French Student Protesters Disrupt Paris’s Academic Core and Seize Presidents’ Offices Elsewhere
On the eve of the two-week Easter holiday, French university students and academic staff members staged another mass demonstration in Paris today, blocking a major boulevard in the Latin Quarter, the historic core of academic life in the city, and shouting slogans evoking the mass protests that convulsed the country in May 1968, the news agency Reuters reported. Elsewhere in France, protesters this week appeared to step up their tactics, occupying administrative offices at two universities and “sequestering” their presidents.
Operations at universities across France have been disrupted for the past 10 weeks by protests and demonstrations sparked by government moves to reform the higher-education system. France’s education minister, Valérie Pécresse, said today that it was still possible to salvage the semester if there are no further disruptions after classes resume after the holiday. “There is still time to catch up on lectures and hold exams,” Ms. Pécresse told the Parisien newspaper, according to Reuters.
In targeting the heads of universities, protesters appeared to be borrowing a page from the manual of disgruntled French workers who have recently taken their bosses hostage at a handful of factories. On Monday the president of the University of Rennes 2 was reportedly held by student and faculty protesters. On Tuesday the president of the University of Orléans was held by demonstrators who occupied the university’s main administration building. Gwendal Ropars, a second-year student who participated in the action, insisted today that the rector was free to depart at any time and that, although he remained in the building until 9 p.m., he did so of his own volition.
Annliese Nef, a lecturer in medieval Islamic history at the Sorbonne who participated in the demonstration in Paris today, said that action would be the last major event on the protest calendar before the Easter holiday, but that mass demonstrations would resume after the break. In the meanwhile, actions such as the ronde des obstinés — a uniquely Gallic protest in which, according to The Guardian, protesters have walked in circles for two weeks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — are set to continue over the holiday. —Aisha Labi
news by Chronicle of Higher Education / chronicle.com