PARIS, 16 Nov. - (ANA) - French scholars accused the government of bowing to pro-Israel pressure after the Collège de France cancelled a major symposium on Palestine.

 

France is facing an unusual storm of academic anger after the Collège de France, France's five-century-old prestigious university, cancelled an international symposium on Palestine, triggering accusations that political pressure and lobbying interests have overridden basic commitments to academic freedom.

 

What began as a routine scholarly gathering has turned into a wider dispute about censorship, state interference and the shrinking space for debate in French universities on the Palestine issue.

 

The two-day conference, titled 'Palestine and Europe: the Weight of the Past and Contemporary Dynamics', was organised by the Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World at the Collège de France in partnership with the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies in Paris.

 

The forum was due to be held on 13 and 14 November with speakers from leading institutions across Europe, North America and the Arab world, seeking to explore Palestine's place within European intellectual and political history.

 

The event was abruptly cancelled after days of online agitation and complaints from right-wing and pro-Israel media and activists.

 

French Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste then publicly endorsed the censorship, portraying the symposium as both "activist" and academically questionable, which prompted widespread backlash from researchers who saw this as an example of the Macron government policing the limits of permissible scholarship.

 

The organisers said the decision was taken during a long weekend, which left them scrambling to reorganise.

 

In a press release issued on Wednesday, they confirmed that the conference would still take place, but not at the Collège de France. They thanked speakers who chose to travel to Paris despite the uncertainty and said the last-minute cancellation showed that academic work was at risk.

 

"The last-minute cancellation has shown how vulnerable academic work has become to political pressure, but the conference will go ahead as planned, and we invite institutions and the public to join us in defending the freedom to research, teach and debate," the statement said.

 

The organisers also announced that the conference would be livestreamed in full and encouraged universities, cultural centres and NGOs to open viewing spaces so that students and the wider public could follow the sessions.

 

That sense of defiance sharpened after French administrative courts refused to overturn the cancellation. Late on Wednesday, the Paris branch of the Arab Centre said the emergency judge at the administrative court had rejected their appeal.

 

The court ruled that the Collège de France’s decision did not constitute a serious and manifest infringement of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly or academic freedom.

 

It accepted the Collège's argument that a graffiti incident outside its building was relevant to the security assessment, even though the graffiti targeted an unrelated professor and had no connection to the symposium.

 

For the organisers, this was a worrying signal that sets a precedent in which a piece of graffiti on a public wall could give a government justification to cancel an international academic event.

 

"A simple piece of graffiti on a public wall has now become enough to cancel an international conference bringing together leading researchers and specialists," the statement by the organisers said. "The decision represents a dangerous blow to academic freedoms."

 

They also warned that the judge's suggestion that the symposium proceed only behind closed doors and without an audience undermined the very idea of a university as a space for open debate.

 

"The judge's view that holding the conference behind closed doors, without an audience and exclusively online, constitutes an acceptable solution is, in our view, a rejection of the very idea of the university as an open space for dialogue and free debate."

 

Four major Middle East studies associations, the German DAVO, the British BRISMES, the Italian SeSaMO and the US based MESA, expressed concern over the cancellation in a strongly worded joint letter to the French authorities.

 

"To misrepresent rigorous academic work as partisan undermines the very principles of historical and social scientific inquiry," the letter said. "Such interference threatens pluralism, chills critical scholarship and risks encouraging broader attacks on academic freedom in France and beyond."

 

The letter described the decision as a violation of France's obligations under national, European and international law, listing specific legal guarantees that protect academic freedom.

 

It also warned that claims about academic rigour and activism were being misused to suppress legitimate scholarship, noting that "similar accusations have repeatedly been used to delegitimise researchers and curtail pluralistic academic debate, often through the instrumentalisation of charges of supporting political Islam, terrorism, and antisemitism".

 

The associations urged the French government and the Collège de France to apologise, allow the symposium to go ahead on its original premises, and publicly reaffirm their commitment to open academic inquiry.

 

They also called on the authorities to protect researchers from political intimidation.  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/16 November 2025 - - -