“Laurent Wauquiez has a mistaken reading of situation in Sciences Po Grenoble”

The director of the IEP, Sabine Saugger, responds to the controversy that has risen for several months on his establishment, whose financing has been suspended by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

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Sabine Saugger returns to Le Monde on the controversy that affects his establishment accused of “wokism”. She invites Mr. Wauquiez to come see on the spot the reality of her school and review her decision.

The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is a member of your board of directors. Have you been able to talk to you with its president, Laurent Wauquiez, about his decision to suspend the funding of the Sciences Po Grenoble region due to “ideological drifts”?

We did not have the opportunity to exchange but I invite him to come to see the reality of what we teach, far from the media storm we suffer. I regret his decision based on a misconception of the situation. Sciences Po Grenoble is not an establishment gnawed by the “wokism” or the Cancel Culture, as we want to describe it. I want it for proof, among many other elements, the events we organized in December, as the coming of the Minister responsible for relations with the Parliament, Marc Fesau.

Professor Klaus Kinzler says Yet you are undermining his freedom of expression and his academic freedom, deciding to suspend after he spoke in the media …

I can not dwell on this decision. Management supported Klaus Kinzler when he was attacked with these shocking and unacceptable posters in March 2021 [accusing Islamophobia and relayed on social networks]. Teachers are free to express themselves in the media and social networks on the subject of their research, I never intervene. Controversy is the basis of the advancement of science. The faculty discusses and debate, and fortunately, otherwise we would be in a totalitarian logic. Where it is my duty to intervene, it is when the institution’s reputation is targeted, when I hear about “a political reeducation camp” and when one personally attacks the staff of the ‘establishment. In this context, I play my employer’s role in front of a staff member.

Sciences Po Grenoble returns to the center of media attention since the relaxed, at the end of November, sixteen of the seventeen students incriminated for the installation of these posters. What do you think of this decision?

I was completely divest on the file. It has been outdated at Clermont-Auvergne University and it is the discipline commission of this establishment that has decided. I pledged prosecutions, I wanted them to be sanctioned. The period of appeal in litigation still runs, by the way. From a criminal point of view, I made a report to the Prosecutor of the Republic and the proceedings followed his course.

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