Against the Occupation of Sciences Po

By Jimmy Quinn

Yesterday our community awoke to the news that Sciences Po’s Paris campus had been seized by students opposing Emmanuel Macron’s push to reform the French university system. This is another development in the current season of social vandalism.

The students occupying 27 rue Saint Guillaume assembled in defense of the status quo, against changes that would make France’s university selection process more meritocratic. But that’s not all.

In their words, they want an end to “the reproduction of liberal elites, those who select at our borders and universities, who privatize the country and put the most vulnerable at risk.”

They want an end to the “vast neoliberal and racist” policy changes undertaken by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s government.

They want a change to Sciences Po’s curriculum, which perpetuates a “liberal authoritarian” regime through courses that are neoliberal, neocolonial, and punishing of workers in a master’s program. (And they want an exemption from the university’s absence policy for the duration of their absence from these classes, because radicals need to pass the semester too.)

I have a hard time finding the neoliberal bias of Marx’s writings—at our Reims campus, the Communist Manifesto appears on mandatory class reading lists three or four times throughout the curriculum. In any case, the bearded intellectual is correct insofar as that history repeats itself as a farce, and it’s lost on no one that this year is the 50^th anniversary of the 1968 student protests.

The Facebook page of the movement’s organizers made use of a Sciences Po Instagram post commemorating the university’s role in the May 68 movement, coining the hashtag “May 68, they commemorate, we restart”. The 2018 descendant of the student protests, so far, represents a bootlegged copy of the original—one that lacks a clear purpose (especially since Sciences Po students are admitted by a process different from the one modified by the proposed reforms) besides agitation against France’s neoliberal reemergence under Macron.

Meanwhile, neoliberalism has become a bogeyman of a concept, deployed by the hard left as an epithet rather than a descriptor. As a protest movement, the group occupying Sciences Po needs only polemics and overused rhetorical tropes to mobilize support, precisely the approach it has followed so far. Rigorous argumentation matters less than a vast constellation of vaguely-connected grievances to recall the rehabilitated memory of a violent past. But that’s politics.

These are broad demands of a quasi-Occupy Wall Street character, though maybe they could be advanced if they were backed by more than just bloviating rhetoric. Their tract is kind of punchy, and I guess it resonates with the folks who already subscribe to this cynical worldview.

But the mission of this little band of 70 is not going to catch on at Sciences Po. And it shouldn’t.

The organizers sell their movement as a “symbolic” gesture designed to taunt Macron, a Sciences Po alum, and his parliamentary majority, many of whom are graduates of the institution. For the wannabe soixante-huitards (reports say that 250 attended the general assembly yesterday evening, and 70 currently occupy the buildings) the symbolism is clear. It’s articulated in their manifesto:

“We are occupying Sciences Po because Macron came out of it, and we don’t want to end up like him.”

Their detestation of the French president probably won’t torpedo the reforms he proposed, though time will tell. However, some concrete effects of the occupation are already clear:

For one, the group of 70-or-so students has succeeded in placing the Sciences Po chapter of Macron’s party on the same side as that of the right-wing Républicains. Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Républicains, rose to power in large part because he could cut a clear contrast with Macron’s centrist party. Talk about a convergence des luttes.

More importantly, the occupation results in a significant disruption to academic and student life that has shut university buildings towards the end of the semester, a time most recognize as exceptionally difficult. The message is that their struggle against the neoliberal machine is more important than your final exam preparation—and that you hate the socioeconomically disadvantaged if you disagree.

This is parochialism at its finest. This cohort of ideologues fights for its own cause at the expense of their classmates’ condition. Plans are made behind closed doors under the auspices of this exclusive club. Then, they are launched, presented to the rest of the community as a fait accompli to be accepted at a general assembly.

So yes, the symbolism is clear: In the name of their ideology, the activists impose their struggle on the rest of us.

Their fight places itself in the context of the raft of other social movements that have emerged across France recently, from the railroad strikes, to the occupation of land to be developed for an airport, to other student protests across France. This activist blob attempts to take French society—and at Sciences Po, our campus—hostage, bringing daily life to a grinding halt until they win submission.

Now is a season of social vandalism that degrades the quality of our community spaces and practices, and it’s coming to Reims, maybe.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep grinning at the masks that protesting Sorbonne students wore in a widely-shared video. Will Sciences Po be the next butt of the joke?