University: One hundred senators sign an open letter following the Balanche affair

" The university is dying if freedom is silenced there. " This is how the open letter signed by a hundred senators and published on May 25 in the Journal du Dimanche ends . In this letter, the elected officials took Fabrice Balanche's case as their starting point to defend " academic freedom " in universities.

" On Tuesday, April 1st, the geography teacher was not refuted, but was forced to remain silent in the middle of class by insults and violence ," the open letter states. " He was targeted by supporters of a nauseating ideology, which advocates obscurantism and accepts neither contradiction nor informed debate ."

Academic Freedom: A Hundred Senators Sound the Alarm https://t.co/bgjKBZJfYr

— Le JDD (@leJDD) May 25, 2025

In this letter, the senators also express surprise at the lack of support from the president of Lyon 2 University in the face of what they do not describe as an " isolated slip-up " but rather as a " concerted offensive by sectarian ideologues ."

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The hundred senators are calling on the minister to react. " It is time to open our eyes and take action (...) In the name of a radical ideology, the recruitment of professors and researchers is biased, the capture and allocation of funding is organized, research is biased, controversy is stifled, and pluralism is muzzled. " With one underlying idea: truth is never born from silence, and " the university dies if freedom is silenced ."

Among the signatories of this open letter are Mathieu Dardaud, president of the Les Républicains group and senator for Ardèche, Valérie Boye, senator for Bouches-du-Rhône, and Max Brisson, spokesperson for Les Républicains.

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