The final dismissal: at the end of a six-year legal saga, the Council of State imposed, on September 27, the most severe disciplinary sanction on former legal history professor Jean-Luc Coronel de Boiezon for having participated, on the night of March 22 to 23, 2018, in a violent evacuation of students who occupied an amphitheater of the Montpellier Law Faculty.
A hooded commando, composed partly of people outside the university, equipped with blackboards and an electric pulse gun, violently evicted the striking students who were protesting against the creation of the Parcoursup platform, provided for by the student orientation and success law . .
In this case, the Council of State twice annulled the decision issued by the National Council of Higher Education and Research (Cneser) in the disciplinary section. In March 2022, he had drastically reduced the dismissal sanction issued in the first instance, in January 2019, by the disciplinary section of the academic council of the Sorbonne University: the case was dismissed. He preferred a simple suspension, for a period of four years, with deprivation of salary. In December 2022, the high administrative court annulled this sanction considered “too weak”.
He then sent the file to the disciplinary Cneser, who, for the second time, issued the same sanction, on September 4, 2023, considering that, on a criminal level, meanwhile, the sentence decided by the Montpellier appeal court in February of 2023 (suspended one-year prison sentence) had been softened, with a partial acquittal for the acts of violence committed against one of the victims.
Therefore, the president of the University of Montpellier, Philippe Augé, and the then Minister of Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau, had decided to appeal again to the Council of State, in cassation, against the professor’s reinstatement.
“Demand for dignity”
Three grievances were leveled against Mr. Colonel de Boisenton: his participation in the creation of the command, the fact that he led the group to the occupied amphitheater and, of course, his participation in the violent evacuation. For the judge of the Council of State, these facts constitute “failures” the obligations of a university professor, “in particular, to the demand for dignity, and, in addition, harm the reputation of the public service of higher education, to which the legislator has also assigned the mission of promoting the values of ethics, responsibility and exemplarity”.
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