Our February 10th session, entitled “Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism” resulted in us being defamed on social media and being intimidated before and during the session. These are particularly insulting and serious attacks that target not only our seminar and its guests but also the Ecole Normale Supérieure and its students.
Our February 10th session, entitled “Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism,” whose speakers were among the co-authors of the books Contre l’antisémitisme et ses instrumentalisations (La Fabrique, 2024) and Antisionisme: une histoire juive (2023), resulted in us being defamed on social media and being intimidated before and during the session. These are particularly insulting and serious attacks that target not only our seminar and its guests but also the Ecole Normale Supérieure and its students.
We strongly condemn these defamatory accusations and the racist and Islamophobic insults that followed on social media. The Palestine seminar has always complied with the framework established with the ENS administration. It has always been an invaluable space for exercising critical thinking, and we have reiterated, at the beginning of each session, our rules of conduct for which there are no exceptions (no racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic comments, etc.), ensuring that every session thus far has remained peaceful.
We insist on the academic rigor of our seminar, which is supported and greenlit by several departments of the school. For six months (or over a year, if we count the work of the previous team), our seminar has brought together established scholars at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, while giving a place to young researchers, and has welcomed a hundred people every week on average, in Ulm or Jourdan.
At a time when intimidation attempts and efforts to censor those who speak about Palestine in universities are increasing, we reaffirm our commitment to academic freedom and we refuse to be intimidated by groups or individuals that seek to censor students, professors, and researchers.
The session planned for today, Monday, February 17th, scheduled with Ibrahim Rabaia, Lourdes Habash, Sophie Roux and Catherine Goldstein, had to be cancelled, and we hope that it will be postponed to a later date. We hope to be able to organize it as soon as possible. This is a session that we are particularly keen on, since it deals with one of the most important themes of our seminar: educide in Palestine.
In the meantime, we invite you to discover the article (link to the article in French and in English) by our guests Ibrahim Rabaia and Lourdes Habash, published by the French Development Agency and the French Institute of the Near East, entitled: “Destruction of Higher Education (Educide) in the Gaza Strip: Assessment and Support Mechanisms.”
The ENS-PSL Palestine Seminar team.