The vice-president of the college resigns | EUROtoday

On May 6, 2025

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Lhe vice-president of Lumière Lyon-2 University, Willy Beauvalle-Haddad, introduced this Monday its resignation from all of its govt capabilities. In a message addressed to his colleagues, that The level Consulted, he declares that he’s the goal of “harassment” and a “public denigration campaign” in connection along with his private positions on the scenario within the Middle East. He says he needed, by this departure, to guard the college in a very tense interval.

Willy Beauvallet-Haddad held a number of key capabilities: vice-president accountable for workers since 2018, finance since 2021, and vice-president of the board of administrators since February 2025. He will proceed to train as a lecturer in political science.

Larking tensions in Lyon-2

This choice comes because the college is affected by full of life tensions, because the assault of Professor Fabrice Balanche. The 1^er April, this geographer, a specialist within the Middle East, was violently interrupted within the midst by round twenty masked activists, affiliated with the “Autonomous Lyon-2” group. The trainer was compelled to depart the amphitheater below the insults, in entrance of dumbfounded college students. The case has aroused a shock wave within the tutorial world, and to the highest of the state.

In the times that adopted, the president of the college, Isabelle von Bueltzingsloewen, made remarks that ignited the embers. While condemning “intolerable” info, she instructed her trainer, declaring to The Tribune of Lyon Do not be stunned that this incident goals at Fabrice Balanche, with regard to his “positions on Gaza” – a formulation which shocked a part of the educational physique.

And which have earned the president to be the goal of loss of life threats. Fabrice Balanche had notably denounced, within the media, the rising grip of spiritual and political activism on the campus, in addition to sure sprains within the precept of secularism, such because the group of Iftars within the premises of the college. In her e mail, Willy Beauvallet-Haddad thanks her colleagues and the president for the “quality of the work done”, whereas reaffirming her dedication to the protection of human rights in Palestine and the Middle East.

A resignation to “protect the institution”

He presents himself as a sufferer of a hostile local weather – with out mentioning, nonetheless, the remarks that fueled the controversy: particularly a sequence of tweets through which he had paid tribute to Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah (group thought of as terrorist by the European Union), died in an Israeli strike in September 2024. ” And he joined the pantheon of our hearts and great characters in history, “he wrote.

These declarations, extensively relayed, shocked even within the ranks of the college, the place votes have been raised to request ensures of ideological neutrality inside governance. In his message, the resigning vice-president doesn’t return to the content material of those remarks, nor on the controversy they aroused, or the assault on which his colleague Fabrice Balanche was the sufferer.

Since the autumn of 2023, the bronst campus has skilled an growing radicalization of militant expressions: tags, prayers organized in tutorial rooms, blocking of programs, cancellations of exams, political slogans displayed in amphitheatres … The aggression of 1^er April, says a trainer, acted “as a revealer of a wider climate of intimidation”.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

Several academics denounce an abandonment of administration, which might search to appease tensions by yielding to probably the most radical teams.

Contacted, the Lyon-2 University confirms that it has accepted resignation.

https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/crise-a-lyon-2-le-vice-president-de-l-universite-demissionne-05-05-2025-2588893_23.php