Not even one month after being appointed as provisional administrator of Paris' elite social sciences university Sciences Po, Jean Bassères has already made a major impact. At his request, on the night of Wednesday, April 24, several dozen French riot police officers entered the school to clear out around 60 students who had been staging a sit-in since the afternoon, which had been called for by the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po. The collective claims to have some 100 members, and was formed in November 2023 in response to the intensification of Israel's offensive on Gaza. The protest action also happened a day after an unprecedented demonstration to support Palestine at Columbia University in New York, which offers double degrees with Sciences Po.

On Wednesday evening, the provisional administrator of Sciences Po, who took office on March 27 following the resignation of former director Mathias Vicherat – who was ordered with his former partner to stand trial on charges of domestic violence – had consulted the higher education minister "to share with her his wish to have recourse to public force [and] the minister assured him of her support in this decision," according to a statement by a source in minister Sylvie Retailleau's entourage.

In a press release, Sciences Po's management regretted "that the numerous attempts at dialogue, in order to have the students leave the premises calmly, had not made it possible to find a way out of this situation". The Palestine Committee of Sciences Po, meanwhile, expressed its determination: "We have no intention of becoming silent; the fight for justice in Palestine compels us. We are not afraid," it warned in a statement.

Bassères was acting with the government's support, all the more so as his agenda had been essentially dictated by the Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, according to whom the Parisian school was experiencing "a form of slope, of drift, linked to an active and dangerous minority." His sights were set on the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po, which had called for an occupation of the Emile-Boutmy auditorium on March 12. The words "Don't let her in, she's a Zionist" were allegedly heard in the auditorium when a student of Jewish faith came to the venue, a claim that has yet to be confirmed by an internal investigation carried out by the university's management.

The following day, Attal attended a meeting of the university's board of directors to declare that it would be up to the provisional administrator to "reverse this slope to ensure that the Republican principle is always respected everywhere." The deans and directors of Sciences Po's research centers spoke out against this attack on the principle of academic freedom.

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