FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS — Professor Kepel, you are one of the world’s leading experts on the Middle East, you have just published in France the book «Holocausts» on Israel, Gaza and «the war against the West» which will be published in Italy after the summer by Feltrinelli, and you have taught for thirty years at Sciences Po. What do you think of what is happening at the school of the elite, not just French ones?
«It is the collapse of a fundamental institution, which has capitulated in the face of woke ideology and has given up on the transmission of knowledge. A decline that unfortunately began many years ago, when the then director Richard Descoings, who later disappeared in New York in unclear circumstances, had the idea, in excellent theory, of opening Sciences Po to students coming from the suburbs, from the banlieues, strangers to usual Parisian neighborhoods.”
Were you against this opening?
«No, on the contrary, Descoings associated me with his initiative and it seemed like a positive thing to me, I myself went to the suburban high schools to teach and prepare the kids for the entrance exam».
So what didn’t work?
«Democratizing access was right, but not enough attention was paid to keeping the level of the students, and also of the management, high. After the tragic death of Descoings, two senior officials from Ena took over at the head of Sciences Po, not two professors. Everything was focused on the democratization and internationalization of schools, which could have been good, but knowledge was neglected, that is, the profound raison d’être of a high-level institution like Sciences Po.”
How does this specific issue at Sciences Po relate to protests on American campuses?
«It can be seen clearly in the statement with which a week ago the current temporary administrator of Sciences Po announced the holding of a town hall, or a meeting between management and students, copying and pasting the jargon of American campuses. Sciences Po is prey to the propaganda of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, which sees a redefinition of global balances on 7 October. In this sense, October 7th is worse than September 11th.”
Why?
«Because after the attacks of 11 September 2001 the West reacted unitedly, the Corriere della Sera And Le Monde they wrote on the front page “we are all Americans”. After the atrocities of October 7, however, at least part of the West sides with the executioners and not with the victims, as do the students who do not make many distinctions between Hamas and Palestinians. When I see that Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei applauds the protests in Paris, I think we have reached rock bottom.”
Pro-Palestine protesters complain that their protest is being criminalised. Is it not legitimate to denounce the thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by the choices of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?
“Certainly. However, when the October 7 massacre and the fact that there are still over 100 hostages in the hands of Hamas are totally forgotten, then the protest becomes less based on facts and more on ideology. A few days ago pro-Israel demonstrators and pro-Palestine demonstrators faced each other in front of Sciences Po, the Boutmy amphitheater where I held many lectures was renamed the Gaza amphitheater: it is the opposite of what should happen in a university institution, made for the reasoned comparison of all positions”.
In a previous book you spoke of “atmospheric jihadism”. Do you see him at work these days?
«There is no violence, at least for the moment, fortunately. But this climate, fueled for years by the Muslim Brotherhood, favored the killings of professors Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard. I hope that someone doesn’t take advantage of this by going back to linking the Olympics and the Palestinian cause, as happened in 1972 in Munich.”
