struck off, two professors from the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès cleared by the administration
The National Council for Higher Education and Research (CNESER) canceled Thursday, September 22, the disciplinary sanctions of the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès against two of its teachers. They had been expelled from higher education for sexual and moral harassment.
“The decision rendered by the disciplinary section of the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès is annulled.“The phrase recurs in both decisions published Thursday, September 22 by the National Council for Higher Education and Research. “The definitive ban on exercising teaching or research functions in any public institution of higher education, decision immediately enforceable notwithstanding appeal decided by the University of Toulouse 2, July 11, 2019, against two of its plastic art teachers is lifted.”
The case caused a stir within the Toulouse establishment in 2019. A dozen students had reported intrusive questions about their sex life, discrimination based on their perceived sexual orientation. They also claimed to have suffered unambiguous sentences about rape and “the uncontrollable urges of men” from their teachers.
To justify their decisions, the members of the National Council for Higher Education and Research highlight procedures “a load” Hired by the Toulouse University “not respecting the presumption of innocence.“
the CNESER was not convinced by the testimonies incriminating the two teachers. For the judges ofto call “nothing does not make it possible to determine the existence of pedagogical practices contrary to the ethical requirements that are expected of one teacher“; no evidence should prove that “intrusive, insulting, humiliating, degrading and discriminatory remarks, constituting a situation of moral and sexual harassment that has harmed students and the establishment and that the reality of the harm has therefore not been able to be demonstrated” were held and that “the charges brought against the defendant are revealed in a context of social conflict within the university to which the defendant has taken a stand.“
In its decision against one of the two teachers, in July 2019, the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès nevertheless mentioned “ambiguous remarks made against students as part of her pedagogical practice and when appreciating student work such as “naturism, she should like it”, “seeing her in a porn film with ZZZ “, “Do you do this kind of practice?”
Of the “lies“, of the “settling of scores“, a “manhunt, not to say hunting with hounds, pack attacks such as we see them being unleashed on the networks“, considers one of the dismissed teachers whom he explains by “tkings main motivations to the company of my defamers: a political settling of accounts about his situation during the last blocking of the university, a second settling of accounts to purge the grudges that may have been provoked by two altercations he had with two female students, and finally back to the censor.”
In May 2019, when this case was revealed, the Toulouse prosecutor’s office opened an investigation, before closing it six months later. The facts would not have been sufficiently characterized at the criminal level, according to the prosecutor at the time, dominique Alzeari.
Contacted via their lawyers, the various parties to this case did not respond to our requests at the time of publication of this article. The presidency of the Jean Jaurès University ensures that it takes note of the decision of the CNESERwithout making any comment and without specifying whether it seizes the Council of State.