By Evi Tsakali,
It is true that many French public universities incline politically toward the left; and mine is no exception. La Sorbonne is a traditionally left-oriented university, with numerous socialist and communist associations (not affiliated to political parties like the ones in Greece though), but the offer when it comes to right-wing associations is not proportional. There is one, however, the UNI, and personally, I remember it as the association that was handing out leaflets promising better conditions of studies for “French students”, and backed off refraining from giving out one when a friend of mine and I, both Greek and speaking in Greek to each other, walked by (we wouldn’t take a leaflet anyway). In any case, it is understandable from the above that students that find themselves inclining mostly to the right, may not consider that they really belong within the French university. It was this very need and demand that the Institut de Formation Politique took advantage of.
The Institut de Formation Politique offers practical and theoretical classes in journalism, politics, and business, making it essentially a postgraduate school. Its alumni include MPs and members of their electoral campaign team, as well as far-right social media influencers.
According to information gathered by Le Monde, nearly one-fifth of the former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour’s (to get a bigger picture, you can refer to a previous article of mine that is available here) entourage have ties with the IFP. One of them is Samuel Lafont, Zemmour’s digital strategist, who is also one of the people behind the conception of “Manif pour tous” (Protest for all), organizing protests against “Mariage pour tous” (Marriage for all), Christiane Taubira’s Law that legalized gay marriage in 2013 (for more information on Christiane Taubira, you may refer to another previous article of mine that is available here). The director of the IFP, Alexandre Pesey, was not very willing to position the school in the political spectrum during an interview with CNN. However, he stated that “on a scale from left to right, [the school] is clearly quite on the right”. I will leave that “quite on the right” to your judgment though by listing some seminars offered by the school: “A lawyer faces the Islamist menace”, “Preserving our freedom of speech, a challenge of our times”, “The values of the right”, and — last but not least — “Gender, Veganism, Nativism: decrypting the semantics of the left”.
The diplomas offered by the school are not state-recognized, and thus students tend to attend it in parallel with their formal university education, but the school arranges classes in the evenings or the weekends so that the students can manage.
It is evident from the aforementioned that the IFP has a great impact on the French political scene. As the IFP alumna Alice Cordier said “The right-wing politicians of tomorrow will all have gone through IFP; of that, I am almost certain.”; and remember her name, because she will be the illustration of how the IFP shapes activists of the far-right in an upcoming article…
References
- Bertini, Renee. Far-right French “finishing school” educating the leaders of tomorrow, edition.cnn.com, Available here
- Institut de Formation Politique, ifpfrance.org, Available here
