15 November 2025
Despite the most appalling interference by the Minister of Higher education and Research, yielding to pressure from right-wing media and pro-Israel interests in France, and despite the abysmal complacency of a magistrate who refused to reverse the Minister’s objection, the organisers of the international conference on Palestine have seen to it that the conference has gone ahead. Even at this late hour, it seems that officials in France are still unaware that pro-Israel interests conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order to obstruct the efforts of academics and activists to alert the public to the genocide taking place in Gaza and the OPT. Here is a report from the Association France Palestine Solidarite.
French academics have accused the government of bowing to pro-Israel pressure after the Collège de France canceled a major conference on Palestine.
13 November 2025
France is facing an unusual wave of anger in academia after the Collège de France, France’s prestigious five-century-old university, canceled an international symposium on Palestine, prompting accusations that political pressure and lobby interests have taken precedence over fundamental commitments to academic freedom.
What began as a routine academic meeting has morphed into a broader debate about censorship, state interference and shrinking space for discussion in French universities on the Palestinian issue.
The two-day conference, entitled “Palestine and Europe: The Weight of the Past and Contemporary Dynamics,” was organized by the Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World at the Collège de France, in partnership with the Arab Center for Political Studies and Research in Paris.
The forum was scheduled to take place on 13 and 14 November with speakers from leading institutions in Europe, North America and the Arab world, with the aim of exploring Palestine’s place in European intellectual and political history.
The event was abruptly canceled after several days of online turmoil and complaints from right-wing and pro-Israel media outlets and activists.
France’s Minister of Higher Education, Philippe Baptiste, later publicly endorsed the censorship, calling the symposium “activist” and academically questionable, prompting a backlash from scholars who saw it as an example of how the Macron government controls the limits of authorized academic research.
Organizers said the decision was made over a long weekend, which left them scrambling to reorganize.
In a press release issued on Wednesday, they confirmed that the conference would take place, but not at the Collège de France. They thanked the speakers who chose to travel to Paris despite the uncertainty and said that this last-minute cancellation showed that academic work was under threat.
“The last-minute cancellation has shown how vulnerable academic work has become to political pressures, but the conference will go ahead as planned, and we invite institutions and the public to join us in defending freedom of research, teaching and debate,” the statement said.
The organisers also announced that the conference would be broadcast live in its entirety and encouraged universities, cultural centres and NGOs to open viewing spaces for students and the general public to follow the sessions.
This feeling of mistrust was accentuated after the French administrative courts refused to annul the annulment. On Wednesday evening, the Paris branch of the Arab Center said that the emergency judge of the administrative court had rejected its 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.
He accepted the College’s argument that an incident of graffiti outside its building was relevant to the safety assessment, even though the graffiti was directed at a professor unrelated to and unrelated to the symposium.
For the organizers, this was a worrying signal that set a precedent that graffiti on a public wall could give the government a justification for cancelling an international university event.
“A simple graffiti on a public wall is now enough to cancel an international conference bringing together renowned researchers and specialists,” the organizers said in a statement. “This decision is a dangerous blow to academic freedom.”
They also warned that the judge’s suggestion to hold the symposium 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, is an acceptable solution is, in our view, a rejection of the very idea of the university as a space open to dialogue and free debate.”
Four major Middle Eastern studies associations, Germany’s DAVO, Britain’s BRISMES, Italy’s SeSaMO and America’s MESA, expressed their concern about the cancellation in a joint letter with a firm tone addressed to the French authorities.
“To misrepresent rigorous academic work as partisan undermines the very principles of historical and social research,” the letter says. “Such interference threatens pluralism, cools critical inquiry, and risks encouraging broader attacks on academic freedom in France and beyond.”
The letter describes this decision as a violation of France’s obligations under national, European and international law, and lists specific legal safeguards that protect academic freedom.
She also warned that arguments about academic rigor and activism were misused to suppress legitimate research, pointing out that “similar accusations have been repeatedly used to delegitimize scholars and restrict pluralistic academic debate, often by instrumentalizing accusations of support for political Islam, terrorism and anti-Semitism”.
The associations urged the French government and the Collège de France to apologize, allow the conference to take place at its original premises, and publicly reaffirm their commitment to the freedom of academic research.
They also called on the authorities to protect researchers from political intimidation.
Translation: AFPS
