on Twitter, denouncing “an unacceptable ideological and communitarian drift”.

The decision of the director of the IEP Sabine Saurugger, revealed by Le Figaro, targets interviews granted in early December by the teacher, Klaus Kinzler, to the site of the weekly Marianne, daily Opinion and the CNews channel.

The German teacher has, according to the director, “seriously disregarded several obligations”, in particular as regards “professional discretion”. “It is necessary to seize the disciplinary council”, she adds in the decree which suspends him for four months. In his interviews, the teacher described the IEP as an institute of “political re-education” by accusing a “hard core” of colleagues, followers according to him of the theories “woke”, To indoctrinate the students, and the management of the IEP to let it go.

For his lawyers, who denounce a “witch hunt”, Klaus Kinzler “was forced to speak in order to defend himself” after being implicated “in the public square”. “It poisons my life but maybe you have to go all the way to find out who has the right to say what and in what situation,” the teacher told AFP, citing a possible appeal to the administrative court.

Zemmour congratulates Wauquiez

Contacted, the management of the IEP of Grenoble did not wish to react to “an internal measure”. On December 13, in an interview with Marianne, Mrs. Saurugger had defended the establishment.

“Mr. Kinzler criticizes a number of facts which are not correct. He says in particular that the management never protected him. Sciences-Po Grenoble is an establishment where freedom of expression and freedom of education are at the heart of the academic project ”, she said.

Laurent Wauquiez justified his decision to suspend regional funding – around 100,000 euros per year excluding investment in projects, according to the executive – by a “long ideological and communitarian drift”, which he said has just “taken a new step” with the suspension of the teacher. According to him, “a minority confiscated the debate” within the establishment, “without the management taking the measure of this worrying drift”.

A choice that delighted the far right of the political spectrum, the presidential candidate Eric Zemmour in particular welcoming his way of “cutting short the infiltration of our major schools by Islamo-leftism”.

“Extremely Problematic” Criticisms of Islam

At the origin of the case, at the end of 2020, Klaus Kinzler and a colleague historian had exchanged vehement emails about a day of debates entitled “racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia”, a term whose scientific character he disputed, while criticizing Islam.

On March 4, Klaus Kinzler and another teacher were the target of posters accusing them of “Islamophobia”, posted by students and relayed on social networks by unions.

The director of the IEP had condemned “very clearly” these posters, while considering that the way in which Klaus Kinzler spoke of Islam was “extremely problematic”.

On November 26, 16 of the 17 IEP students prosecuted before a disciplinary body were acquitted, while the Minister of Higher Education had recommended sanctions against them. Only one was the subject of a suspended temporary exclusion.

See also on The HuffPost: In Canada, giant vigil after the Islamophobic attack in London


source site