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NEWS
Discrimination Against Observant Jews at French
Universities
By Arnon Yaffeh, Paris
The first real test of relations between the French
leadership under President Nikolas Sarkozy and the Jewish
community is beginning to raise its head. The Consistoire,
the central organization of the French Jewish community,
contacted the High Authority to Fight Discrimination and
Promote Equality (HALDE) to protest requirements for Jewish
students to take exams on Shabbos and Shavuos.
Some 200 observant students were called in for the exams this
year. Until now college students have managed to schedule
alternative testing dates, but this year college officials
are not willing to budge. CRIF, the umbrella group for
France's Jewish organizations, raised the issue with
Presidential Spokesman David Martino, and the heads of the
Rabbinate spoke with Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie,
who is in charge of religious affairs in the country. Both
promised to speak with Higher Education and Research Minister
Valerie Pecresse, but have yet to hear from her. According to
the Rabbinate, Pecresse is afraid to speak with several left-
wing university presidents who have displayed hostility
toward the Jewish students' request.
In a letter to the HALDE the Jewish students complained about
"increased secular intransigence among several university
presidents, who are refusing to postpone the exams to a later
date. A matter that used to be easy to arrange is now
encountering stiff refusal."
But discrimination is also apparent in the general attitude
toward Jews at the universities. A Jewish professor at a left-
wing university in Paris, who was appointed on the campus in
the Arab suburb of Ste. Denis, said Jewish students and
lecturers are harassed there. Hebrew and Jewish Studies
faculties are marginalized. Citing various excuses research
institutes are no longer promoting Jewish researchers upon
discovering they are observant.
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