French Middle East expert defiant despite pro-Palestinian protest

Protestors wave Palestinian flags and hold a banner reading "Palestine will live" during a demonstration on Place de la Republique in Paris on March 22, 2025, as part of the international day against racism and fascism. (File/AFP)

• Balanche was giving lecture to students last week when around 20 individuals shouting pro-Palestinian slogans accused him of racism

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 quoted in international media, vowed “not to give into pressure.”
Balanche 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.
“And 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,” he told RMC TV.
He said he would file a complaint but would resume teaching his course on Tuesday, albeit with a university security agent present.
“I plan to continue my classes normally,” he said, adding it was “out of the question” to even move the lectures to another campus of the university.
Balanche, who rose to prominence as a commentator on Syria during the country’s 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.
France’s right-leaning government has leaped to his defense with Prime Minister Francois Bayrou denouncing “unacceptable pressure” against him in the incident on April 1, in an interview with Le Parisien published Saturday.
French authorities have said Balanche was targeted because he supported the university’s decision not to allow a fast-breaking Ramadan meal on its premises.
But a group calling itself Autonomes de Lyon 2 that claimed the action denied this, accusing him of “unacceptable positions on Palestine and Syria.”
France’s Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste has described the incident as “serious,” adding on his social media account that the judiciary and the university would “deal with these unacceptable acts with the utmost firmness.”