France: Resignation of the director of a university institution due to charges of domestic violence

The director of the Science-Po university institution, in , submitted his resignation after the charges for . The university’s head, Matias Visera, announced his resignation, following protests and demands of angry students seeking his departure from the institution of France. He and his partner are in court after charges of domestic violence, one against another. “I was informed that my former partner and I were invited to appear before a criminal court,” wrote the institution’s director in a message he sent to the institution’s teaching staff today clarifying that she decided to resign to “protect” the school from any impact due to the case. Visera had resigned temporarily again in January after the preliminary hearing that Paris’s prosecution had ordered against him and the occupation of the institution by students who protested “immunity” for persons committing “sexual and sexist violence”, as they denounced. He denied the accusations of violent behaviour, but acknowledged that “possibly trust was shaken”. In Sciences Po Paris some 15,000 students attend, half of whom are foreigners and 25% scholarships. Although it is often presented as the French elite’s “factory”, the University Sciences Po Paris has recorded scandals involving its leaders for about ten years, without at present having altered its academic prestige. Matias Visera took charge of Sciences Po Paris in November 2021 receiving from Frederik Mion, who was forced to resign in February of that year for concealing suspicions of incest involving the famous analyst, constitutionalist and former Socialist Party MEP Olivier Diamel. Diamel was then president of the National Foundation for Political Sciences (FNSP) which oversees the Sciences Po Paris. Former student of Sciences Po, from which he graduated in 2000, Matias Viseras was a fellow student of the country’s president Emanuel Macron at the National School of Administration (ENA), the iconic institution of the senior public sector. Shortly after arriving as head of Science Po, he declared that his “absolute priority” would be to address sexual and gender violence.