PARIS: A prominent French academic specializing in the Middle East Monday vowed to carry on teaching courses and file a complaint after pro-Palestinian protesters ejected him from his own lecture.
\nFabrice Balanche, associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2 in southeastern France and a prominent expert on Iraq and Syria regularly quoted in international media, vowed \u201cnot to give into pressure.\u201d
\nBalanche was giving lecture to students last week when around 20 individuals shouting pro-Palestinian slogans accused him of racism, and being too close to the ousted Bashar Assad regime in Syria, surged into the lecture theater.
\n\u201cAnd then they surrounded me, started to insult me, calling me pro-Israeli, genocidal. And so when I heard that, I left the lecture hall. They tried to chase me, but fortunately, I had students who intervened,\u201d he told RMC TV.
\nHe said he would file a complaint but would resume teaching his course on Tuesday, albeit with a university security agent present.
\n\u201cI plan to continue my classes normally,\u201d he said, adding it was \u201cout of the question\u201d to even move the lectures to another campus of the university.
\nBalanche, who rose to prominence as a commentator on Syria during the country\u2019s civil war, in this interview and other comments vehemently rejected having any bias in favor of the Assad regime, which Islamists ousted in late 2024.
\nFrance\u2019s right-leaning government has leaped to his defense with Prime Minister Francois Bayrou denouncing \u201cunacceptable pressure\u201d against him in the incident on April 1, in an interview with Le Parisien published Saturday.
\nFrench authorities have said Balanche was targeted because he supported the university\u2019s decision not to allow a fast-breaking Ramadan meal on its premises.
\nBut a group calling itself Autonomes de Lyon 2 that claimed the action denied this, accusing him of \u201cunacceptable positions on Palestine and Syria.\u201d
\nFrance\u2019s Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste has described the incident as \u201cserious,\u201d adding on his social media account that the judiciary and the university would \u201cdeal with these unacceptable acts with the utmost firmness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: A prominent French academic specializing in the Middle East Monday vowed to carry on teaching courses and file a complaint after pro-Palestinian protesters ejected him from his own lecture. Fabrice Balanche, associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2 in southeastern France and a prominent expert on Iraq and Syria regularly …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79275,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79263\/revisions\/79275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}