Sciences Po Strasbourg in eastern France has severed ties with an Israeli higher education institution, accusing it of "warmongering" stances over the Gaza war, sparking criticism from the French government.
The university, also known as the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Strasbourg, cut ties with the Reichman University near Tel Aviv in June, local newspaper Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace reported on Wednesday, October 30, confirming initial reports by BFM-TV.
The move comes after students at several French universities have, like some of their peers in the United States, protested or held sit-ins demanding a ceasefire in Gaza over the past year.
Students and several teachers had backed the move over what its initiators called the Israeli institution's "deeply warmongering" stances over the Gaza war, calling them "devoid of any humanist perspective," it said. The institute's director Jean-Philippe Heurtin told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that he had been strongly opposed, but members of the university board – which includes students – approved it in a vote.
"The decision is distressing," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told the BFMTV broadcaster on Thursday. "It's not this university that today is bombing Lebanon or Gaza."
"It's in Israeli universities that we find the most fervent advocates for peace and the two-state solution," Barrot added, referring to the idea of an Israeli state and another Palestinian one living peacefully side by side. France's Higher Education Minister Patrick Hetzel on X on Wednesday said he "deplored the decision" taken by the French university board.
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in a June opinion article in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper criticized the Reichman University for giving an honorary doctorate to a military commander. The man had shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian who had hurled a rock but "posed no threat" to him in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2015, Levy wrote. The case was brought up during the debate over whether to cut ties in Strasbourg.