France’s Middle East expert is defiant despite protests from Palestinians

After pro-Palestinian protesters kicked him out of his talk on Monday, a well-known French scholar who specializes in the Middle East promised to keep teaching classes and file a complaint.

Fabrice Balanche, an associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2 in southeastern France and a well-known Iraq and Syria expert who is often mentioned in news outlets around the world, promised to “not give in to pressure.”

Last week, Balanche was lecturing to students when a group of 20 people yelling pro-Palestinian slogans rushed into the lecture hall and accused him of racism and being too close to the now-deposed Syrian government of Bashar Assad.

“Then they surrounded me and began to insult me by calling me pro-Israeli and a killer.” Upon hearing their insults, I left the class immediately. I had students who stopped them when they tried to chase me, he told RMC TV.
He said he’d complain but would still teach Tuesday, even with a university security guard present.

“I plan to continue attending classes as usual,” he stated, clarifying that relocating the lectures to a different university building was not a viable option.

Balanche became famous as a commentator on Syria during the country’s civil war. In this interview and other comments, he strongly denied being biased in favor of the Assad government, which was overthrown by Islamists in late 2024.

France’s right-leaning government has jumped to his defense. In an interview with Le Parisien that came out Saturday, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou called the pressure put on him on April 1 “unacceptable.”

The French government says Balanche was targeted because he agreed with the university’s choice not to let a meal to break the silence during Ramadan happen on campus.

But a group calling itself Autonomes de Lyon 2 said that the action wasn’t true and that he had “unacceptable positions on Palestine and Syria.”
Philippe Baptiste, France’s Higher Education Minister, called the event “serious.” He also said on social media that the university and courts would “deal with these unacceptable acts with the utmost firmness.”