When the president of the Lyon-2 University discharges her assaulted professor | EUROtoday

On Apr 17, 2025

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Lhe releases is so brutal, the choice burden that she has made a lot of colleagues from Fabrice Balanche, this geographer specialist within the Middle East, lecturer at Lyon-2 University, sufferer of insupportable intimidation on 1^er final April. That day, round twenty masked activists, affiliated with the novel group “Lyon-2 autonomous”, had burst into his amphitheater, forcing him to go away the premises by screaming insults-“Zionist”, “racist”, “Islamophobic”-in entrance of fifty dumbfounded college students. The scene, of unimaginable violence, filmed, had raised indignation to the very best spheres of the State, from François Bayrou to Élisabeth Borne.

The president of the college has to this point remained very discreet to defend her threatened trainer. Conversely, in an unique response revealed this April 16 by ThereLyon tribuneIsabelle von Bueltzingsloewen chooses a disturbing path, condemning the assault on the top of the lips – “intolerable facts” -, and castigating inexperienced … The sufferer, accused of getting held “distressing words, conspirators and deleterious for the university”. “I am angry because there have been uses of terms that have still been very hard. “First Islamist blockage in France”, it had to invent it, “she said to our colleagues, confident” not having been surprised that [cette interruption] falls on this colleague “in view of his” positions on Gaza “. A public disavowal, of unprecedented institutional violence.

Inversion of roles

The president criticizes the teacher his media interventions, where he denounced a “group of Islamogauchist” and “Islamist abuses” at the university. “It is up to him to find his place,” she asserts. “The case is not over, we will discuss it during the next board of directors. »An inversion of responsibilities that many, behind the scenes, consider properly staggering. “Fabrice Balanche is the best specialist in Syria. He has committed no crime, no disciplinary fault. He is an academic, like the president, whose independence and academic freedom are guaranteed by the Constitution “, storms a colleague, asking for anonymity to protect himself from the” deleterious climate “which plagues the Bron campus. “She makes him a political trial, by rewriting the facts. The reality is that a nervis commando has intimidated a teacher, and it is him that we accuse! Madame von Bueltzingsloewen has lost her compass. »»

Fabrice Balanche says he is stunned. “I don’t know what to do, my arms fall to me,” he says, announcing that he plans to consult his lawyer. “It links my assault to my positions on Gaza. But I would like to know what they are: I only wrote on Gaza in the context of geopolitical analyzes, I have never expressed personal opinions! If the president confuses both, it is not surprising that the students are manipulable, ”he asserts. “I do not know if she realizes it, or if her words were badly reproduced by ThereLyon tribune. The president was not reachable on Wednesday evening to confirm her words.

“His strategy is to define the conflict constantly. We give a room to the activists to avoid violence, we let them block the campus of the Porte des Alpes, we cancel exams to prevent the students who demonstrate to be penalized, we let the Propalestinian tags cover the walls of the university … It’s been years since it lasts, “gnashes Fabrice Balanche. The president of the college, if she granted him purposeful safety after her assault, by no means referred to as her.

A beneath rigidity campus

Since October 7, 2023, the Bron campus, a bastion of the novel left, has been shaken by an growing radicalization. Tags proclaiming “from the sea to the Jourdain, Palestine to the Palestinians”, requires iftars in college rooms, unlawful prayer corners: an energetic minority, carried by “Autonomous Lyon-2”, imposes its legislation. On March 28, the prohibition of an IFTAR – after experiences for harm to secularism – set hearth to the powder. Balanche, who had commented on these drifts on CNews, turns into a goal. The subsequent day, his course was taken over.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

The college, after an embarrassed silence, grants “functional protection” to Balanche and information a report back to the prosecution. But the president, in a balancingist subject, now appears “more concerned with sparing activists than defending her teacher”, underlines a Lyon University. “Why does she never criticize the profile of her vice-president, Willy Beauvalle-Haddad?” He is nonetheless a posted propalely activist, complacent with Hezbollah. “In recent months, the organization of seminars like” warfare crimes, crimes in opposition to humanity, genocide? ” Israel in courtroom! (Finally canceled by the prefecture), or the controversial invitation of Maryam Abu Daqqa, a member of a categorized terrorist group, created swirls.

The case exceeds Lyon-2. For the historian Pierre Vermeren, co -signing of a stand of help for Fabrice Balanche, she questions above all freedom of expression in universities, the place a loud minority manages to impose his censorship by intimidation. “Balanche is the very best specialist within the Syrian battle in France, the one who understood what was occurring ten years earlier than the others. The president of Lyon-2, in actuality, criticizes her for having spoken to the media, and of getting denounced the laxity of a course which had closed the eyes on the group of prayers inside the grounds of the institution. Fabrice Balanche is elected lecturer, he has made his place at college for a very long time. He did it scientifically, and by his college students. »»

https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/quand-la-presidente-de-l-universite-lyon-2-dezingue-son-professeur-agresse-17-04-2025-2587554_23.php