Faced with anti-Semitic acts at university, Philippe Baptiste asserts that “we can’t have even one student afraid to go to class”.
France’s Minister of Higher Education Philippe Baptiste on Thursday called for “great firmness” in the face of anti-Semitic acts at university, pointing out that “around fifty” of them had been recorded since October 7, 2023.
“I want to reiterate a message of great firmness on the subject. We can’t have even one student afraid to go to class because he thinks he’s going to be subjected to anti-Semitic threats,” he told Agence France Presse (AFP).
He made the statement as a ceremony was held to mark ten years after the jihadist attacks of January 2015 against the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in Paris, where four people were killed, Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham and François-Michel Saada.
The minister said that, according to his ministry figures, “in total, 360 reports have been made for incidents linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.’’
“Most of the time, these are pro-Palestinian actions that can degenerate into public order disturbances, but where the anti-Semitic character is not characterized. When anti-Semitic markers have been clearly identified, it’s about fifty cases,” he added.
The minister will meet next week with presidents of universities and schools confronted with these acts, to “take stock of what exists and see what more can be done.’’
“Obviously, there is a problem at universities”, but ‘it’s a phenomenon that has increased everywhere in France since October 7’, he added.
Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for anti-discrimination, said on Sunday that the number of anti-Semitic acts recorded in France in 2024 should approach that of the previous year, when there was a very sharp rise, adding that the “priority area” was “universities”.
In 2023, according to data from Crif, the Representative Council of Jewish institutions in France, the number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the country had quadrupled in one year, to 1,676.