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April 7, 2005
Signing Off From Lyon
It was a wonderful experience, even better than four years ago. The students this time seemed more eager to talk in class, and more eager to engage with me out of class and by email as well. The English language abilities of these (mostly) French students are amazing. Very, very impressive.
It's a bit hard to get a sense of the larger university community on such a short visit, but it certainly seems like a vibrant place, with lots of speeches and conferences going on.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the university has known problems with a small number of faculty members who are what the French call "négationnistes" (we would call them revisionists or Holocaust deniers). As best I can tell after two three-week visits, one in 2001 and this one in 2005, these are views held by only a tiny fringe.
I was heartened, in fact, by a fantastic public program I attended on campus a couple of weeks ago, in which a student organization screened the film "Night and Fog" by Alain Renais and then hosted a fascinating lecture by law professor Emmanuel Dockes on France's laws outlawing Holocaust denial. I learned a lot, and was stunned to that around 55 or 60 students came out to hear a lecture by a law professor at 6:30 on a Thursday evening.
Incidentally, on a related subject, I also visited Lyon's Museum on the Resistance and the Deportation yesterday morning. It's exceedingly well done. The museum documents French collaboration with, and resistance to, the Nazis during World War II, as well as the internment and deporation of many thousands of "undesirables," including 75,000 French Jews. They've installed the museum in a symbolically powerful site: the building that was the Gestapo nerve center during the war, where unspeakable crimes were committed. Well worth a visit if you're ever in Lyon.
Posted by Eric at April 7, 2005 8:22 AM
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