Pro-Palestinian demonstrators take over a campus facility at a top institution in Paris

Paris: On Friday, students at a top French university blocked entry to a campus building, drawing inspiration from Gaza solidarity encampments on American campuses. This forced the administration to shift all lectures online.

The pro-Palestinian demonstration marked the beginning of an eventful day at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies. Among its several illustrious graduates are Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and President Emmanuel Macron.

Initially, protestors took over a main university building, barricading its entrance with bicycles, wooden platforms, and garbage cans. They also held a gathering outside the windows of the building, where they chanted pro-Palestinian chants and displayed Palestinian flags and signs with the phrase “We are all Palestinians.”
Later on Friday, there was a heated confrontation in the street outside the school between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protestors. To keep the opposing factions apart, riot cops intervened.

A small but growing contingent of pro-Palestinian demonstrators refused to leave the street as night fell, defying police instructions to do so. Others quietly departed after being led by police out of the area.
France, which has the greatest concentrations of Muslims and Jews in western Europe, is deeply divided over the Gaza conflict. Following Hamas’ unexpected assault on Israel on October 7, which ignited the conflict, France first attempted to outlaw pro-Palestinian protests. There is a rise in antisemitism.
Protesters demanded that Sciences Po cut its links to Israeli educational institutions.
Additionally, around a hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators took over a Sciences Po amphitheater on Wednesday night. Following conversations with management, the majority of students decided to go, although a small number stayed. The French media said that later that night, they were taken out by police.
On Friday, the management of the institution shifted courses online and shuttered all academic facilities. In a press release, it said that it “strongly condemns these student actions that prevent the proper functioning of the institution and penalize Sciences Po students, teachers, and employees.”
An estimated sixty protestors were inside the building that had been taken over, according to the statement, and officials were meeting with a delegation of students “to try to find a way out of this situation through dialogue.”
Protester Louise said that comparable protests at Columbia University in New York and other American schools served as the impetus for the students’ activities.
“But our solidarity remains first and foremost with the Palestinian people,” she said. She only agreed to speak using her first name because she was afraid of the consequences.
At Columbia University, students are demonstrating against the Israel-Hamas conflict, joining a wave of protests that are engulfing colleges from California to Connecticut.
In the United States, hundreds of students and even some professors have been detained, often in the midst of altercations with the police.