The figures are worrying to say the least. Since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 76 anti-Semitic acts have been reported in French universities, seventeen of which are the subject of disciplinary proceedings. To combat this “climate of anti-Semitism,” a senatorial mission proposed on Wednesday to “strengthen training” and “systematize sanctions,” recommendations that it hopes to see taken into account “as of the next academic year.”
The work of this “flash mission”, approved at the end of March by the Senate following incidents that occurred during the occupation of a Sciences Po Paris amphitheater, began at the end of April and was led by two rapporteurs, the centrist Pierre-Antoine Lévi and the radical Bernard Fialaire. “We are no longer in the era of vigilance but in a period of reaction and action” and “we ask the government to take into account as quickly as possible the recommendations made, from the start of the school year next September, to contain this phenomenon,” explains Bernard Fialaire.
“An atmospheric anti-Semitism”
The rapporteurs said they were “alarmed by the resurgence, within many establishments, of a climate of anti-Semitism whose modes of expression have evolved under the effect of ideological polarization associated with student mobilizations in favor of Palestine” , added Pierre Antoine Lévi. “This atmospheric anti-Semitism, difficult to spot, results in harassment, shoving, changing places in the lecture halls, and isolation of students when forming groups,” he explained.
Among their eleven recommendations, the senators ask to “generalize partnership agreements between higher education establishments and local prosecutors’ offices”. They also recommend “adding types of sanctions for reporting cases of racism and anti-Semitism, going as far as temporary exclusion”. “Every time a president of a university or major school is aware of a fact, it must be reported,” they insisted.