CONCLUSION: THE CRISIS
OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM

Far from being isolated incidents, the micro-struggles at the CIUP in 1968 were symptomatic of a broader institutional crisis, which deeply unsettled its foundations, rooted in the 1920s and 1930s. The international order reshaped by the Cold War and decolonization disrupted the delicate balance between French cultural imperialism and liberal internationalism that the CIUP had originally sought to maintain. Initially envisioned as a place to celebrate national identities—through its national pavilions and the promotion of cross-national encounters—the CIUP unwittingly became a platform for nationalist and anti-imperialist demands, hostile to the French-dominated international cooperation that, in line with France's foreign and colonial policy, the CIUP had historically embodied.<fnref n="105" />

The protests of 1968 exposed the internal contradictions that made this balance unsustainable. “International cooperation! As if such a thing were possible between oppressor and dominated peoples”, proclaimed the militants of the *Union des résidents progressistes* in the autumn of 1970, rejecting the interwar internationalist ideology, wich, by “erasing class conflicts” and “uniting ‘elites’” handpicked by their embassies, sought to transform the CIUP into “a powerful tool of social integration and ideological unification between the French bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisies on a global scale.” They concluded with the rallying cry: “No to embassies at the Cité!”.<fnref n="106" />

Without endorsing this Marxist analysis, the general delegate or the CIUP, Pierre Marthelot, similarly raised the question during this period of whether the structures established nearly half a century earlier should be reconsidered, particularly the “ambiguities” of the 1920s that allowed for the formation of almost homogeneous national entities within the

<footnote n="105">105 Cf. TRONCHET Guillaume, “La Cité universitaire: une joint-venture transnationale dans le Paris des années 1920 et 1930. Note de recherche”, in JAUMAIN Serge and VAN DEN DUNGEN Pierre (eds.), *Biermans-Lapôtre. Histoire d’un mécène et de sa fondation*, Brussels, Lannoo/Racine Editions, 2013, p. 85–100; “Diplomatie universitaire ou diplomatie culturelle? La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris entre deux rives (1920–1940)”, in KÉVONIAN Dzovinar et TRONCHET Guillaume (dir.), *La Babel étudiante...*, op. cit. p. 59–88.</footnote>

<footnote n="106">106 “Plateforme présentée par le secrétariat provisoire de l’Union des résidents progressistes”, Autumn 1970 (document forwarded by Bernard Morel).</footnote>
CCIUPité, which were later brought into conflict by the “great ideological divides of the time”.<fnref n="107" /> As a result, the houses of the CIUP were “regarded by the embassies concerned as quasi-annexes [...] or turned into hotbeds of anti-government activities directed against certain foreign governments”.<fnref n="108" />

By the mid-1970s, the proposed solution was to increase the proportion of mixed nationalities in each house to 50%, since a house with insufficient diversity, such as the Cambodian house (5% non-Cambodian residents), “tends to become insular and form a national enclave”.<fnref n="109" /> It is clear that the CIUP management did not know which direction to take. Without abandoning the institution’s overarching goals, but deviating from its founding principle—that of a “Youth League of Nations” where foreign students, housed in national pavilions, would feel “somewhat at home” while learning, “by visiting each other’s houses, to understand and respect the distinct characteristics of different nationalities”<fnref n="110" />— the CIUP entered a period of uncertainty regarding its future role and mission, a crisis that persisted until the late 1990s.

**Conflicts of Interest** The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.

<footnote n="107">¹⁰⁷ “Rapport moral sur l’année 1970” (AN, 20,090,013/88).</footnote>

<footnote n="108">¹⁰⁸ Office of the Board of Directors of the Fondation nationale, May 28, 1970 (AN, 20,090,013/88).</footnote>

<footnote n="109">¹⁰⁹ Board of Directors of the Fondation nationale, June 2, 1971 (AN, 20,090,013/88).</footnote>

<footnote n="110">¹¹⁰ André Honnorat, Comité de direction de la Fondation nationale, October 27, 1926 (AN, 16AJ 7031).</footnote>
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# The Cité Universitaire de Paris as seen from Fascist Italy

*Elisa Signori*

The real reasons for Italy’s interwar reservations about the French and international Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (CIUP) project are not difficult to determine. The ideology of fascism, rooted in a positive myth of war that represented a foundational, transformative force in the ideology of the movement, as well as the assertion of Italy’s spiritual supremacy in the world and the claim to its imperial destiny, were guidelines that conflicted with the inspiring principles enunciated immediately after the First World War by the founders of the CIUP: pacifism, liberalism, and the cosmopolitan ethos of culture and science.<fnref n="1" />

E. Signori (✉)
Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italia
e-mail: elisa.signori@unipv.it

<footnote n="1">¹ LEMOINE B., *La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris*, Paris, Hervas 1990; ANBERT C., “Origines de la Cité”, *Les Cahiers de la Cité internationale universitaire*, n°1, 1991; SÉRÉNI F., “La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (1925-1930). De la SDN à la construction de l’Europe”, *Revue Relations internationales*, n° 72, 1992, pp. 399-407.</footnote>
Similarly, the mutual incompatibility of educational models that opposed Fascist Italy to the Parisian initiative is immediately evident: on the one hand, a selective system regulating access to secondary education from 1923 onwards in Italy, an ever-increasing programmatic tension toward totalitarian control, politicization, and, finally, the militarization of the young university elites; on the other, in France, the socially democratic spirit of a university open to all, a place for study but also for friendly sharing and the exchange of cultures and knowledge, fundamental elements advanced by Emile Deutsch de la Meurthe's philanthropic commitment.

Finally, the decisive confirmation of the impossibility of a cultural collaboration—in which the construction of an Italian pavilion at the CIUP could be coherently considered—can be seen in the field of political-diplomatic relations. The trajectory of relations between the two countries, far from linear or unequivocal in the 1920s and early 1930s, with alternating phases of rapprochement and frostiness—whether in the wake of fascist aggression in Ethiopia or the victory of the Front Populaire in France—traces a spiral of increasingly harsh conflict, culminating in the Francophobic campaign unleashed in Italy in 1938, a veritable point of no return. For all these reasons, Italy could only join the CIUP after the dramatic epilogue of the fascist experiment, and it was not until the mid-1950s that Italy, now a Republic, gave concrete expression to its participation in the construction of its “Maison”, inaugurated on January 25, 1958, symbolizing, in the eyes of many observers, a European and international cultural citizenship regained by post-Fascist Italy.<fnref n="2" />

However, if the focus is on Italy's resumption of university life and/or international relations immediately after the First World War, following the dynamics of the advent of fascism with its multiple facets, changes of direction, and successive evolutions, the apparent linearity of this story—impossibility in the 1920s-1930s, then evidence of an Italian presence in the CIUP in the 1950s—can be seen in a quite different light. Beyond any determinism, the CIUP project is in fact a mirror through which it is possible to observe, over a fifteen-year period—from 1920 to the mid-1930s—the constituent elements of a cultural, political and diplomatic confrontation between Italy and France that was not a given from the outset.

<footnote n="2">² ALBANESE G., *La Maison de l'Italie. Storia della residenza italiana alla Cité Universitarie di Parigi*, Milan, Angeli, 2004.</footnote>
This essay sets out to reconstruct the various reasons for Italian resistance to the French and collective project of the CIUP during the interwar period: the contexts studied in this connection are as much those of Italian-French diplomatic relations as those of Italian cultural and university policy, in particular through examination of the documentation found in the collections of the Archivio storico del Ministero degli Affari esteri (Roma) and the Archivio centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione MPI (since 1931 Ministero dell'Educazione Nazionale, MEN). The theme of this paper is closely linked to the positions taken within the institutions of intellectual cooperation created in the context of the League of Nations (International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation and International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation), where Italian participation was represented only as formal and opportunistic, sometimes discordant with the aims of cultural internationalism. These sources are complemented by an examination of the opinion press, academic journals, and the student press.<fnref n="3" />

## THE MYTH OF THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY AND THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF STUDIES

The need for international openness, the reference to the medieval model of *the universitas* as a free community of student *nations*, and the evocation of the *peregrinatio academica*, which for centuries had mapped out a kind of unitary geography and sociology of knowledge in Europe, were the partly mythological components of a heritage shared by France and Italy, which boasted the world's oldest university institutions in Paris and Bologna, respectively. This medieval myth was a *leitmotif* not only in the history of the CIUP, but also in Italy. The memory of the more than 10,000 students who flocked to the University of Bologna from all over Europe as far back as the fourteenth century was often cited with nostalgia as an example of the circulation of people and knowledge that needed to be recreated. Before, during, and after the war, the positive contribution of foreign students in Italian universities was often emphasized. This need was advocated as early as 1913 by Carlo Francesco Ferraris, professor

<footnote n="3">³ This article is a translated and revised version of the following contribution: « La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris vue de l'Italie fasciste», in Dzovinar Kévonian et Guillaume Tronchet (ed.), *La Babel étudiante*, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, p. 127-142.</footnote>
of administrative law and administrative science, but also, and above all,
rector of the University of Padua. Between 1905 and 1911, Padua was
one of the top 28 universities and institutes of higher learning in the
Kingdom of Italy in terms of the number of foreign students enrolled
and the number of degrees obtained.

Similarly, in 1914, Giorgio Del Vecchio, Professor of Philosophy of
Law at Bologna, observed that foreign students should be treated with
special consideration by facilitating their enrollment in courses, as was
widely done in more advanced countries, by lightening existing stan-
dards, and by eliminating administrative obstacles. In this respect, he cited
Germany as a model to be imitated: "The University of Berlin welcomes
Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian and Japanese students with a minimum of
formalities [...] and they then return to their countries to spread German
thought and influence."<fnref n="4" />

A few months later, war struck Europe, accelerating the debate on
student mobility. Del Vecchio wrote that the ongoing war and Italy's
choice of neutrality constituted a “bona occasio” to open university doors
to young people from belligerent countries. Neutrality was in itself a justi-
fication for “offering a liberal welcome to researchers from all nations, so
that we can continue here the work of science, broken elsewhere by the
harsh necessity of arms”.<fnref n="5" /> Del Vecchio’s speech was widely acclaimed.
The National Association of University Professors immediately adopted a
similar resolution.<fnref n="6" /> The Corda Fratres Society, Italy’s largest student asso-
ciation and itself part of an international network, submitted a request to
the Minister of Public Education, Edoardo Daneo, for support, particu-
larly for Belgian and Balkan colleagues.<fnref n="7" /> Italy’s entry into the war did not
extinguish interest in this issue, which had been clearly addressed for the
first time by the university press in comparison with the situation in other

<footnote n="4">⁴ “Un’intervista col prof. Giorgio Del Vecchio sulla riforma universitaria e la Relazione Ceci”, *L’Università italiana. Rivista dell’Istruzione Superiore*, a XIII, n. 2-3, 1914, pp. 32-33. All quotations are my translations of the original Italian version.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ DEL Vecchio G., “Le Università italiane e gli studenti stranieri durante la guerra”, *L’Università italiana. Rivista dell’Istruzione Superiore*, a. XIII, n.10, 1914, p.150.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ DEL Vecchio G., “*Ancora sull’ammissione degli studenti stranieri nelle Università italiane*”, op. cit., p. 172.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ *Ibid*, p. 166. On the Corda Fratres, see MOLA A. A., *Corda Fratres. Storia di una associazione internazionale studentesca nell’età dei grandi conflitti 1898-1948*, Bologna, Clueb, 1999.</footnote>
European countries. For the first time, this topic was linked to a project that we might call “cultural policy”.

These projects were taken up again at the end of the war, and Giovanni Gentile was a respected and pragmatic interpreter of them. In the school reform, law that bears his name, an ad hoc provision was introduced that completely exempted foreign students from paying university fees.<fnref n="8" /> Even though this benefit was halved two years later, it had the effect of attracting significant flows of students from abroad to Italian universities, a flow that grew steadily, particularly in the 1930s.<fnref n="9" /> The peak was reached in the 1933–1934 academic year, with 2,932 foreign students enrolling, equivalent to 5% of the student body in Italian universities. Thus, while awareness of the problem of internationalization of university studies was very high, it was seen essentially as a challenge to be met within Europe, with the aim of fostering intellectual migration toward Italian universities; a centripetal dynamic, not a centrifugal one.

The severe postwar economic and social crisis and the postwar political climate were influenced by nationalist mobilization and the instrumentalization of the “mutilated victory” discourse. These developments represented a veritable springboard for fascism, offering an unfavorable context for the resumption of study, advanced training, and research stays at foreign universities. Nevertheless, in 1923 and 1927, the specialized press, such as the magazine *L’Università italiana*, did not fail to express its positive appreciation of foreign student accommodation institutions, such as the *Maison de l’étudiant* in Brussels or the CIUP, underlining the pragmatic attention paid by the Belgian and French governments to the question of international university exchanges. From the Italian perspective, these opportunities for international confrontation were seen

<footnote n="8">⁸ Art. 54 R. D. 30 settembre 1923. For a comprehensive analysis of Giovanni Gentile’s school reform, see now *La Riforma Gentile e la sua eredità*, ed. by Mattone A., Moretti M., Signori E., Bologna, il Mulino, 2023.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ SIGNORI E., “Una peregrinatio academica in età contemporanea. Gli studenti ebrei stranieri nelle università italiane tra le due guerre”, *Annali di storia delle università italiane*, n°4, 2000, pp. 139–62. On these topics see SIGNORI E., Università. “Tra orizzonte nazionale e internazionale:150 anni di migrazioni, ostracismi e scambio scientifico”, *Il Politico*, n. monografico, *L’Italia che cambia: 1861-1961*, vol.76, f.3, 2012, pp.267–285; SIGNORI E., “Intellectual migrations and elites’ formation beyond the boundaries. Foreign students, Jews and non-Jews and Italian universities (1900-1940)” *Borders, migration and globalization. An interdisciplinary perspective*, ed. by Calabrò A. R., London—New York Routledge, 2021, pp.222–235.</footnote>
as valuable assets in combating the discrediting of higher education, which had occurred in the postwar years and was linked to a utilitarian vision of university education.<fnref n="10" />

These objectives were reflected in the creation of the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation (CICI) in 1922, and three years later in the founding in Paris of the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IICI), under the direction of Julien Luchaire, who had already been appreciated before the war for the creation of the French Institute in Florence. The CIUP project was part of the same political and institutional framework, where Romain Rolland's aspirations for the reconstruction of “a European intellectual communion” and the utopian drive for an “international of culture and spirit”<fnref n="11" /> converged, albeit not without some uncertainty. These aspirations were meant to do away forever with fratricidal war, together with the ambitions of a universalist vision of French civilization, and the hardline opposition to German Kultur.

However, these positive voices concerning international cultural exchange remained isolated since, within the Italian political and diplomatic establishment, an atmosphere prevailed that could best be described as “Italocentric” and fundamentally indifferent, even hostile to the aims of intellectual and scientific collaboration, an atmosphere that ignored languages and borders, ideological differences, and geopolitical balances of power.

Italy's representation at the ICCI was initially entrusted to Francesco Ruffini, a liberal jurist, former Minister of Public Instruction, and Senator. This initial phase could be interpreted as a direct endorsement of the objectives of understanding between peoples and defending freedom and the autonomy of culture; however, it was short-lived. With the advent of the fascist dictatorship, the government quickly imposed a politically aligned representation. Once dismissed, Ruffini was replaced by Alfredo Rocco. A theorist of the total integration of politics and culture into the

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ See “Sull’internazionalizzazione degli studi universitari”, *L’Università italiana*, a. XXII, n. 7, 1923, pp. 131–132.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ See the review on Clarté: “L’internazionale dello spirito”, *La Stampa*, 6–7 gen. 1920.</footnote>
totalizing dimension of fascism, the Italian representative was at the oppo-
site end of the spectrum from the perspective set out by the CICI.<fnref n="12" />
Moreover, the initial project of both organizations was gradually modi-
fied by purely political and geopolitical considerations, as in the case
with the boycott against Germany, where the choice of members —for
example, Einstein—ended up reflecting ideological dynamics and official
power coalitions.

This was also the case in the formal defense of an apolitical stance
that translated into a non-commitment to the fundamental rights of intel-
lectuals, notably pedagogical freedom. In short, when it comes to these
cultural organizations, it is possible to endorse in part the assessment that
Gaetano Salvemini, a democrat and anti-fascist, made of the League of
Nations. Salvemini had followed the evolution of the League of Nations
from its very beginnings, quickly understanding the risk that it might
betray its initial ideals: "We must consider," he wrote in 1923, "the insti-
tution of Geneva as the germ of a greater future. And we must protect,
strengthen and develop this seed".<fnref n="13" /> The danger from which it had to be
protected was the "tactics of perfidious sabotage"<fnref n="14" /> practiced by militarist
and nationalist governments, aided by the blindness of socialist countries
everywhere. This would have resulted in a paradoxical situation where
the League's activities were shaped by nationalists, who never wanted it,
and neglected by socialist and democratic internationalists, who should
have supported it. In ICCI and IICI circles, Italy's contribution primarily
involved a jealous and systematic defense of its cultural and educational
policy against potential European interference. Additionally, Italy carefully
monitored internal balances, aiming to gain prestige or reduce the risk of
supremacy from other nations.

In the more specific field of Italian-French confrontation, the 1920s
saw a weakening in the influence of organizations which, before the
war, had promoted friendship and cultural rapprochement between the
"two Latin sisters". This was exemplified by the Latin Youth League,

<footnote n="12">¹² GIUNTELLA M. C., *Cooperazione intellettuale ed educazione alla pace nell'Europa della Società delle Nazioni*, Padova, Cedam, 2001.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ SALVEMINI G., “Sicurezza e Società delle Nazioni”, *Il Popolo*, 16–17 maggio 1923.
See SALVEMINI G., *Dalla guerra mondiale alla dittatura (1916–1925)*, Milano, Feltrinelli,
2. ed., 1973, p. 707.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ *Ibid.*</footnote>
founded by Julien Luchaire in Florence in 1916, with its own news-
paper, *La Rivista delle Nazioni Latine*. It was also reflected in the
Italy-France committees and their France-Italy counterparts, created in
1910 and headed by Luigi Luzzati, former President of the Council,
and Stéphen Pichon, former French Foreign Minister, respectively.<fnref n="15" />
The Italian-French friendship linked to military collaboration within the
Entente gradually weakened, even though Giovanni Gentile was still a
member of the Cercle international des étudiants et des étudiantes des
nations alliées et amies de France<fnref n="16" /> in 1920.

PREMISES AND PLANS FOR AN ITALIAN HOUSE

It is almost impossible to discuss the themes and events that marked
Italian cultural policy between the two World Wars without encountering
the name of Giovanni Gentile and taking the measure of the influence he
exerted. Even after he stepped down from his role as minister and once
the school reform had been launched, his commitment manifested itself
elsewhere, always maintaining a central role and, at times, an intellectual
dominance, which gradually became more debated and contested within
the party and the fascist establishment. Therefore, it is hardly surprising
that on the subject of international collaboration, and more specifically
the CIUP, the only initiative for which sources survive is linked to a
request from Giovanni Gentile.

At the beginning of 1928, Gentile asked Jérôme Carcopino (an
academic and specialist in Roman history), with whom he was on friendly
terms, to provide him with precise, detailed information on the project
and its implementation. The reasons for Gentile's interest in the CIUP
were probably manifold, personal as well as political and cultural, and
certainly unrelated to the liberal and pacifist ideals that inspired the CIUP
project. His adherence to fascism was in fact based on a historical-political
and philosophical conception at odds with the liberalism inherited from
the philosophy of the Enlightenment. According to Gentile, this agnostic,

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Archivio Storico degli Affari Esteri (ASAE), f. Rappresentanze diplomatiche Francia 1860-1950, b. 163, f. France-Italie.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Letter from the Cercle international des étudiants et étudiantes des Nations alliées et amies de France to Giovanni Gentile, Paris, March 27, 1920. Fondazione Archivio Giovanni Gentile (FAG), Carteggi, b. Cercle international.</footnote>
materialist, utilitarian, and confrontational individualism was to be over-
come by the construction of the new, purely totalitarian state. The state
was conceived as a dynamic, immanent reality founded on the superior
political and religious unity of the nation. Within this framework, the
fascist revolution was viewed as the historical protagonist of a great polit-
ical and pedagogical experiment, picking up the torch of the legacy of the
unfinished *Risorgimento* and confirming Italy as a collective conscious-
ness, a third way between liberalism and communism. By providing the
regime with an accomplished intellectual system that gave it cultural legit-
imacy, Gentile had grafted onto it intellectual dimensions that were alien
not only to the various sectors of fascism, which had always been united
by a contempt for culture, but also to the advocates of a more conser-
vative nationalism.<fnref n="17" /> The Sicilian philosopher distanced himself from the
idea of the nation as a naturalistic, anthropological, or even racial reality,
taking over from Mazzini the spiritualist dimensions of a historical mission
and of Italy’s political and cultural primacy, projected into the world and
into the future. From these premises, Gentile, as an authentic intellectual,
clearly could not be the interpreter of a line of self-referential closure of
the regime. On the contrary, he wanted and promoted a broad-based
discussion on all fronts, which would enable Fascist Italy to make a name
for itself abroad and represent a valued model in the history of Euro-
pean political and social experience in the twentieth century. It is in this
spirit of international recognition of Fascist Italy that we must under-
stand the former Minister of Public Instruction’s interest in the CIUP,
according to a logic free from any temptation of cultural autarky. These
were the years, moreover, when Gentile began *the Enciclopedia Italiana*,
a long-term cultural undertaking that projected itself toward international
“debate”, presenting itself, in his own words, as a kind of “great examina-
tion sustained by the thought and character of Italians before all civilized
nations”.<fnref n="18" />

We can perhaps add a more personal element to these general consid-
erations. In October 1926, Gentile was following from a distance his son
Federico’s stay in Paris. Federico was then engaged in research on Blaise

<footnote n="17">17 TURI G., *Giovanni Gentile. Una biografia*, Firenze, Giunti, 1995, pp. 407-445; TARQUINI A., *Il Gentile dei fascisti: gentiliani e antigentiliani nel regime fascista*, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ GENTILE G., *Politica e cultura*, I, Firenze, Le Lettere, 1991, pp. 298-301.</footnote>
Pascal<fnref n="19" /> and had been entrusted by his father to the care of long-time friend Giuseppe Prezzolini, head of the press section at IICI since 1925. Prezzolini offered Federico his help in finding accommodation first in a boarding house on rue de Vaugirard and subsequently in a hotel. “I have seen Federico several times in the library, where we both have the vice of going,” Prezzolini wrote to Gentile. “Your dear young man is not lost to sight. He leads his life well as a serious researcher and student [...]. Don’t worry about his permanence at the hotel. All students in Paris live like that, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s the most practical and economical thing to do. Trust him”.<fnref n="20" /> In reality, alternatives did exist: the CIUP was becoming the alternative par excellence to anonymous student housing. Add to this the direct experience of Giovanni Gentile, who had been a student in his youth at the Normal School in Pisa (and by June 1928 its director), and we have a plausible picture of the reasons that prompted Gentile to ask Jérôme Carcopino about the CIUP.

To respond as fully as possible, Carcopino obtained a meeting with André Honnorat, who, pleased with his Italian colleague’s interest (they were both former Ministers of Public Instruction), detailed the project precisely from an economic and legal point of view, describing its qualities, achievements, and future prospects. Carcopino took this information on board and sent Gentile a French-language account of the conversation, the text of which is so detailed and precise that it seems to be more the result of a piece of writing controlled by his CIUP interlocutor.

In the account, Honnorat explains the checks-and-balances mechanism envisaged at the CIUP, which reserved ownership of the entire CIUP to the University of Paris while blocking *in perpetuo* its use for student residences, thus attempting to reconcile “the interests of the donor and the donee.” He also specified the types of intervention possible, with private financing or public investment, and indicated the sum of 50,000 francs as the minimum cost for a single room. With understandable pride, the text lists the pavilions already built by nine nations (England, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Spain, the United States, Japan, Holland, and Sweden) for a total of 1,267 available rooms, and alludes to contacts already underway with Brazil. But above all, he tries to anticipate the objections

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ GENTILE F., *Pascal: saggio di interpretazione storica*, Bari, Laterza, 1927.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Prezzolini a Gentile, Paris, 7 febbraio 1927, G. GENTILE, G. PREZZOLINI, *Carteggio 1908-1940*, Roma, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2006, p. 186-7.</footnote>
of his distant interlocutor and dispel the perplexities or mistrust he might
have regarding the CIUP, asserting that “it conceals no idea of intel-
lectual hegemony. It’s based on a fact. In Paris today, there are nearly
8,000 foreign students scattered across the faculties, establishments and
schools of higher education. It’s as important for them as it is for French
students that the less fortunate among them find a “Cité d’étudiants”
(where diverse peoples are brought together—as in the lecture theaters or
laboratories—but where each retains its own physiognomy and the mark
of its homeland, without which there can be no fruitful intellectual work,
and without which discouragement and bitterness risk embittering and
poisoning the best minds”.<fnref n="21" />

Honzorat's emphasis on highlighting the absence of any intent of
cultural imperialism, but rather the desire to offer each country a chance
for autonomous development and cultural exchange, is evident in more
than one instance, for example, where he pays explicit tribute to Italy's
cultural specificity, observing that "it would be absurd to propose to an
Italian who can, with good reason, pride himself on the oldest and highest
culture, the CIUP as a means of initiating himself into ours. French
friends of Italy should be allowed to hope that he will enter to get to
know us better, and above all to represent his country in ours".<fnref n="22" />

Lastly, Honnorat refers to the British example, which, jealously
guarding its autonomy, had combined the construction of its own house
at the CIUP with the creation of a British Institute designed to dissem-
inate British culture in France: in short, two complementary initiatives
designed to neutralize any risk of French hegemony. Following this
example, Italy, too, could conquer new areas of visibility. Carcopino
added: "For my part, I would gladly welcome the appearance [...] of
an *Istituto Italiano*, a home for high Italian culture in the heart of our
Parisian university life".<fnref n="23" />

As mentioned above, this 1928 project had no follow up. Honnorat's
later attempts to interest the Minister of Public Instruction, Belluzzo,
through the French Ambassador in Rome, Beaumarchais, and later
through Dario Lupi and Madame de Jouvenel, were no more successful.

<footnote n="21">²¹ FAG, Jérôme Carcopino a Giovanni Gentile, 5 febbraio 1928.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ *Ibid*.</footnote>
While the Italian government rejected every proposal, the CIUP Founda-
tion felt it could not follow up on the *advances* made by Italian antifascists
in exile in France. The conflict between Italy and France over the granting
of political asylum to Italian exiles was too great for the acceptance of a
possible donation from these circles (Francesco Saverio Nitti, ex-president
of the Italian Council and in exile in Paris, had given a few signals, and
there is evidence of financial availability on the part of Carlo Rosselli)<fnref n="24" />
not to be understood in Italy as an ideological taking of sides and a
clear denial of the apolitical premises of the global project. The only
positive initiative was a private donation from the curator of the French
national museums, Desarrois, to reserve a place in the CIUP for an Italian
student.<fnref n="25" />

BETWEEN CRITICISM AND EMULATION:
THE OPINION OF FASCIST STUDENTS

From 1927 to 1928, the Fascist University Groups (GUF), strictly
controlled in terms of discipline and ideological cohesion, became the
instruments of a fascist conquest of the university designed to flush out
opposition, combat the agnosticism of resistant students, and provide,
according to PNF directives, for the political education and training of the
country's future professional and managerial elites.<fnref n="26" /> With this in mind,
sport and welfare were the two complementary strategies pursued by the
GUF to bring the student community together. Thus, the creation of
appropriate structures to welcome and care for students (Student Houses)
became crucial to consolidate the consensus. The experience of other
foreign university centers, the CIUP in particular, became an important
reference point and the object of a comparison of models. It is certainly
no coincidence that the GUF secretariat's documents include copies of
the information brochures distributed by the CIUP National Foundation,
such as the special issue dedicated to the CIUP in September 1929, full
of illustrations and drawings by *L'Animateur des Temps Nouveaux*. The
issue contains several slogans that would irritate fascist ears, such as: "The
Cité universitaire is the indispensable institution for training the elites of

<footnote n="24">²⁴ ALBANESE G., *op. cit.* p.76.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">25 ALBANESE G., *op. cit.* p. 28.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26 LA ROVERE L., *Storia dei Guf*, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003, pp. 119-127.</footnote>
democracy. The Cité universitaire is the most appropriate work for main-
taining France's prestige", or "We are witnessing a unique phenomenon,
of nations from all parts of the world spending large sums to settle their
students in France. How can we fail to understand the magnitude of the
predominant role we can play in the universe? We were predisposed to it
by the influence of French genius over the centuries and by our geograph-
ical location. Now it's up to us to become and remain the spiritual center
of the universe".<fnref n="27" />

Fascist students therefore followed these experiences with curiosity,
sometimes reading with annoyance the emphatic descriptions of the
French press, which alternated between ritual reaffirmation of Italian
primacy and cautious appreciation of foreign initiatives. If we look at
*Libro e Moschetto*, the Milanese periodical that has become the official
mouthpiece of the academic world, we have confirmation of the difficult
balancing act practiced by students on this subject. In 1927, in response
to an article on the CIUP by George Maybon, a Paris correspondent and
student at the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris,<fnref n="28" /> an issue of *Libro e
Moschetto* offered a flattering panorama of the Italian regime's university
system, to which foreigners flocked from all over the world. The article
concluded emphatically that "Rome's tradition is not and will not be infe-
rior to that of the City of Light".<fnref n="29" /> However, the article carefully avoided
mentioning the residential structures and assistance services which, in the
context of this panorama, represented least brilliant aspect of the system.
Only a few months earlier, in February 1927, Augusto Turati, secretary
of the PNF, had painted a less than comforting picture of the situation.

An assessment was quickly made: out of 24 university centers, only four had a canteen; only one, Bari, could boast a Student House with 130 places, and in all the other universities, devoid of ad hoc structures, only private and denominational assistance initiatives were recorded, i.e., boarding schools, Catholic boarding schools, and reserved canteens, such as the one, for example, for Jewish students in Padua.<fnref n="30" /> Maybon, for his part, celebrating the Latin friendship cemented on the battlefields of the

<footnote n="27"><sup>27</sup> Special issue of *L'animateur des Temps Nouveaux*, September 27, 1929, pp. 22-23.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ MAYBON G., “L’Università di Parigi centro intellettuale e la città universitaria”, *Libro e Moschetto*, 15 agosto 1927, p.1.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ MIGLIERINA L., “Le Università Italiane”, *Libro e Moschetto*, October 3, 1927.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ “Le Opere assistenziali universitarie”, *Libro e Moschetto*, 5 maggio 1927.</footnote>
Great War, invited Italy not to isolate itself from this “great intellectual movement”, whose epicenter was represented by the CIUP. His appeal went unanswered, a silence that also signaled the indifference of fascist students toward the naïve expressions of self-satisfaction regarding French civilization and its “privileged role in the world”.

A more elaborate position was taken by Annibale Carena, secretary of the GUF and future young secretary of the Pavia Fascist Federation, who, in 1932, while reworking impressions of his travels and personal reflections, attributed a partially positive judgment to the CIUP. Carena supported outright the usefulness of an Italian presence and participation in the project, pointing to the development of structures designed to assist Italian students (in 1934, six Student Houses were up and running, with a further nine under construction); however, he did not give in to the ritual discourse of self-celebration. Commenting on and illustrating the evolution of the CIUP, he asserted that the creation of an Italian House would have the objective of grafting onto it “a nucleus of Fascist thought” as a response to the interest that Fascist Italy was arousing abroad. The Italian House would not serve to increase the flow of Italian students to Parisian universities, a flow that already existed and was a fact of life, but rather to create an ideal connecting center. In his opinion, there was no risk of distorting abroad the political identity that the students represented, for he wrote: “He who, as an Italian, goes abroad returns Italian twice over; he who goes as a fascist returns with a stronger faith and the pride of feeling himself to be the bearer of a doctrine [...] which has real international teaching virtues”. In this way, the CIUP project’s initiative in favor of the hegemony of French thought—to which, incidentally, Carena did not spare a few criticisms—would be reversed in favor of fascism, which, from Paris, would project itself into the world of student youth as a universal political model.31 This objective was enough to put the sarcasm about the CIUP’s “architectural audacities”—the eclectic style of the buildings, shaped like “boats or tanks, towers and barracks”, or even sandcastles—into the background. The position adopted by Carena, co-founder of Milan’s Institute for International Policy Studies (ISPI), was not an anomaly but reflected the keen interest of many young people of his generation in international horizons.

<footnote n="31">31 CARENA A., “La città universitaria di Parigi”, *Il Popolo d’Italia*, 20 maggio 1932.</footnote>
In 1932, it may still have made sense to support Italy's European and Western vocation: the GUF sections dedicated to the League of Nations were still active and, in those same years, the GUF were themselves represented and active in European student organizations, such as the International University Federation (FUI), which was also part of the League of Nations movement. In this respect, it is interesting to note that the GUF's internal documentation, and above all the correspondence between the central leadership and local groups, bear witness to veiled disagreements precisely about the permanence of Italian representatives in these organizations.<fnref n="32" /> Some academics defended the appropriateness of Italian representation in these internationalist circles. Despite its skepticism on the issues of disarmament and pacifism, this Italian presence could prevent possible damage to the image of fascism, oppose the emergence of Italian student groups with anti-fascist leanings (as was feared in 1931),<fnref n="33" /> contain the pan Germanic initiatives of German delegations, and, above all, keep the channels of dialogue open. The party hierarchies, on the contrary, gradually diminished their involvement in all institutions connected to the League of Nations and aimed for a disdainful and sectarian isolation.

When the general rule, which excluded politically connoted groups from the FUI, created a temporary halt to Italian participation, foreign colleagues mobilized to obtain an exemption, allowing the readmission of GUFs. However, the endorsement from the leadership of the GUF and PNF—both from Carlo Scorza and Achille Starace—waned, and this international observatory became off-limits for fascist students. The evolution of fascist foreign policy subsequently led to an ever more exclusive alignment with the student associations of the Third Reich. The multipolarity of the 1920s and early 1930s would be replaced by a selective and monotonous partnership, framed within the ideological affinity and political convergence between fascism and Nazism.

<footnote n="32">³² Archivio centrale dello Stato (ACS), Segreteria generale GUF, b. 3 and 22.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ Giuseppe Righetti a Carlo Scorza, segretario generale dei GUF, 7 marzo 1931; Carlo Scorza a Giuseppe Righetti, 16 marzo 1931, ACS, Segreteria generale GUF, b. 3.</footnote>
## ALTERNATIVE MODELS ADOPTED IN ITALY AND ABROAD

In what forms of university presence around the world and in which types of university towns did fascism instill its vision of science and culture, and what political-institutional and architectural forms were chosen as the framework and model for its ideal of a scientific community? Two different cases of intervention in this field explain the underlying logic and offer themselves as explanatory paradigms: on the international scene, the Casa Italiana near Columbia University and, in the national context, the construction of the Universitas Urbis in Rome.

The creation of the Casa Italiana in New York was contemporaneous with the CIUP project. It was born after World War I, on the initiative of a committee bringing together numerous personalities from New York's Italian-American community, and with the concrete help of the university. Having relocated to the upper part of Manhattan, Columbia University granted the land (at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 117th Street) free of charge. The construction of the building was made possible by a public subscription, contributed to by Americans sympathetic to Italy, such as John Aldreed and General Electric, but primarily by Italian-Americans from various professional backgrounds, including significant funding from building industry magnates Joseph and Michael Paterno and Antony Compagna. The Casa Italiana, inaugurated in the presence of Gugliemo Marconi on October 12, 1927, was hailed by the press as an "achievement befitting the new power of the Motherland".<fnref n="34" /> However, its purpose was not as a residential establishment for students. Alongside the *Houses* of other nations, which had sprung up without an organic, unified plan alongside the old and prestigious Columbia University, it housed and occupied a variety of functions. It was a center for Italian studies, a meeting place for students and researchers, and a coordinating point for institutions and associations for cultural and economic promotion, such as the Dante Alighieri Society and the Italy-America Society.<fnref n="35" /> Over the years, especially after the Great Depression and the ensuing financial difficulties, the Casa Italiana also assumed the functions of the university's Department of Italian Studies and, from 1929 to 1940

<footnote n="34">³⁴ “La casa dello studente a New York”, *Libro e Moschetto*, 8 luglio 1927.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ FREZZA BICOCCHI D., “Propaganda fascista e comunità italiane in Usa: La Casa italiana della Columbia University”, *Studi Storici*, n°4, 1970, pp. 661-697 and Prezzolini’s reply, *Studi Storici*, n°2, 1971, pp. 396-412.</footnote>
under the direction of Giuseppe Prezzolini (who was already active, as we have seen, in Paris within the IICI) became a significant pole of Italian cultural policy in the United States.

What characterized the history of Casa Italiana from the outset was the syntony between fascism in power, determined to intensify its economic relations with the United States and legitimize its role before American public opinion, and an Italian immigration on the road to social integration and economic affirmation, strongly desirous of enhancing its origin and cultural identity and being freed from negative stereotypes of its backwardness and inferiority. Against this backdrop, for over ten years, under Prezzolini's skilful direction, Casa Italiana exerted a remarkable influence on American society and in the Italian-American community as an instrument for transmitting messages, images, and values favoring a positive reception of fascism. Art and literature, cinema and language teaching, books and magazines were the elements of a skillful strategy which, by endorsing the equation between "Italianness" and fascism, lent credibility to the propaganda developed through the mobilization of diplomatic delegations, newspapers, and the Church, while collaborating in the marginalization of anti-fascist culture.

In France, most of the conditions that had favored the New York initiative were not present. Italian immigration had long been characterized by its temporary, seasonal nature, and was still far from the socio-economic ascendancy that would attract major donations: more manual workers than capitals. The CIUP project, with its pacifist dimension, left little room for the self-promotional strategies of fascism, which, with other tools and in other circles, could be pursued more incisively. Finally, in France there was a democratic public opinion critical of fascism and in solidarity with the anti-fascist opposition led abroad by organized groups of political exiles, with whom it was appropriate to deal with on grounds other than those of high culture and science. It was the sum of all these elements of difference that steered the regime toward non-participation in the CIUP, in contrast to the American project.

As for the construction of Rome's Cité Universitaire, inaugurated by Mussolini on October 31, 1935, during the Ethiopian crisis, this represented the compendium of the regime's ambitions. The project can be read as a synthetic expression of fascist ideas on the themes of science and the university, the relationship between culture and politics; above all, it
stands out as an exclusive model of a university-city.<fnref n="36" /> We will not analyze it in detail here but summarize its fundamental choices.

First and foremost, the monumental structure hierarchizes the spaces and buildings according to a scheme which, according to Marcello Piacentini, the head of the overall project, was inspired by the idea of *the agorà*, the *forum*, and aimed to recreate the climate of Mediterranean antiquality. Conceived on a basilical plan with a transept oriented toward the rectorate and enriched by propylaea, the eleven buildings created for the faculties, clinics, and services are arranged in a set of rigid symmetries that preclude any concession to simplicity. A few isolated manifestations of architectural rationality are combined with a predominantly emphatic, antique-inspired rhetoric, which creates rectilinear perspectives in the avenues named *Libro e Moschetto* and *Battaglioni universitari*, alluding to the totalitarian overcoming of any distinction between politics and culture.

Support services and accommodation are confined to the periphery of the complex, in a modest student house with just 160 places—a small number compared to the 12,000 enrolled at the *Università della Sapienza* in 1935—and in a canteen equipped to provide 400 to 500 meals a day. The cost of the building represents less than 2% of the total cost of *the Urbis* and reflects the order of priority of the requirements under consideration: the quest for “Romanness” and traditionalist hyperbole take second place to the concrete needs of the student community. As Giuseppe Pagano writes: “All values shift, modest but necessary things become negligible, the superfluous is considered indispensable, the useful and the useless undergo a radical reversal of values and meanings”.<fnref n="37" />

But the meaning given to the whole complex becomes clear when, following the artistic path punctuated by Sironi's frescoes, the bas-reliefs of the Dioscuri, the monument to the war dead, the Littorio circle, and the University Militia barracks, with spaces for the armory and external areas for paramilitary exercises, parades and PNF liturgies, we arrive at the heart of the Cité Universitaire. An imposing bronze statue of Minerva by Arturo Martini stands on a red marble base, depicted as an archaic divinity, from which all reference to her character as protector of the

<footnote n="36">³⁶ “La città universitaria di Roma”, n. speciale di *Architettura*, Roma 1935.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ PAGANO G., “Città orizzontale”, *Casabella*, n°148, apr.1940.</footnote>
arts and sciences, which characterized her in the Roman Pantheon, has
disappeared, giving way to the physiognomy of an armed warrior god.

The free, pacifist, “horizontal” community of students from all over the
world, united by a love of science and a commitment to study, expressed
in the construction of heterogeneous buildings naturally spread across
a space extending toward a park: the cité-jardin, has here been trans-
formed into a distinctly martial, authoritarian, and hierarchical dimension.
Describing the students’ morning training on Sundays, a commentator of
the time wrote: “The university campus becomes a war zone. A few thou-
sand youngsters from the GIL, the GUF and the University Battalion give
a perfect example of what military training is all about. There are sharp
orders, vibrant movements, bursts of fanfare, war songs”.<fnref n="38" /> The university
was transformed into a “Field of Mars”.

Elisa Signori, graduated in Humanities in Pavia, student and graduate student of the Ghislieri College of Pavia (1972–1978). Scholarships: Luigi Einaudi Foundation of Turin, Accademia dei Lincei, Roma; CNR. Full professor of Contemporary history at the Department of Humanities of the University of Pavia until 2021 and professor of Contemporary History at the University of Italian Switzerland (USI) too. Currently retired from university, she is honorary member of the Interuniversity Center for the History of Italian Universities (CISUI), member of the Scientific Committee for the publication of the works of Gaetano Salvemini and of the Rossi-Salvemini Foundation, director of the Istituto pavese per la storia della Resistenza e dell’età contemporanea (rete Parri) and president of Article 21 Lombardia.

Bibliography: for a complete list of my books and essays see
academia.edu

**Conflict of Interest** The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.

<footnote n="38">³⁸ SPANO N., “La città universitaria di Roma”, *Annali della Università d’Italia*, a.I. n.4, p. 405.</footnote>
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<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>
The Cité universitaire de Paris
during the war: International mobility
between global constraints and local issues
(1936–1944)

Dzovinar Kévonian

Between 1938 and 1944, the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (CIUP) experienced a paradoxical phase in its history: a first period of construction had just concluded, with the opening of the Maison inter-nationale (1936). This building symbolized the desire to territorialize and inscribe in community practices the pacifist potentials of a mobile academic elite, transcending the national identities juxtaposed in the 19 foundations of its East and West parks. By the late 1930s, the CIUP was home to nearly 3000 French and international students, researchers and artists. However, the outbreak of the Second World War abruptly halted international academic mobility, followed by the mobilization of young people for military service. In Europe in particular, defeat at the hands of

<footnote>D. Kévonian (✉)</footnote>

<footnote>Caen-Normandie University, Caen, France</footnote>

<footnote>e-mail: dzovinar.kevonian@unicaen.fr</footnote>
the Germans was swift, and a long period of military occupation began in the spring of 1940. In France, the mass exodus of June 1940 quickly led to the collapse of the Republican regime and the proclamation of the new Vichy regime, dominated by the Marshal Pétain. By mid-June, Paris had been occupied and largely deserted.

The question lies in how the CIUP, a cosmopolitan and international place founded by the town councilors of the Third Republic and international patronage, was to weather the war between German military occupation, the ideology of the National Revolution and the anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime. This regime overturned national solidarity, replacing republican values with the triptych of Work—Family—Home-land. As Alya Aglan writes in *La France à l'envers*, "anything international became anti-national".<fnref n="1" /> Locally, a complex game of confrontation and connivance played out between the occupied and the occupiers. Added to this inversion of norms and values was an internal civil war, embedded in the duel between two legitimacies, one in Paris and the other dissident in London. On an international scale, the world press, particularly the Anglo-Saxon press, expressed its dismay at the "fall of Paris". The new regime, authoritarian and reactionary, anti-liberal and xenophobic, claimed that every individual should be part of a "community" of family, work and nation, guaranteeing fundamental rights.

This particular period of the collapse of the international ideal thus leads us to understand the conditions of the CIUP's "survival" up to 1944, and more broadly to measure the lasting inflections caused by the war in conceptions of international student and academic migration in the post-1945 world. The corpus of sources on which this study is based is made up of three main archival fonds: those of the Rectorat de l'Université de Paris concerning CIUP, those of the Fondation Nationale, which manages the CIUP and its various pavilions, deposited at the Archives nationales, as well as the archives of certain national houses.<fnref n="2" />

<footnote n="1">¹ Alya Aglan, *La France à l'envers. La guerre de Vichy (1940-1945)*, Paris, Gallimard, 2022, p. 9.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Archives nationales, Paris (hereafter AN). Rectorat de Paris. Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (1918-1964), AJ16 7027 to 7044; CIUP, Fondation nationale (1896-2001), 20,090,013/1-1200; CIUP, Fondation nationale et maisons (1906-2022), 20,090,014/1-343. Relations with the Vichy regime, the issue of student health and the Aryanization of the Cité were discussed in depth in: Dzovinar Kévonian, "La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris dans la guerre: refuge, occupation et résistances (1938-1944)", in D. Kévonian, G. Tronchet (dir.), *La Babel étudiante. La Cité internationale*</footnote>
RISING CONFLICT AND ACADEMIC
MOBILITY UNDER DRESS (1935-1940)

In February 1935, French philosopher Victor Basch, president of the Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League), was booed by Jeunesses patriotes students and Camelots during a lecture on "Les grands courants de l'art français contemporain" at the Fondation des Etats-Unis. Tear gas and police intervention punctuated his speech.<fnref n="3" /> A few months earlier, it was the internationalist jurist Georges Scelle, professor at the Faculty of Law in Paris, who was persuaded by the rector of the University of Paris to cancel the lecture he was due to give at the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation on the problem of reforming the League of Nations.<fnref n="4" /> Jean Giraud, director of the same foundation<fnref n="5" /> also called on the police to stop intimidation operations by residents affiliated to the Jeunesses patriotiques or Action Française at the Maison des Provinces de France armed with truncheons against those of his foundation: "Johès manus. It's up to the police to ensure free passage on the public highway and to apprehend these armed and threatening fascists.<fnref n="6" />"

The CIUP resonated with the radicalism of a mobilized and fragmented youth. André Honnorat, first president and creator of the Fondation nationale de la CIUP, received death threats from a mysterious group of hoteliers, restaurateurs and shopkeepers who claimed to have been ruined by illicit competition from the CIUP against a backdrop of xenophobia: "We have decided to do away with you, pure and simple... We have had enough of the Staviskys and their ilk... The era of injustice is over, and society must be cleansed of the gangsters and pirates

<footnote>universitaire de Paris, 1920-1950, Rennes, PUR, 2013, pp. 143-162. This article is a modified version of the quoted contribution.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ "It's a disgraceful spectacle given to foreigners in a foreign house," he lamented at the time. erVictor Basch, March 1 1935. AN, AJ16, 7033.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ AN, AJ16, 7033. Jean Giraud to the Rector of the University of Paris, February 10, 1934.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Jean Giraud, a native of Saône-et-Loire (1882), is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and an agrégé de lettres. An adjunct lecturer at the Sorbonne, he was the first director of the Émile and Louise Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ AN, AJ16, 7033. Jean Giraud to André Honnorat, April 13, 1935.</footnote>
who scour the public.<fnref n="7" />" In the Parc Est, the Collège d'Espagne was inau-
gurated in April 1935, to accommodate 150 Spanish and Ibero-American
students. Its first director had just taken up his post. Angel Establier
(1904–1976) was a chemist and secretary of the scientific relations section
of the League of Nations' International Institute for Intellectual Coopera-
tion. His commitment to international academic relations and circulation
was evident from the outset. For example, the College of Spain organized
a student reception in honor of Rafael Altamira, a judge at the Perma-
nent Court of International Justice in The Hague and professor of law
at the University of Madrid, in the presence of Salvador de Madariaga
(future founder of the College of Europe in Bruges) and a representative
of the Rockefeller Foundation.<fnref n="8" /> A few months later, the Spanish Civil War
broke out. The Collège d'Espagne became a meeting place for Spanish
refugees and exiles in Paris. Establier welcomed students and intellec-
tuals of all political persuasions, and succeeded in maintaining within
the pavilion a space of tolerance and mutual respect even as the Spanish
people sank into civil war.<fnref n="9" /> Philosopher Xavier Zubiri, biochemist Severo
Ochoa (nephew of Spanish president Alvaro de Albomoz) and Francoist
writer Pío Baroja were just a few of the many students. This determina-
tion to keep academia out of the political arena led to an attempt by the
Republican ambassador to Paris, Luis Araquistáin, to dismiss him, which
the French authorities prevented.

Against this backdrop of international tensions from 1935 onwards,
student demand at the CIUP increased sharply. For the 1938–1939
academic year, the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe registered 300 male
applications for the 100 places available, and 140 female applications for
the 30 places still available in the Pierre and Marie Curie pavilion. Appli-
cations made directly to the Fondation nationale doubled between 1935
and December 1938,<fnref n="10" /> with a marked acceleration in the autumn of

<footnote n="7">⁷ AN, AJ16, 7033. Anonymous letter dated June 20, 1935, addressed to André Honnorat.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ *French Revolution. Revue d'histoire contemporaine*, n°6, 1936, pp. 191-192.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ *Bulletin de l'Alliance internationale des anciens de la Cité universitaire de Paris*, n°113, January 1989; Anna Maria Pedrerol i Pié, *El Mundo de Ángel Establier (1904-1976)*, Independently published, 2022.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ AN, AJ16, 7031. Report on the operation of the work in 1938 and 1939; AN, AJ16, 7035. Boards of directors of the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe. Annual report, December 20, 1938.</footnote>
1938.<fnref n="11" /> The CIUP welcomed 2010 French students and, above all, 834 international students, 20% more than at the start of the 1937 academic year. International students now make up a third of residents.<fnref n="12" /> The most represented nationalities were from Central and Eastern Europe and the United States. The reason for this is that, since 1935, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has entrusted the CIUP with the task of receiving foreign scholarship holders from the French government. The second reason was the increase in funding for scholarships for foreign students voted by the Popular Front government in 1936.<fnref n="13" /> To complete the picture, in December 1938 the Fondation nationale signed an agreement with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which delegated to it the payment of foreign scholarship holders from the French government.<fnref n="14" /> This agreement marks the Foundation’s recognition at national level as an institutional partner in France’s international diplomacy, and gives it an additional visibility effect with international partners. It also provides a wider pool of foreign students from which to select the “best” future Francophile executives for admission to the CIUP.<fnref n="15" /> As Patrick Ferté reminds us, welcoming foreign students serves the national interest, investing in what he calls “intellectual allies”.<fnref n="16" />

<footnote n="11">¹¹ From 525 to 1,059.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² The nationalities represented are, in descending order: United States, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Greece, Luxembourg, Egypt, Holland, Romania, Syria, China, Denmark, Turkey, Canada, Japan, Argentine Republic, Poland, Belgium. Report on the operation of the organization in 1938. Specialties are mainly law, medicine, science, ahead of literature and pharmacy.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Tronchet Guillaume, “‘Quality rather than quantity’. Le tournant élitiste de l’accueil des étudiants étrangers en France dans les années 1930”, in Marianne Amar, Nancy L. Green (dir.), *Migrations d’élites. Une histoire-monde XVIe-XXIe siècle*, Tours, Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2022, pp. 189-206.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Decision of the Board of Directors on December 26, 1938.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ AN, AJ16, 7031. National Foundation, financial report, period 1940-1943.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ FERTÉ P., BARRERA C. (dir.), *Migrations internationales et universités refugees (xvi-xx siècles)*, Toulouse, Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2009, p. 14. See also in the same volume: CABANIS A., “Le flux d’étudiants étrangers et les aléas de la politique internationale de la France”, pp. 177-190. For context: KARADY V., “Student mobility and Western Universities, Patterns of Unequal exchange in the European Academic Market (1880-1939)”, C. CHARLE, P. WAGNER, J. SCHRIEWER (eds.), *Transnational Intellectuals Networks, Forms of Academic Knowledge and the Search for Cultural Identities*, Frankfurt/ New York, Campus Verlag, 2004, pp. 361-399; P. HARTMUT RÜDIGER and N. TIKHONOV (eds.), *Universitäten als Brücken in Europa/Les Universités des Ponts à travers l’Europe,*</footnote>
However, international tensions and the economic crisis affected the CIUP, as did the presence of Austrian, Czech, German-Israeli and Spanish refugee students, torn between the impossibility of returning home, the French administration's insistence on extending residence permits and financial difficulties. No statistical information on refugee students is recorded in the moral reports to the CIUP's Board of Directors for 1938 and 1939. However, Jean Giraud, who heads the Deutsch Foundation, insists on the need to obtain exceptional administrative arrangements from the rectorate for these refugee students.<fnref n="17" /> This was the thrust of the correspondence between Gustave Roussy (Rector of the University of Paris), André Honnorat and Jean Branet (General Secretary of the Fondation nationale de la CIUP), in January 1939. André Honnorat wrote that, anxious to bring real relief to refugees, it was his duty to "bend the rules to the necessities of the hour",<fnref n="18" /> He insisted once again in October 1939,<fnref n="19" /> and made repeated representations to the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and National Education, so that these students could benefit from exceptional aid enabling them to survive financially.<fnref n="20" /> The refugee question was not a new concern for André Honnorat, who was one of the founders of the Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allmands victimes de l'antisémitisme (National Committee for the Relief of German Refugees Victims of Anti-Semitism), which was specifically concerned with the placement of refugee scholars. Vicki Caron's study of the reception of these Jewish refugees highlights both the forms and

<footnote>Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2003; KARADY V., "La migration internationale d'étudiants en Europe, 1890-1940", *Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales*, no. 142, December 2002, pp. 47-60; Scott-Smith Giles, Tournès Ludovic, (ed.) *Global Exchanges. Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World*, Berghan Books, 2017; Matthieu Gillabert, "Paris la souricière? L'organisation de la mobilité étudiante dans la capitale pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale", *European Journal of International Migration*, vol. 37, 2021, pp. 277-302.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ AN, AJ16, 7035. Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation. Annual report, December 20, 1938.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ The Service d'entraide sociale created at the Cité universitaire was not enough. AN, AJ16, 7033. Student refugees welcomed at the Cité universitaire, 1939. André Honnorat to Jean Zay, Minister of National Education, January 20, 1939.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ AN, AJ16, 7033. André Honnorat to Gustave Roussy, October 16, 1939.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ AN, AJ16, 7033. La Cité internationale during the war, refugee agreements and staff mobilization.</footnote>
the ambiguities of André Honnorat’s commitment.<fnref n="21" /> However, refugee students themselves do not appear in the minutes of 1938 and 1939: it is the Service d’entraide sociale de la CIUP that deals with the financial and material problems of exiled students.

Finally, the reality of financial needs is no less important, particularly for the Fondation Nationale, which fears and fights the hypothesis of a general evacuation of the CIUP. This would deprive it of the resources generated by student rents, and therefore of any operating profit. This fear was all the greater when the President of the French Council, Édouard Daladier, ratified the Ministry of Defense’s plans to requisition the CIUP in the event of war, in order to set up a hospital for the Armed Forces Health Service.<fnref n="22" /> Honnorat and Branet tried to have the CIUP recognized as a “lieu de Genève”, a neutral territory with diplomatic exterritoriality in the heart of Paris, to enable international student life to continue.<fnref n="23" /> This failed. Their attempts to reconcile the proposed military takeover with keeping French and international students on the site were unsuccessful.<fnref n="24" /> They did, however, manage to obtain delegated responsibility for the organization of passive defense, thereby controlling the measures adopted.

From autumn 1938 onwards, the CIUP and student life were transformed: deposits of sand were stored on the floors of the upper rooms of the student pavilions, shovels were distributed to everyone, fire extinguishers and pump buckets were distributed throughout the houses, and the buildings were camouflaged with the installation of blue lamps in the common areas of the pavilions. The windows of the students’ rooms are obscured with paint, blue paper, louvers or black canvas. Shelters were set up in the cellars of the Maison internationale, and 1500 meters of shelter trenches were dug in the CIUP’s West Park. Lastly, guarantees were taken

<footnote n="21">²¹ Vicki Caron, *L'asile incertain. La crise des réfugiés juifs en France, 1933-1942*, Paris, Tallandier, 2008, p. 46, 147 and 340. In 1938, for example, André Honnorat felt that it was dangerous to welcome too many German Israelites to France, because of the resentment this could generate among unemployed French intellectuals.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Decision of December 4, 1937. AN, AJ16, 7033. Directeur du Service de santé des armées to André Honnorat, December 5, 1937.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Quoted by KELLER A., *La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris face à la montée de l'Etat nazi et à la guerre: un idéal en question (1937-1945)*, Master's thesis, Université Paris X, 2005, typed, p. 47.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴ AN, AJ16, 7033. André Honnorat to Jean Zay, December 16, 1937; André Honnorat and Jean Branet to Édouard Daladier, December 27, 1938.</footnote>
out for the supply of fuel oil and coal, notably with the Compagnie des pétroles Jupiter, whose director Jean Branet had been since the 1920s.<fnref n="25" />

The fear of a complete closure of the CIUP was reinforced by the preventive evacuation of many foreign foundations at the end of summer 1938, at the time of the Munich crisis. In Honnorat's eyes, this threatened to jeopardize the start of the academic year in November 1938. Moreover, during 1939, he tried to convince the directors of the foundations not to close their houses in the event of mobilization in their own country. At the Danish House, for example, Helge Wamberg, Press and Cultural Attaché at the Danish Legation in Paris, refused Honnorat's request at the Board meeting in April 1939. He decided to evacuate Danish students from France.<fnref n="26" />

When war broke out, most of the directors of foreign foundations, like the national authorities on which they depended, urged their nationals to return home or not to return to Paris for the start of the academic year in November 1939. As soon as general mobilization was announced in France on September 1, 1939, houses were closed and requisitioned: on September 3, the Fondations Deutsch de la Meurthe and Biermans-Lapôtre (a Belgian-Luxembourg foundation)<fnref n="27" /> were occupied and turned into a hospital, a dormitory was set up at the Maison des Etudiants Canadiens, and a complementary hospital was set up at the Fondation Argentine. The Fondation de l'Institut national agronomique was also made available to the French army. The personnel of an anti-aircraft battery set up nearby on the Charléty stadium were to be housed there.<fnref n="28" /> Despite this state of affairs, in autumn 1939 the Fondation Nationale planned to keep two houses open—the Maison des Provinces de France and the Maison de l'Indochine—as well as the Foyer International des Etudiantes in the Quartier Latin, only for students authorized to attend

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Société des pétroles Jupiter was formed in 1922 by an alliance between the company run by Émile and Henry Deutsch de la Meurthe and Royal Dutch Shell.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ AN, AJ16, 7038. Board of Directors of the Danish Foundation, April 28, 1939.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ For the Belgian and Luxembourg foundations, all the students left in the two months preceding the mobilization. AN, AJ16, 7037. Report by Josse Staquet, Board of Directors, December 12, 1944.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ AN, 20,090,013/166. Note from the administrative secretary general of the Fondation nationale, M. Pehuet, November 21, 1949; AN, AJ16, 7030. Finances of the Fondation nationale for the war period. Report on the operation of the Foundation in 1940-1941.</footnote>
classes and lectures, in accordance with the conditions laid down by the
University of Paris. Rector Gustave Roussy agreed, and instructed the
deans of the various Paris faculties to issue special certificates for French
or international students wishing to apply for admission to the CIUP
for the 1939-1940 academic year.<fnref n="29" /> In the end, only the Maison des
Provinces de France welcomed students. 171 residents, 42% of whom
were in voluntary or forced international mobility.

The war brought about the closure of the foundations and the temporary transfer of supervisory authority to the Fondation nationale for a number of them. At the Board meeting of February 5, 1940, the Foundation set up a crisis management organization, concentrating financial powers in the hands of two men, André Honnorat and Jean Branet, with two objectives: to preserve the CIUP's material interests and its moral interests by ensuring the protection of young people. The CIUP then changed its mission and made a commitment. Its participation in the national effort took the form of hosting former French residents on leave at the Maison des Provinces de France,<fnref n="30" /> and Czechoslovakian volunteers at the American Foundation.<fnref n="31" /> From May 12, 1940, the Dutch College and then the Maison des Provinces de France opened their doors to the refugees who flocked to Paris fleeing the advancing German army. Nearly 200 fugitive students and teachers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and northern France found refuge at the CIUP. In both cases, however, the CIUP succeeded in taking targeted action in favor of the academic world.<fnref n="32" />

When the Germans entered the CIUP on June 19, 1940, the buildings were deserted in the rush to escape. Only a few directors remained in Paris. Otto Hermann, the director of the Danish Foundation, played a key role here, single-handedly hiding the archives, valuables and library

<footnote n="29">²⁹ AN, AJ16, 7033. Agreement on students at the start of the 1939 academic year. Jean Coulet to Gustave Roussy, October 6, 1939.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ AN, AJ16, 7039. Board of Directors of the United States Foundation, January 20 and April 20, 1940. Report on the operation of the Foundation from January to September 1940.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ AN, AJ16, 7033. Circular to directors of Cité Universitaire foundations, November 22, 1939.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² AN, AJ16, 7033. André Honnorat, May 13, 1940.</footnote>
books of the many foundations and houses in the Parc Est neighborhood.<fnref n="33" /> After André Honnorat’s failure to obtain from Albert Sarrault, Minister of National Education, the provision of university centers in the south of France to relocate the work of welcoming students, conservatory measures were adopted to protect the estate.<fnref n="34" /> Jules Coulet, General Delegate (in office since April 1933 and officially until May 1945), left Paris with part of the secretariat for the free zone. He was in charge of transferring bank accounts and providing scholarships for international students, most of whom had been sent back to the provinces. André Honnorat, Jean Branet, David David-Weill and André Goldet, all members of the Board of Directors of the Fondation Nationale, fled Paris in a hurry.

## GERMAN OCCUPATION AND THE VICHY REGIME: ACADEMIC MOBILITY BETWEEN RESISTANCE AND CLANDESTINITY

In the summer of 1940, the CIUP was requisitioned by the German army. The estate was transformed into a maneuvering ground, with norias of trucks and tanks. An anti-aircraft battery was installed on top of the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe’s campanile, student rooms were turned into guardhouses, dressing rooms into ammunition depots, and staff were checked and registered. However, a number of student residences managed to retain their autonomy: the United States Pavilion remained independent until the outbreak of war in December 1941, while the Collège d’Espagne, the Maison des Etudiants Suédois, the Maison Suisse and the Maison du Japon remained independent until the winter of 1942. The National Foundation managed to retain control of the administrative and medical pavilions.<fnref n="35" /> For the rest, the CIUP was transformed into barracks, and access to the estate was subject to passes. Interventions with Karl Epting, Otto Abetz’s loyal collaborator and former head of the

<footnote n="33">³³ AN, AJ16, 7037. Report by Josse Staquet, *op. cit.*</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ AJ16, 7031. Board of Directors, May 18, 1940; AN. AJ16, 7031. Fondation nationale, Board of Directors, 1945. La Cité universitaire since June 1940.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ AN, AJ16, 7033. Jean Coulet to Dr. Epting, August 31, 1940. Karl Epting to Gustave Roussy, September 18, 1940.</footnote>
Paris section of the German Academic Exchange Office, who headed the German Institute in Paris, had no effect.<fnref n="36" />

A second phase began in 1942.<fnref n="37" /> Foundations that remained unoccupied were also invested, despite André Honnorat’s repeated urging of Jérôme Carcopino, Secretary of State for National Education.<fnref n="38" /> In the end, only the Swedish Student House managed to remain unoccupied between 1940 and 1944. The military presence caused considerable damage to the pavilions in the east and west parks.<fnref n="39" /> Destruction and deterioration of the pavilions varied, however, depending on the length and type of occupation. There was little damage to pavilions that were only lightly occupied (Japan House), or that only housed women from the auxiliary services (United States Foundation), or an officers’ mess (Danish Foundation). But the majority of the houses received a succession of troops, often beyond their normal capacity.<fnref n="40" /> It was Josse Staquet, director of the Fondation Biermans-Lapôtre, who successfully filed the first claim for compensation for requisitions with the Préfecture de la Seine in 1941. This success enabled all the CIUP’s foundations to obtain substantial compensation from 1943 onwards.<fnref n="41" /> It was based on one argument: the dual legal independence of the foundations themselves from the CIUP, and of the Fondation nationale from the French state. At a time when mobility and academic freedom were subject to the dual

<footnote n="36">³⁶ In October 1940, Jean Giraud urged Gustave Roussy to partially liberate the Cité: “With the start of the new academic year, a lot of homeless students turn up every day at the Fondation Deutsch or the Fondation nationale to find lodgings,” he explains. AN, AJ16, 7033. Jean Giraud to Recteur de l’Université de Paris, October 3, 1940.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ AN, AJ16, 7033. Correspondence in February–March 1942 with Jérôme Carcopino, Gilbert Gidel and Jean Verrier, chief of staff to the Secretary of State for National Education. Jean Verrier to André Honnorat, February 6, 1942; André Honnorat to Jérôme Carcopino, February 4, 1942.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ AN, AJ16, 7033. Note addressed to the Préfecture de la Seine by the Paris Kommandantur, April 20, 1942.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Details of destruction: AN, AJ16, 7028. Statistical information sheet for East and West parks, 1 May 1943.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ AN, AJ16, 7033. Report on damage to the Cité Universitaire estate and on the condition of the buildings, sent to Rector Gidel, March 28 and May 5, 1942.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ AN, 20,090,013/169. Total indemnities received amount to 10,000,627 francs for the Collège franco-britannique, the Maison des étudiants arméniens, the Maison des étudiants canadiens, the Fondation agronomique, the Résidence André de Gouveia, the Fondation hellénique, the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe and the Maison de Monaco. André Honnorat to Rector Gidel, August 6, 1943.</footnote>
constraints of Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime, the CIUP asserted its private identity and partial exterritoriality. As Auguste Desclos, deputy delegate general of the Fondation nationale, emphasized in 1941: "The Cité universitaire is not a creation of the State". Its founders are individuals, its pavilions are autonomous and managed by their deeds of foundation, and they have their own resources. The CIUP's raison d'être is not to offer more comfortable student accommodation than the garnis of the Latin Quarter. It is a "cultural work of worldwide scope", a national and international school of civic application.<fnref n="42" />

The German occupation of the CIUP came to a definitive end on August 23, 1944. It ended with the looting of the Maison internationale and the administrative building, which were shot at and machine-gunned, as well as the Fondation Belgo-Luxembourgeoise, where grenades started a fire. For several days, the buildings were thoroughly looted, both by the Germans and by the civilian staff they had taken into their service.<fnref n="43" /> Fighting with FFI resistance fighters who had taken up positions in Parc Montsouris resulted in grenades being thrown, machine-gun salvos and anti-tank cannon fire. The facades of Boulevard Jourdan still bear the scars today.

During this period of occupation, the German threat was reflected in 1943 and 1944 by increasing Gestapo surveillance and arrests of staff members, as the CIUP was the scene of anti-German attacks, particularly in autumn 1942.<fnref n="44" /> The resistance action of Jeanne Thomas, André Honnorat's secretary at the Fondation Nationale, made the CIUP a rallying point for international academic resistance. Supporting the Czechoslovak resistance movement, she succeeded in obtaining false university registrations and scholarships for international students who had joined the resistance. Her contact was Czech communist Milos Nekvasil (1910–2001). Trained in Moscow at the International Leninist School, he joined the International Brigades in Spain, as an active member of the clandestine Immigrant Labor Organization (MOI). Interned in 1939 after Franco's victory, he managed to escape and joined the Resistance in Paris. In 1942, thanks to Jeanne Thomas, he obtained a student

<footnote n="42">⁴² AN, AJ16, 7041. Auguste Desclos, "Du rôle de la Cité universitaire dans la formation de la jeunesse d'après-guerre", October 1941.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ AN, AJ16, 7031. The Cité Universitaire since June 1940.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Henri Michel, *Paris résistant*, Paris, Albin Michel, 1982, p. 168.</footnote>
registration in sociology and an employee certificate at the CIUP.<fnref n="45" /> This network also included Milos Nekvasil and Maître André Bossin, a member of the Palais de Justice Resistance group, who organized attacks and sabotage.<fnref n="46" /> Lectures given by André Mazon (1881–1967), President of the Institut d'études slaves and Professor at the Collège de France, provided a forum for clandestine meetings and exchanges between Czechoslovak resistance circles and Jeanne Thomas.<fnref n="47" /> She narrowly escaped the Gestapo when they came to CIUP to arrest her. Less fortunate was M. Collard, the Maison d'Argentine bursar, who was arrested and imprisoned in Fresnes prison, near Paris. Another Foundation secretary, Mlle Neyssel, was deported to Germany. The director of the Maison de l'Indochine, Roger Bauduin de Belleval, a Chartist graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a journalist on colonial issues, who quickly joined the Resistance, was shot by the Germans in July 1944.<fnref n="48" />

Officially, the CIUP's activities focused on helping and supporting French and foreign university students<fnref n="49" />: letter-writing support and the regular dispatch of book parcels to 350 former residents imprisoned in stalags and offlags, food parcels for former Polish, Czech and Yugoslav residents still in Paris, the provision of a heated work room in the administrative building, and occasional meetings. In the name of student preventive medicine and the fight against tuberculosis, the Service médical benefited from the support of the Vichy regime, particularly from 1942

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ Milos Nekvasil, “Témoignage sur la résistance tchécoslovaque en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale,” *Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps*, vol. 31, 1993, pp. 47–56. At the same time, his wife took refuge in the Foyer des étudiantes in the Latin Quarter.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ AN, 72AJ 8/27. Note by André Bossin on the Palais de Justice group in Paris and liaison with the Czechoslovak resistance, September 5, 1949. Liora Israël, “La résistance dans les milieux judiciaires. Collective action and professional identities in wartime,” *Genèses*, n°45, 2001/4, pp. 45–68.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ Graceffa Agnès, “De l’entraide universitaire sous l’Occupation: la correspondance de Marc Bloch avec André Mazon (décembre 1940—juillet 1941)”, *Revue historique*, vol. 674, 2015, pp. 383–412.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ A la mémoire de Roger Bauduin de Belleval, directeur de la maison de l'Indochine, héroïs de la résistance fusillé par les Allemands le 13 juillet 1944 à Nantua et des anciens résidents de la maison de l'Indochine morts pour la France, Paris, 1946. AN, 20,090,013/141; AN, AJ16, 7031. Fondation nationale, moral report for 1944.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ HOCHARD C., “Étudiants et lycéens dans la guerre et l’occupation”, J.-P. LEGOIS, A. MONCHABLON, R. MORDER, *Cent ans de mouvements étudiants*, Paris, Syllepse, 2007, pp. 59–69.</footnote>
onwards. André Honnorat himself was a leading figure in interwar health policy,<fnref n="50" /> who had been arguing since 1930 for the introduction of medical surveillance at the CIUP, using the argument of the establishment's prestige and the “shame” that France would represent if it proved incapable of ensuring the health of international students.<fnref n="51" /> At the same time, this service at the CIUP was used to hide students “for political and racial reasons”, with the two doctors in charge producing numerous certificates of overeating, or to remove students from the German Compulsory Labor Service. To escape the Gestapo's enquiries, one of them, Dr. Lacourbe, went underground in 1944.<fnref n="52" />

In its relations with the Vichy regime, the CIUP mobilized a capital of sympathy or protection by valorizing part of its identity and its missions compatible with the ideology of the National Revolution: the dream of a student community, hygienism and moral and physical regeneration, national influence and a tool of France's international policy. Things are actually more ambivalent. André Honnorat was one of the few senators to abstain on July 10, 1940, when Marshal Pétain was given full powers, and the fight against international cosmopolitanism was one of the creeds of the new regime. The new regime's anti-Semitic policies had a direct impact on the CIUP. The Aryanization of the Banque des Intérêts Privés of the Deutsch de la Meurthe family, patrons of the CIUP's first foundation, began in the autumn of 1940.<fnref n="53" /> David David-Weill, a member of the board of directors and a major donor to the CIUP, heads the largest French family bank of international scope, Banque Lazard.<fnref n="54" /> The Fondation nationale holds shares and funds in this bank. He was stripped of his nationality and fled to Portugal in the autumn of 1940. Staff identified as

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ AN, 20,090,013/286. André Honnorat to M. Gas, Director of Assistance and Hygiene, March 3, 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ President since 1925 of the Comité national de défense contre la tuberculose, member of the assembly and then the board of directors of the Institut Pasteur. Guillaume Tronchet, *André Honnorat. Un visionnaire en politique*, Paris, Hémisphères/ Maisonneuve & Larose, 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² AN, AJ16, 7031. Fondation nationale, moral report for 1944.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ Jean-Marc Dreyfus, *Pillages sur ordonnances. Aryanisation et restitution des banques en France, 1940-1953*, Paris, Fayard, 2003, pp. 204-207.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ David David-Weill (1871-1952). A banker and philanthropist, he is known for his donations of works of art to French and foreign museums, universities and libraries. DÉROUGEMONT G., *Lazard Frères: banquiers des deux mondes, 1840-1939*, Paris, Fayard, 2011.</footnote>
Jewish at the National Foundation were laid off in the autumn of 1940. Such was the case of archivist and historian Camille Bloch (1865–1949), to whom André Honnorat had entrusted the design of the CIUP library, opened in 1937.<fnref n="55" /> Finally, the economic Aryanization law of July 1941 directly affected the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe as a “Jewish association”, due to the presence on its board of directors of members of the Deutsch de la Meurthe family.

This did not prevent the Fondation nationale from also benefiting from the regime's protection, notably after André Honnorat's personal meeting with Marshal Pétain in December 1941, and from mobilizing the international academic networks inherited from the interwar period.<fnref n="56" /> The most illuminating example is the Foyer international des étudiantes du Quartier latin, which, as mentioned above, remained active throughout the war and the Occupation. The Foyer is the heir to the work founded in 1906 by Grace Whitney Hoff (Student Hostel of the Christian Union of Anglo-American Girls). It became an international hostel for female students in 1928. In May 1936, a deed of gift transferred the work to the University of Paris, which appointed the Fondation nationale of the CIUP as its trustee.<fnref n="57" /> Since 1920, it has been directed by Sarah Watson (1885–1959), a history teacher. An American from South Carolina, she came to Paris with American troops in June 1918. She is assisted by Marcelle Fournier.<fnref n="58" />

By 1940, the Foyer was home to over a hundred international students and a university restaurant that prepared nearly 700 meals a day. Sarah Watson decided to stay on. A tug-of-war soon ensued with the Student Department of the Vichy Youth Secretariat, which intended to control the Foyer, arguing in particular that it had a mandate to manage the capital's university restaurants. In December 1941, the United States'

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ Camille Bloch, *La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris*, Paris, Conciliation internationale, 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ AN, AJ16, 7033. Occupation of the Cité, 1940–1944. André Honnorat to Jérôme Carcopino, February 4, 1942.</footnote>

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ AN, 20,090,013/123. Deed of donation dated May 6, 1936 to the University of Paris.</footnote>

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ AN, 20090013/123. *Er*Robert Garric's tribute to Sarah Watson on the occasion of her death, July 1 1959. Her archives are deposited at the South Carolina Library (Sarah Watson Papers, 1861–1967). Whitney Walton, *Internationalism, National Identities, and Study Abroad: France and the United States, 1890–1970*, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2010.</footnote>
entry into the war was seized as an opportunity by the government. Sarah Watson was given an ultimatum to leave the management team, and an internal investigation into Marcelle Fournier<sup>59</sup> led to a takeover of the Foyer. The active mobilization of André Honnorat and Auguste Desclos, who met personally with the Rector of the University of Paris, Gilbert Gidel, thwarted the attempt and affirmed the pre-eminence of the authority of the University of Paris over the ambitions of the Secrétariat à la Jeunesse.<sup>60</sup> A few weeks later, a new attempt to entrap the Foyer's management by fabricating false alcohol delivery certificates failed again.

In February 1942, the German Military Commission announced the occupation of the Foyer des étudiantes, and in September 1942, Sarah Watson was arrested and interned at Vittel. It was then through the Centre universitaire d'études hongroises in Paris, thanks to Auguste Desclos's personal links with Professor F. Grimm, the legal advisor to the German embassy in Paris<sup>61</sup> and, finally, through the direct intervention of the rector with the Hungarian consul general in Paris<sup>62</sup> that the Foyer escaped closure and its director was able to regain her freedom. Since 1933, Leopold (Lipot) Molnos-Müller has directed the Centre d'études hongroises, which provides material support for Hungarian students living in France<sup>63</sup>. Through him, Karl Epting was asked to intervene, both of them having worked closely with Sarah Watson in the 1930s in welcoming German and Hungarian students. Molnos was also directly involved in the unsuccessful 1929 project to found a Hungarian pavilion at the CIUP. Thus, Molnos took it upon himself to draw up a circumscribed list of all female students from Axis countries who had stayed at the Foyer between 1934 and 1940, to warn Karl Epting who also assured him of his personal support, and to have letters written by German and

<footnote n="59"><sup>59</sup> We know from Milos Nekvasil's testimony that Marcelle Fournier and Jeanne Thomas were closely linked by their clandestine activities and their proximity to Czech resistance circles.</footnote>

<footnote n="60"><sup>60</sup> AN, 20,090,013/123. André Honnorat to Recteur Gidel, December 15, 1941; Auguste Desclos to P. de Chevigny, December 23 and 30, 1941.</footnote>

<footnote n="61"><sup>61</sup> AN, 20,090,013/123. Mr. Binder-Kotrba, December 7, 1942.</footnote>

<footnote n="62"><sup>62</sup> LE CALLOC'H B. "Léopold Molnos, pionnier des relations culturelles franco-hongroises", *Association des anciens élèves de l'INALCO, Le Bulletin*, October 1998, pp. 81-88.</footnote>

<footnote n="63"><sup>63</sup> AN, 20,090,013/123. Auguste Desclos to Professor F. Grimm, November 12, 1942.</footnote>
Japanese students.<fnref n="64" /> All this led to a favorable resolution. In 1943 and 1944, Honnorat and Desclos reinforced the Fondation Nationale's direct protection of the Foyer des étudiantes, relying firmly on the deed of donation of 1936 and the support of the Paris rectorate.

It can be seen, therefore, that the discourse on the CIUP's interna-
tional ideal was replaced in the period under consideration by a legalistic
discourse based on the founding acts of the foreign houses and of the
Fondation nationale itself vis-à-vis the political authorities. International
student mobility was obviously severely affected by the global conflict.
However, the academic networks of the interwar period, whether in Axis
or Allied countries, worked to protect the CIUP and the Foyer des étudi-
antes in the Latin Quarter. What's more, a number of these international
academic networks coincided with a mobility of involvement in the Euro-
pean resistance to Nazism. By understanding the CIUP as a complex
social space, we can avoid prejudging the unity of view of the actors who
make it up, and highlight the tensions that run through it. In this respect,
the period of the war and the Vichy regime is a revealing "moment".
This period reveals the fragility of international academic mobility in the
face of dictatorships and global conflict. It also shows that transnational
academic networks and long-term interpersonal links, such as private law
foundations, are resources in their own right in times of peril.

**Conflict of Interest** The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.

<footnote n="64">⁶⁴ AN, 20,090,013/123. Léopold Molnos to Sarah Watson, February 25, 1942; note of October 28, 1942 on the Foyer's German, Austrian and Hungarian students (364 in all); note of November 14 concerning all Axis students.</footnote>
**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /></figure>

# The end of the war and the American presence at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (1944–1950)

*Elisa Capdevila*

From 1944, the date of its liberation, to 1950, the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) embarked on a process of reconstruction and return to civilian life. Although liberated from German occupying troops, the CIUP was not immediately returned to its original purpose, as it was initially taken over by the American army. Paradoxically, the return to civilian and student life that the CIUP's managers had hoped for was both slowed down and supported by the United States' involvement in this end-of-war phase. After housing its troops at the end of 1944, the U.S. Army sent student soldiers to the CIUP to await demobilization, whose very status symbolized the slow conversion of the CIUP. This end of the war was also supported by the United States Foundation, which from 1946 encouraged the return of American students to Paris.

<footnote>E. Capdevila (✉)
Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, Versailles, France
e-mail: elisacapdevila@gmail.com</footnote>
The history of the American presence<fnref n="1" /> at the CIUP must be understood in conjunction with the rich historiography of American “expatriation” to Paris. The American students who joined the CIUP at the time of the Liberation were part of a long history that established Paris as a major training center for the American elite, and whose appeal was reinforced in the interwar period by the arrival of writers from the Lost Generation, avant-garde artists and numerous black American musicians and dancers. The enduring presence of Americans, particularly artists and intellectuals who often came to Paris as students before and after the Second World War, was the subject of numerous cultural representations that perpetuated an American myth of Paris;<fnref n="2" /> the City of Light thus occupies a singular place in the history of American arts, which was challenged in the Cold War decades by the advent of American art, concomitant with the worldwide deployment of American *soft power*. Far from the central districts—from Montparnasse to Saint-Germain-des-Prés—where the “new expatriates” flocked from 1946 onwards, the CIUP has escaped the studies devoted to this renewal of the American presence in Paris. Yet it is an integral part of a history whose diversity and complexity has been demonstrated by numerous studies in recent decades.

These are part of a vast historiographical trend attentive to circulations on an international scale, which has renewed, in the field of cultural history, the study of Americanization—conceived, not as a simple diffusion of American productions or models, but as the product of exchanges, involving individuals and institutions, originating in the United States but also in host countries.<fnref n="3" /> The attention paid to the phenomena of cultural

<footnote n="1">¹ For convenience, the term “American” refers to the United States. This article is a modified and translated version of: “Sortie de guerre et présence américaine à la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (1944–1950)”, in D. Kévonian, G. Tronchet (dir.), *La Babel étudiante. La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, 1920–1950*, Rennes, PUR, 2013, p. 143–162.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² These include the works of the Lost Generation and, in the immediate post-war period, Vincente Minnelli’s 1951 musical *An American in Paris*. On this subject, see Gerald Kennedy, *Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity*, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993 and Vanessa Schwartz, *It’s so French! Hollywood, Paris and the making of cosmopolitan culture*, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ See, for example, Ludovic Tournès, *Américanisation. Une histoire mondiale (XVIIIe-XXe siècle)*, Paris, Fayard, 2020 and Victoria De Grazia, *Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth-century Europe*, Cambridge (Mass.), Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. We have chosen to cite just a few of the most important works, mainly on Americans in Europe or, more specifically, in Paris. Given the vast bibliography</footnote>
transfers and artistic exchanges has also led to a decompartmentalization of American art history; encouraged also on the French side by the reappraisal of the dynamism of the post-war Parisian art scene, recent studies have shed light on the trajectories of expatriates, who until then had remained on the margins of a history previously approached from an essentially national angle.⁴

At the crossroads of social history, cultural history and art history, a number of studies have highlighted the diversity of the American presence in Paris, with particular emphasis on minorities—women, homosexuals and black Americans (following the pioneering studies of Michel Fabre and Tyler Stovall⁵)—and the importance, in individual trajectories, of the Parisian sojourn as a moment of formation and distancing from the American homeland. They have also highlighted the political dimension of this expatriation, and raised the question of the role of expatriates in the Americanization process.⁶ These studies are linked to a broader reflection on American influence in Europe and the world, and on the contacts between Americans and foreign hosts generated by individual mobility and the

in this field, it is impossible to provide an exhaustive overview in the context of this article.

⁴ See Wanda Corn, *The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915–1935*, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999. Several exhibitions have been devoted to Americans in Paris; for example: Sophie Lévy (dir.), *Paris, capitale de l'Amérique: l'avant-garde américaine à Paris, 1918-1939*, Giverny, Museum of American Art, A. Biro, 2003; Lynn Gumpert and Debra Bricker Balken (dir.), *Americans in Paris. Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962*, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2022; *United States of abstraction: American artists in France, 1946-1964*, Musée d'arts de Nantes-Musée Fabre, Montpellier, Paris, Beaux-Arts Editions, 2021.

⁵ Michel Fabre, *La Rive noire: de Harlem à la Seine*, Paris, Lieu commun, 1985 and Tyler Stovall, *Paris noir: African Americans in the city of light*, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Several books have been devoted to black American musicians and artists, including: Ludovic Tournès, *New Orleans sur Seine: histoire du jazz en France*, Paris, Fayard, 1999; Theresa Leininger-Müller, *New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934*, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2001. On women, and the role of Paris in individual careers, see Alice Kaplan, *Three American Women in Paris. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Angela Davies, Susan Sontag*, Paris, Gallimard, 2012.

⁶ Notably Brooke L. Blower, *Becoming Americans in Paris. Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars*, New York, Oxford University Press, 2011.
deployment abroad of American institutions (state and non-state) in the context of the Liberation and the Cold War.<fnref n="7" />

Among these many “Americans in Paris”, students appear to be a major category, in full expansion after the Second World War, and yet still little studied as such—except through certain places or through individual itineraries.<fnref n="8" /> On the bangs of Paris, the CIUP appears to be an ideal observation post from which to study these “Americans of Paris” and, more broadly, the American presence in the capital, at a critical moment in the history of the CIUP, but also in the history of the American presence in Paris, and more broadly on an international scale, as it played out on military, political, and cultural levels.

To this end, we have consulted institutional sources from the CIUP's rich holdings at Paris,<fnref n="9" /> which shed light on the issues at stake in the return of Americans to the CIUP, for the directors of the CIUP and the Fondation des États-Unis on the one hand, and the authorities, both French and American, on the other. These sources are supplemented by the testimony of John Breon, an American soldier-student, whose correspondence, particularly extensive for the 1944–1946 period, is preserved in the archives of the Beineke Library at Yale.<fnref n="10" /> His letters go some way to filling the gap left by the absence of residents in the institutional archives; they provide an insight into the experience of one of them, describing life at the CIUP from the inside during the difficult years of reconstruction, and offer an individual point of view that complements the general view of the CIUP's operations.

A reading of these archives reveals the difficulties of the return to civilian life for this international student city, and the tensions between the players involved in this reconstruction process aimed at reviving the CIUP's internationalist project. Behind the apparent consensus of

<footnote n="7">⁷ On the war and the Liberation see in particular Mary Louise Roberts, *What Soldiers do—Sex and the American GI in World War II France*, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2013.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ See in particular: Nelcya Delanoë, *Le Raspail Vert. The American Center in Paris, 1934–1994*, Paris, Seghers, 1994.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ Archives du Rectorat de Paris, CIUP (AJ16 7033, 7039, 7049) and Archives de la CIUP, Fondation nationale et archives des maisons rattachées (20090013 and 20090014), deposited at the Archives nationales (AN).</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ John Breon Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.</footnote>
a return to civilian life and to the CIUP's primary mission—meetings and exchanges between students of different nationalities—there are also much more national issues at stake, crucial for the two countries concerned here, in terms of *soft power*: between promoting French culture to the soldiers of the Liberation and defending and spreading an American model of prosperity, the reconstruction of the CIUP bears the marks of the transition from a time of war to a time of peace and renewed prosperity, but also from a world war to a new Cold War.

## AMERICANS IN THE CIUP: A DIFFICULT END TO THE WAR (1944–1946)

The United States has been an integral part of the CIUP's history from the outset. The first designers of the CIUP drew inspiration from the American campus model in defining their initial project<fnref n="11" /> and it was a donation from American billionaire John D. Rockefeller in 1929 that enabled the construction of the Maison Internationale, the central building of the CIUP.<fnref n="12" /> This influence, both ideological and financial, remained strong after the Second World War. In 1949, during budget discussions with the French government, the CIUP's directors recalled the exceptional gesture of the American philanthropist to encourage the government to become more involved: they pointed out that this donation of 3.5 million dollars (or one and a half billion francs in 1949) had enabled the creation of a house, a veritable “grand ‘club’ of the Cité U<fnref n="13" />”, including a library, a theater, a reception hall, a swimming pool and a restaurant. A second donation from American philanthropist Homer Gage financed the construction of the Fondation des États-Unis<fnref n="14" /> in 1927.

Inaugurated in April 1930, it was primarily intended for American students pursuing higher education, as well as for overseas professors and

<footnote n="11">¹¹ On this subject, see Lemoine Bertrand, *La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, Paris, Hervas, 1990*, pp. 29–31.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² AN 20090013, art. 35. See the general delegation’s activity reports for 1929 and 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ AN, AJ16 7033, Note sur les questions d’ordre budgétaire relatives à la fondation nationale de la Cité universitaire, April 8, 1949.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ AN, AJ167039. Donation dated April 9, 1927. See in particular the contract preserved in the archives of the Fondation des États-Unis.</footnote>
researchers visiting the French capital. It also welcomed French students in a proportion equivalent to the number of American students accommodated in the French foundations. This early American investment in the CIUP is indicative of the influence acquired by the United States in cultural relations, before the Cold War and through American philanthropy; it also bears witness to the singular place of Paris in American culture and the attraction exerted on the American elite by the City of Light, whose role as a cultural capital on an international scale was reinforced by the support of American patrons for artists<fnref n="15" /> and the capital's cultural institutions.

*The Arrival of the Americans in 1944: A New Military Occupation of the CIUP*

At the Liberation, however, the presence of the Americans exacerbated the difficulties encountered by the CIUP in rebuilding itself. The challenge for the directors was to return the CIUP to its original vocation: welcoming students rather than housing armed troops. In their eyes, this mission was of the utmost importance: it represented a real duty to a generation of students who had had to leave the CIUP because of the war, some of whom had just returned from the maquis or the camps. Aware of the failure that the war had represented for the CIUP, Deputy Delegate General Auguste Desclos and President André Honnorat set themselves the goal of returning the CIUP to the students, and thus re-establishing, perhaps redeeming, an ideal that had been close to failure.<fnref n="16" />

The plan initially presented by the American authorities was in line with their wishes, as they envisaged establishing an army study center in Paris. The plan was for the CIUP to house the *GI's* attending this center. The transition would be easy for the CIUP, which would thus be able to move from war to peace while helping the Allies, with the Americans also undertaking to carry out the most urgent work to restore the occupied foundations and houses. Studied from September to November 1944, this project gave rise to fairly extensive negotiations, which soon became

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Many Parisian avant-garde artists owed their success to American support, from the Impressionists to Matisse and Picasso. On this subject see Bénédicte Joyeux-Prunel, *Les avant-gardes artistiques (1848-1918): une histoire transnationale*, Paris, Folio Histoire, 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ See Dzovinar Kévonian's contribution in this volume.</footnote>
complicated. In the end, the project was abandoned in the face of the necessities of war: as hostilities did not cease as quickly as expected, the American army had to house a greater number of soldiers than it had originally envisaged. For their part, the CIUP authorities refused to postpone the creation of the study center, for fear of compromising the reception of students at the start of the 1945 academic year, which remained their primary objective.<fnref n="17" />

The CIUP was finally occupied by the American army. At first, the American military presence was limited: in August 1944, only a few units and the DCA headquarters occupied the CIUP. In November 1944, several buildings were requisitioned for executive schools (the International House, the United States Foundation, the Belgian Foundation and the Franco-British College<fnref n="18" />). Gradually, other units followed, and by December 1944, the entire CIUP was occupied by American troops, for a total of some 6600 men.<fnref n="19" /> This occupation lasted until September 1945, and entailed payment by the Allies of a requisition indemnity (as had previously been the case with the Germans) and reimbursement for work undertaken at their request to restore the buildings.

The attitude of the new occupants is hard to pin down, as reports and letters from the CIUP remain rather laconic on the subject. Relations between the U.S. military authorities and the City's leaders appeared to be fairly tense, stumbling over the question of compensation payments (an issue that remained unresolved at the end of the 1940s<fnref n="20" />). The amicable tone of the initial negotiations was abandoned, although this did not

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ On these negotiations and the American requisition, see the activity reports of the Fondation de la Cité Universitaire and the claims file in the CTU archives. AN, 20090013, art. 35 and 171.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ AN, 20090013, art. 171, Requisition orders dated December 17 and November 7, 1944, signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Hendricks.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ AN, 20090013, art. 171, Note entitled "La Cité universitaire depuis juin 1940", dated summer 1944. In the same file, see the undated note entitled "Les différentes phases d'occupation de la Cité universitaire pendant la guerre".</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Between 1945 and 1947, the valuation of the indemnity owed by the Americans was disputed. The discussion centered on the valuation of the work carried out at the occupier's request, the costs of which were borne by the occupier; they were in fact covered by the French state, which was then reimbursed by the United States under the lend-lease law. According to a letter from the intendance des réquisitions, dated October 27, 1947, the United States had to pay 12,445,102 francs to the CIUP as compensation for deprivation of use. AN, AJ16 7033.</footnote>
mean that relations had completely deteriorated. Letters from the Amer-
ican army, which in September-November 1944 presented the image of
a benevolent liberation army, sensitive to the CIUP's civil and pacifist
aims, gradually took on a more administrative tone. However, only one
complaint is recorded in the archives: it was lodged by the director of
the Dutch College, who violently denounced the American occupation,
which he considered worse than the previous one.<fnref n="21" />

Over and above the damage caused—which corresponded to a short-
term occupation by visiting troops<fnref n="22" />—the situation was of great concern
to the CIUP authorities, as it ran counter to their mission and perpet-
uated the period of war, which they would have liked to see come to
an end as quickly as possible. Letters from the company’s directors bear
witness to their concerns. As much as, if not more than, the material
consequences, it was the moral aspect of the situation that worried them.
In a letter to André Honnorat and Jean Branet dated November 9, 1944,
Auguste Desclos, deputy delegate general of the CIUP national founda-
tion, stressed the material damage that could be caused by the American
High Command’s new plan to house some 600 furloughed workers in
unoccupied houses, by doubling the number of beds in the Maison des
provinces de France. For the CIUP, he said, this would be “a second
catastrophe<fnref n="23" />”, both morally and materially. In a letter dated November
29, President Honnorat stated that the American occupation, for purely

<footnote n="21">²¹ The director complained of theft of furniture by the Americans. The Dutch College had been occupied during the war by the German General Staff. See letters from the Director of the Collège néerlandais to the Rector of the University of Paris, December 6, 1945, and to the Chief Accountant of the Fondation nationale de la Cité universitaire, July 4, 1949. AN, 20090013, art. 171.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² A letter dated December 8, for example, refers to damage caused by the passage of troops and the comings and goings of trucks on the west islet. A U.S. Army memorandum dated March 14, 1945, reminds troops not to damage equipment (unused furniture should be stored under cover).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ He writes: “As much as it would be in the interest of the Cité Universitaire, the University of Paris and France to have an American university center operating here, it would be regrettable to see successive batches of furloughed students. From a moral point of view, there would be no benefit for us or for the country. From a material point of view, the presence of permissionnaires from fighting troops made up of rather rough men who would be here without any supervision, with the sole aim of having fun in their own way, and taking turns from one week to the next, could only lead to great disorder and considerable damage in the Cité. It would be a second catastrophe for us.” AN, AJ16 7039, Letter from Desclos to Honnorat and Branet, November 9, 1944.</footnote>
military purposes, no longer offered any of the “moral and material advan-
tages<fnref n="24" />” initially hoped for. The disappointment of these leaders, who had
believed in the promises of a rapid return to civilian life, is palpable, as
the American army laconically replied that it had itself gambled on a more
rapid victory.<fnref n="25" />

*The American “Second Occupation”: The U.S. Army Study Center*
*(1945–1946)*

In August 1945, the main foundations were finally evacuated, putting an end to the military occupation, but not to the presence of the American army at the CIUP, which had set up a training center for its students there in April. By its very nature, this American “second occupation” was completely different from the first, and marked a genuine transition from the era of war to that of peace. It involved only two buildings, the United States Foundation and the House of Japan, whose premises were made available to the U.S. Army Study Center from April 1945. Officially requisitioned from September 13, 1944 to March 25, 1946²⁶, these two houses were in fact occupied by student soldiers until April 12, under a private arrangement between the American authorities and the CIUP. They were not completely vacated until July 1946, in time for the start of the 1946–1947 academic year.

This occupation, which was limited and gentler than the previous one,
marked the beginning of the return to civilian life. The mentality of these
students, ex-GIs awaiting demobilization, was very different from that of
their predecessors. Born in 1923, John Breon was one of these veterans,
held back in France by the war's end and offered training by the US Army
pending their return home. Stationed in Germany until October 1945, he
arrived in Paris under an agreement between the U.S. Army and COFBA

<footnote n="24">²⁴ AN, AJ16 7039, Letter from André Honnorat to René Capitant, November 29, 1944.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ According to André Honnorat’s letter of November 29, 1944, this was the reply received by Auguste Desclos, who had come to relay the disappointment of CIUP leaders to the American military authorities. In 1946, Rector André Lirondelle spoke of the “delicate period of American presence” that followed the years of German occupation. AN, 20090013, art. 35, Report of the Board of Directors, May 21, 1946.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Initially, they were only requisitioned for a brief period from September 15, 1945 to November 1, 1946.</footnote>
(le Comité Français de Bienvenue aux Armées alliées), which financed the project. From November to December 1945, he took courses at IDHEC (Institut Des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques) and French civilization at the Sorbonne. Initially based in a hotel in the Montparnasse district, he was offered a position at the CIUP at the end of November 1945. He stayed there until the summer of 1946, when he returned to the United States.

The letters he sent to his mother recount his first impressions of the city, which amazed him, his classes and the CIUP. They express the pride of this former soldier turned student, who was surrounded by future doctors, professors, musicians and artists of the world, and attended classes at the prestigious Sorbonne University. The program he followed was indicative of a cultural policy which, under the guise of exchanges between allies, also aimed to promote the image of the host country, in a revived *soft power* perspective. The program's primary objective, although it combined theoretical courses and practical initiation—and for John Breon led to the production of a documentary for COFBA—was neither professional nor academic: it was first and foremost to introduce these young Americans to French culture, and in particular to cinema, considered to be one of its jewels.

In his case, the training paid off handsomely. At first, John Breon was delighted with what he learned. He chose to take advantage of the opportunity to extend his studies, and enrolled in the Sorbonne's literature program for the second half of the academic year (January to June 1946).<fnref n="27" /> His correspondence bears witness to this young American intellectual's interest in Parisian cultural life. From the moment of his arrival, he assiduously frequented the capital's cultural landmarks, notably the Louvre and the Opéra—about which he spoke to his mother with a shared sense of familiarity. This stay was also an opportunity for him to meet fellow expatriates: he soon came into contact with Gertrude Stein, who had remained in France during the war and with whom he became close.<fnref n="28" /> Little by little, he got to know a whole cosmopolitan, avant-garde world. While his career path is singular in this respect, it nevertheless

<footnote n="27">²⁷ He was awarded a 4,000-franc scholarship.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ He met her while on leave in Paris, between October 16 and 18, 1945 before joining the study program. He later explained to his mother that he had received her help to enroll at the Sorbonne; his subsequent correspondence records regular meetings with Gertrude Stein, as well as with Alice B. Toklas, Stein's companion.</footnote>
confirms the attraction of the French capital for this generation of veterans inspired by the myth of the Lost Generation.

## THE RETURN OF AMERICAN STUDENTS TO THE UNITED STATES FOUNDATION WITHIN THE CIUP: FROM THE SECOND WORLD WAR TO THE COLD WAR (1946–1950)

### *American Students Return to the United States Foundation*

Despite rationing, the American students who stayed at the Fondation des États-Unis in the post-war years found relatively privileged living and studying conditions, compared to those experienced by their compatriots who crowded into the dilapidated hotels of the Latin Quarter.<fnref n="29" /> In John Breon's early letters, the CIUP thus appears in a particularly positive light, as much for the relative comfort it offered as for the international atmosphere that prevailed there.

After initially sharing a room with another American student, in March 1946 he obtained a single room, a real luxury at the time. Despite restrictions on heating and hot water,<fnref n="30" /> he was delighted with the comfort of his room and the atmosphere of the Foundation, every detail of which he appreciated. Here's how he described it to his mother:

> The sounds of the place: a subway across the street and at regular intervals the [sound] of the train going to and from Paris—we're on the edge of the city here -; in the hall, the music of a string quartet rehearsing, Conservatory boys practicing, an occasional trumpet, they're rehearsing, discussions, endless discussions about music, art, literature; the bell of the handcarts in the street; the [noise] of the horns; the cry of the woman

<footnote n="29">²⁹ For more specific examples, please refer to our book. Elisa Capdevila, *Des Américains à Paris. Artistes et bohèmes dans la France de l'après-guerre*, Paris, Armand Colin, 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ In December 1946, heating and hot water could only be used once a day. The use of hot water was then limited to Saturdays and Sundays (according to a letter from March 1946). John Breon complained little about these inconveniences, pointing out that the temperature in his room remained quite bearable as long as he kept the windows closed, and that he could always use the showers at the International House, the Belgian building or the Columbia Club Red Cross, on days when there was no hot water at the Foundation. See letters of December 9, 1945 and March 29, 1946, John Breon Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.</footnote>
selling hot chestnuts across the street; the sound of water in the showers;
the maids vacuuming; it's superb. The friends here are really nice<fnref n="31" /> ...

He also emphasized the international spirit of the CIUP, to which he
seemed particularly sensitive: he sent his parents postcards representing
the different pavilions that made up the CIUP, after having duly visited
each of them<fnref n="32" />, and said he enjoyed meeting foreign students. Unlike
the first, this American "second occupation", in which John Breon took
part, was perfectly in keeping with the CIUP's internationalist ideal of
encounters and exchanges between nations.

His letters also corroborate the Foundation's moral reports, which
praised the living conditions offered to the residents. In 1947, the Board
of Directors emphasized that the students, the vast majority of whom
were American,<fnref n="33" /> seemed both happy and serious: "The house is heated
morning and evening, hot water is given on Wednesday evenings and
Saturday mornings, and all this certainly contributes to this atmosphere
of contentment<fnref n="34" />". The report also noted the resumption of social and
cultural life, on the initiative of the Students' Committee: in particular,
Saturday evening dances and Sunday afternoon tea dances were orga-
nized. Every evening, students gathered in the Woolley lounge to listen
to music, an activity supported by the Foundation, which had set up two
music studios in basement rooms. The library was open again, every day
from 5 to 11 pm, and a lecture series was to be organized next term
by the Committee. The resumption of seemingly normal activities on a
university campus symbolized for the Foundation's leaders, as well as for
soldiers-turned-students like John Breon, the return to normal life and
the end of the war.

However, this return to civilian life was not without its difficulties,
either for the Foundation or for its residents. The Foundation was
faced with major difficulties. While its situation was to some extent less
worrying than that of other houses (in 1946, it received an additional
donation of $5000 from the widow of patron Homer Gage, and also

<footnote n="31">³¹ Letter dated December 6, 1945, John Breon Papers.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² Letters dated January 2 and 5, 1946. It describes the Japanese and British pavilions he visited. John Breon Papers.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ The Foundation housed 155 male and 158 female students, including 108 Americans.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ AN, AJ16 7039, Rapport moral du conseil d'administration, December 19, 1947.</footnote>
benefited from material donations from the U.S. army<sup>35</sup>), like other houses and foundations, it encountered major financial problems.<sup>36</sup> Its directors,<sup>37</sup> seeking to cope with the most urgent repairs,<sup>38</sup> encouraged the return of American students. In 1946, they began recruiting students from universities across the Atlantic. Following a visit by Mrs. Lowrie, the wife of the Foundation's director, several Midwestern universities promised to send students wishing to come to France for the start of the 1946–1947 academic year.<sup>39</sup> The Institute of International Education also undertook to promote stays at the CIUP among American students.<sup>40</sup>

The Wooley scholarships, offered by the Foundation and intended for American students only, were reinstated in 1947.<sup>41</sup> Six students received this aid, worth 1000 francs for 1947–1948, then four the following year. In 1950, the arrival of the first Fulbright students, benefiting from an American government grant of 1300 to 1400 francs, marked a real return to peace. Fifty places were reserved for them for the month of orientation

<footnote n="35"><sup>35</sup> In exchange for these donations (consisting of office and kitchen equipment as well as records, musical instruments and sports equipment), the US Foundation paid 300,000 francs to the American Army Relief—a price well below the actual value of the donated goods. See the inventory dated April 25, 1946 and the letter to the French authorities dated October 10, 1947, AN, 20090014, art. 95. On Mrs. Gage's donation, see the documents relating to the management of the Foundation. AN, AJ16 7040.</footnote>

<footnote n="36"><sup>36</sup> In a letter to the rector of the University of Paris, the Foundation's treasurer, Bernard S. Carter, mentions “heavy payments in excess of 4,000,000 francs to refurbish the Fonda- tion des États-Unis (central heating, paintwork, etc.)”. AN, AJ16 7040, Letter dated October24, 1946. On war-related damage, see also the files by foundation in the CIUP archives. AN, 20090013, art. 167.</footnote>

<footnote n="37"><sup>37</sup> The Foundation's directors were Donald Lowrie (from October 1945 to August 1947) and Donald King (from August 1947 to June 1953).</footnote>

<footnote n="38"><sup>38</sup> In particular, the Foundation decided to increase room rental prices, in line with the increases charged by other homes. AN, AJ16 7039, Report of the Board of Directors, meeting of July 24, 1946.</footnote>

<footnote n="39"><sup>39</sup> See in particular the report of the Board of Directors, meeting of July 24, 1946. It is mentioned that several Midwestern universities “are considering sending their Junior Year students to Paris starting in 1947–1948”.</footnote>

<footnote n="40"><sup>40</sup> The 1946 report states, “Dr. Duggan and the Institute of International Education continue to take a keen interest in the United States Foundation and are prepared to direct as many American students to it as possible.”.</footnote>

<footnote n="41"><sup>41</sup> Decision taken by the 1947 Board of Directors (meeting of July 18). AN, AJ16 7039.</footnote>
(in October) and twenty-five single rooms were offered to them for the
academic year. In the end, ten would benefit from this offer.

American students, who numbered 131 in 1946-1947 (11.7% of the total foreign student body<fnref n="42" />), formed the largest foreign community at the CIUP: supported by various scholarship programs,<fnref n="43" /> they neverthe-less represented only a small proportion of the American students who returned to Paris.

John Breon's letters also reveal the difficulties faced by these Amer-ican students, who were nonetheless privileged in many ways. In addition to government scholarships and access to the CIUP, they had access to the resources of American expatriates, which were not insignificant in a context of rationing—access to the Army's PX store and recourse to the black market, which John Breon mentions several times. This comfort-able situation made Breon aware of his country's economic superiority, but it also led him to question the validity of a model whose essentially materialistic aim he regretted.<fnref n="44" />

<footnote n="42">⁴² In July 1946, just as John Breon was leaving Paris, the United States Foundation welcomed 148 students, both French and foreign. American residents at CIUP numbered 172 for 1946-1947, 206 and 207 in subsequent years. Not all stayed at the Fondation des États-Unis (which welcomed a total of 368 students in 1948-1949). On each occasion, they represented between 13 and 15% of the foreign student body. According to CIUP statistics, CAN 20090013, art. 507.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ There is no way of knowing whether and how many veterans benefiting from the GI Bill (a grant offered to former soldiers to facilitate their return to civilian life and covering, in particular, education costs) stayed at CIUP. However, the amount of this grant is mentioned in the minutes of the Board of Directors to prove that the increase in rent, refused by the students, was bearable by most American residents. We can therefore assume that the Foundation was expecting some of them. See the report of the Board of Directors, meeting of November 24, 1946. AN, AJ16 7039.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ This was the subject of a long letter to his mother on December 9. He wrote: "You say America is the only place—that we're young—this world here is old—that they expect us to feed and clothe and educate them—mother. I've seen and lived in both worlds. Americans are poverty stricken, in comparison. Of course, cars, refrigerators and all that—but our industrialism is tearing into the few fine, decent things America has—this is all too long to go into now, of course. But, Mother dearest, the old world, and the people here are rich,—in something Americans never can have. ... The French, mother, are not represented by the typical whores and thieves who the average American soldier seems capable—only capable—and desirous of finding. It's a tragedy—but the first place soldiers head in Paris is to Pigalle. ... America is rapidly becoming a nation without friends thru it's GIs and its "leaders"". Letter of December 9, 1945. John Breon Papers.</footnote>
*The United States Foundation and the Revival of Cultural Life
at the CIUP: American Soft Power?*

The Fondation des États-Unis played an important role in revitalizing the cultural and social life of the CIUP, thanks to the advantages it enjoyed over other residences, limited though they may be. In addition to the provision of equipment, particularly for music, the Foundation's directors payed close attention to the well-being of their tenants, in keeping with the attitude that prevailed on campuses across the Atlantic, where freedom and community life were combined under adult supervision. For example, the director organized parties in his apartment, during which he entertained students, ensuring that they felt at home at the Foundation.

The U.S. Foundation also supported the creation of a music club at the CIUP (one of the first clubs to resume activities after the war). Inaugurated before the war, it was aimed at all those interested in music: musicians, composers, professionals and amateurs, or simply listeners.<fnref n="45" /> While the management of the Maison internationale provided considerable assistance by lending its salons, the United States Foundation assumed responsibility for the project. From December 1949 onwards, the Foundation's cultural fund was used to pay one of the Foundation's residents, who was responsible for organizing musical activities for the entire CIUP, including recorded music auditions (held daily from 8.30 pm to 11 pm) and concerts given by CIUP students. The Foundation also made available to the Club its material resources—rooms, studios and a record library of over 600 titles, inherited from a 1938 Carnegie donation. From March 1949 onwards, the Foundation's Student Committee assumed responsibility for concert organization costs (such as the printing of advertising brochures). In November 1950, the Foundation's Music Club became the music section of the International Cultural Center, but remained on the premises of the United States Foundation.

American participation in the cultural life of the CIUP nevertheless respected the freedom and international spirit of the CIUP. The musical programs, for example, did not favor any particular style of music, but remained highly varied. The only evidence of the arrival of American mass culture at the CIUP is the gala organized in the first half of 1949,

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ On the creation of this club, see in particular the “note sur le club musical de la Cité universitaire” of November 6, 1950. AN, 20090013, art. 443.</footnote>
whose importance in terms of *soft power* is clear from the archives. The moral report on the event praises the success of the Yale Glee Club and, above all, the distribution of “coca-cola, iced chocolate and doughnuts, so popular with Americans, [which] delighted and appeased the international appetites of fifty nationalities, in the garden in the afternoon and in the evening at the grand ball<fnref n="46" />”. In 1949, the Student Committee decided to emphasize typically American holidays such as Thanksgiving and Halloween, and the report explains that these created a “spirit of sincere camaraderie<fnref n="47" />” between residents of different nationalities.

Certain details betray the emerging Cold War climate, and the Foundation’s directors’ desire, if not to promote American culture, at least to defend it more strongly. At a time when the United States was beginning to define a cultural policy for foreign countries (under the aegis of the USIA), the United States Foundation appeared as a showcase for the American model, in this case in the field of education, taking up the promise of the then burgeoning American universities of an education based in part on the liberal arts, rich in cultural and sporting activities and emancipating for the individual. This image of comfort and well-being, with which *colleges* were associated in popular American representations,<fnref n="48" /> was emphasized by the Foundation’s directors; it was also underlined by a Belgian daily newspaper that came to report on the American students at the CIUP.<fnref n="49" />

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ AN, AJ16 7039, Rapport moral du conseil d'administration, séance du 28 juin 1949.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ AN, AJ16 7039, *Rapport moral du conseil d'administration*, séance du 14 décembre 1949.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ See, for example, the cover of the *Saturday Evening Post* dated October 5, 1946, signed by Norman Rockwell and devoted to the arrival of veterans in American universities. https://prints.nrm.org/detail/260979/rockwell-willie-gillis-in-college-1946 [accessed March 19, 2023].</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ Jolyref R., “Par-delà l’Atlantique, Les étudiants américains retrouvent New York à Paris”, *Le Peuple*, Brussels, November 22, 1946 (preserved in the Foundation’s archives, AN, AJ16 7040). The article is highly laudatory, and at times resembles a veritable advertising brochure. Here’s how the American pavilion is described: “Such an important building (at least for Paris) would not house Americans if it were not comfortable. Central heating, bathroom. On each floor, studios for artists, laundry and ironing services, which ensure that every student always wears clean shirts and keeps a crease in his pants. Nothing is missing. Alongside the British and Dutch pavilions, the United States pavilion is the only one to welcome both young men and women. This particularity has earned it a certain renown among the 2,500 students housed in the Cité Universitaire. Its huge hall is also very famous in the “city of students”, and many of them [sic] come to spend comfortable</footnote>
From 1949 onwards, documentaries on loan from the American Embassy were shown, and it was decided that the cultural delegate of the Student Committee (elected in 1950) should preferably be of American nationality.<fnref n="50" /> Above all, the Foundation discreetly sought to respond to accusations of racism that could be leveled at American society.<fnref n="51" /> The 1950 moral report thus mentions that a conference was organized on the theme of the Black in American culture, presented by Mr. Butchor, a “black professor”, and that a concert was given by two “black” students, scholarship holders of the Foundation and the American government.<fnref n="52" /> By promoting cultural exchange—the eclecticism of its program was proof of this—and tolerance and equality between residents, men and women, Americans and foreigners, whites and blacks, the U.S. Foundation was also working to disseminate the image of a culturally rich and tolerant America, in line with U.S. Cold War objectives, without taking part in an official propaganda effort.

John Breon's itinerary nevertheless reveals the limits of these efforts. While he appreciated the comforts and social life of the CIUP during his first stay, with hindsight these appeared to him to be the mark of a spiritual poverty, that of a “shanty life”<fnref n="53" /> remaining on the bangs of the city-center. Returning to Paris in 1949 to complete his studies, he

hours in armchairs that have no equal in the whole city. I'm going to work, “I'm going to play with the Americans” are phrases often heard in certain pavilions deprived of rocking chairs and feminine silhouettes. The American pavilion represents, in the eyes of the Cité's inhabitants, the aristocratic place where everyone aspires to be housed.” (translation by the author).

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ The president must also be American and the vice-president French.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ These criticisms were exploited by Communist propaganda in the 1950s, and their impact was heightened by the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² The students were John Riley, “black singer” and Woolley Scholar, and Amelia Myers, “black pianist” and Fulbright Scholar.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ Shortly before his departure, he expressed his annoyance with life at the Cité Universitaire, which he described as “too inconvenient, out of town”. The tone is very different from that of his first letters. “I simply detest Cité, [....] all the half-witted, uninspired nonsense that goes with dormitory living—life in a dormitory is only one step above a barracks....”. Letter, May 23, 1946, John Breon Papers. During this stay, however, he took advantage of Parisian cultural life, visiting the theater and the museum on a fairly regular basis. At the same time, in 1950, the Foundation's Board of Directors noted that the increase in income was due to the growing number of short stays by students, most of whom were only in France for a short time or, for those who stayed longer, preferred to live in Paris. See the report of the Board of Directors, 1950. AN, AJ16 7039.</footnote>
decided not to go back, wanting to stay in the city, where things were
happening—for someone who was no longer a student soldier and had
his finger on the pulse of the capital's cultural scene.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

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<figure><img src="image_12.png" /></figure>
# Maghreb at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris: A political and social history (1925–2011)

Guillaume Denglos and Pierre Vermeren

The history of North Africans at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (CIUP) was marked by a high degree of politicization. From nationalism to leftism, many students from the three countries of French North Africa were trained in political activism in Paris, from the early 1920s to independence, and then until the 1980s, within the framework of cooperation. This history is rooted in the colonial sphere, then in that of increasingly open opposition to the authoritarian nationalist regimes in place in the early 1960s. The Houses of Morocco and Tunisia, and the aborted project to create a House of Algeria, illustrate this close relationship between student migration on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. State control, the training of elites and political protest by students who

<footnote>G. Denglos (✉) · P. Vermeren
Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France
e-mail: gdenglos.com@orange.fr</footnote>

<footnote>P. Vermeren
e-mail: Pierre.Vermeren@univ-paris1.fr</footnote>
had acquired the means to assert themselves against the authorities in the French capital are all intertwined. This article is based on numerous unpublished archives held by the Archives nationales, the Archives diplomatiques de Nantes and La Courneuve, and the Archives of the Préfecture de police de Paris. It follows on from Violette Matuszewski's pioneering study of North African students in the CIUP.<fnref n="1" />

## PARIS, CAPITAL OF NORTH AFRICAN NATIONALISM: THE IMPOSSIBLE CREATION OF A NORTH AFRICAN PAVILION (1925–1940)

The question of building a pavilion for North African students, and more generally of housing students from the colonies, arose as early as the second half of the 1920s. As early as 1925, the founder of the CIUP, former minister André Honnorat, was not averse to building a house specifically for North Africans, but he soon came up against the refusal of the Residents General Lucien Saint (Tunisia) and Théodore Steeg (Morocco), as well as the Governors General of Algeria, Pierre Bordes and then Jules Cardes. On September 13, 1928, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced to André Honnorat that Théodore Steeg, “had decided to contribute to the fitting out of a certain number of rooms in the CIUP, and that a credit of 200,000 francs had been earmarked for this purpose in the Cherifian budget”. However, “it is not the intention of the general residence to advocate the construction of a North African house. Indeed, it would be feared that students from our various possessions would meet there and acquire, to our detriment, a feeling of Muslim solidarity which, until now, they have lacked. To occupy the rooms reserved for Morocco, Mr. Steeg intends to designate, in principle, French students, and exceptionally only Muslim students<fnref n="2" />”. In the

<footnote n="1">¹ MATUSZEWSKI Violette, *La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris et ses relations avec le Maghreb. Succès et échecs. 1925-1970*, Master 2 dissertation, under the supervision of Didier Musiedlak, Université Paris 10, 2014. See also BOUAZIZ Mostafa, DENGLOS Guillaume, *La Maison du Maroc à la Cité U. Lieu de mémoires des étudiants marocains à Paris*, Paris, Riveneuve, 2022. This article is a modified and translated version of: “Le Maghreb à la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. Une histoire politique et sociale (1925-2011) », in D. Kévonian, G. Tronchet (dir.), *Le Campus-Monde. La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, 1920-années 2000*, Rennes, PUR, 2022, pp. 121-142.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Archives catalog : Dossier pavillon du Maroc (AN, AJ16/7043).</footnote>
short term, the colonial authorities in Morocco and Algeria preferred to finance a few rooms, sometimes with the help of companies such as the Banque d'État du Maroc. This position was maintained throughout the 1930s, despite André Honnorat's attempts, notably with Marshal Lyautey (first Resident General in Morocco and a key figure in colonial France), Lucien Saint (Resident General in Rabat from 1929 to 1933) and financial delegations from Algeria.<fnref n="3" /> To expand the CIUP, André Honnorat was more successful in his relations with countries in North and Latin America, Europe and the Far East (Japan...). For the French colonies, only Indochina built a pavilion in 1930.

The letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recalling Théodore Steeg's position sets the scene for the problem posed by the arrival in the second half of the 1920s of the first generation, the so-called pioneer generation,<fnref n="4" /> of Maghrebi students in the French capital. Notwithstanding the presence of Habib Bourguiba, who stayed in room n°114 of the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe in 1925-1926,<fnref n="5" /> the relative absence of the “Maghreb” at the CIUP between the wars was also due to the small number of students and their potential danger to the colonial authorities (in addition to the fact that Algeria was French national territory at the time). There were around 130 Tunisian students in France in 1933, and around 300 at the end of the 1930s.<fnref n="6" /> Algerians and Moroccans were even less numerous. There were barely 37 Algerian students in 1932.<fnref n="7" /> As for the Moroccans, only a dozen or so managed to pass the baccalauréat at the end of the 1920s, and left to pursue their university studies in the French capital. Bourguiba's example is nonetheless symbolic, as it embodies the trajectory of these students who came to learn French culture in order to better combat the colonial power. Often trained in

<footnote n="3">³ See André Honnorat's correspondence with Lyautey and Lucien Saint. Archives catalog number (AN, 20090013/213).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ VERMEREN Pierre, *La formation des élites par l'enseignement supérieur au Maroc et en Tunisie*, history PhD dissertation University of Paris VIII, 2000.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Bourguiba was also accompanied by a handful of his compatriots at the Cité universitaire (BESSIS Sophie and BELHASSEN Souhayr, *Bourguiba*, ed. Tunis, Elyzad, 2012, pp. 60-62).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ VERMEREN Pierre, *La formation des élites marocaines et tunisiennes. Des nationalistes aux islamistes (1929-2000)*, Paris, La Découverte, 2002, p. 83.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ EZZERELLI Kaïs, “Les étudiants à l’école de la politique”, in *Générations. Un siècle d’histoire culturelle des Maghrébins en France*, Paris, Gallimard, Génériques/CNHI, 2009, p. 95.</footnote>
the schools of the colonial power, these young people formed the first cadres of a nationalist movement that aimed for unity. Their numerical weakness was compensated for by strong politicization and the formation of very dynamic associations, such as the Association des étudiants musulmans nord-africains (AEMNA).<fnref n="8" />

Indeed, during the interwar period, Paris was undeniably *the* capital of North African nationalism.<fnref n="9" /> It was in this city that North African students and workers mingled, organized, and politicized in relative freedom of movement. AEMNA was the matrix for the political and cultural demands of the young North African elite. In the words of Charles-Robert Ageron, this association was home to the “gotha of Maghreb nationalism<fnref n="10" />”. The creation of the magazine *Maghreb* in Paris in 1932,<fnref n="11" /> on the initiative of lawyer Robert-Jean Longuet<fnref n="12" /> and young nationalist students Mohamed Hassan Ouazzani, Ahmed Balafrej, Omar Abdeljalil and Habib Thameur, embodied the national and pan-Maghrebian stance of anti-colonial demands. Nevertheless, the repression of nationalist movements in Morocco and Algeria in 1937, and in Tunisia the following year, as well as the outbreak of the Second World War, temporarily broke this momentum and the access of Maghrebi students to Metropolitan France.

## THE CREATION OF MAISONS DU MAROC AND TUNISIE: CONTROL THROUGH HOUSING (1945–1953)

Everything changed at the Liberation. At the start of the 1945–1946 academic year,<fnref n="13" /> the CIUP welcomed 120 Algerian students (including five girls), 55 Tunisians (including ten girls) and 50 Moroccans (including ten girls). These figures seem low compared with the 3134 students

<footnote n="8">⁸ AGERON Charles-Robert, “L’Association des étudiants musulmans nord-africains en France durant l’entre-deux guerres. Contribution à l’étude des nationalismes maghrébins”, *Revue française d’histoire d’Outre-mer*, t. LXXX, n° 258–259, 1983.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ GOEBEL Michel, *Paris, capital of the Third World. Comment est née la révolution anticoloniale (1919–1939)*, Paris, La Découverte, 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ AGERON Charles-Robert, *op. cit.* 1983, p. 27.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ DENGLOS Guillaume, *La revue Maghreb. Une publication franco-marocaine engagée (1932–1936)*, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2015.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Son of Socialist MP Jean Longuet, he is also the great-grandson of Karl Marx.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ “Statistics on residents from the French Union”. Archives number catalog: AN, AJ16/7031.</footnote>
housed in the entire campus along the Boulevard Jourdan. However, if we look at the number of “colonial” students (323), North Africans account for two-thirds of the total. This significant increase forced the authorities to react. Indeed, no one has forgotten that it was in Paris that the cadres of the nationalist political parties that directly challenged French authority on the ground, now calling for independence, were formed: Parti du peuple algérien (1937), Parti du Néo-Destour (1938), Parti de l’Istiqlal (1943), Parti démocratique de l’indépendance (1946), Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques (1946)... Faced with the housing crisis in post-war Paris, hotels and hostels served as a diversion for North Africans who couldn’t find a place at the CIUP. The AEMNA headquarters at 115 boulevard Saint-Michel housed a hostel with a meeting room and restaurant at a reasonable price. The hostel closed in November 1947, but the canteen continued to operate thanks to a subsidy from the Office de Tunisie.<fnref n="14" /> In the autumn of 1945, a Moroccan Foyer was set up at 21 rue Serpente, “probably with nationalist funds or provided by Moroccan shopkeepers sympathetic to the Istiqlal<fnref n="15" />”. To counter this nationalist influence, in October 1946 the Rabat authorities acquired a hotel at 26 rue Bonaparte, not far from Lyautey’s former apartment! Converted into a hostel, the hotel was intended for both French Moroccans and Moroccans. The latter, who were predominantly pro-independence, outnumbered the former. Tension between the two groups continued to grow as a result of the political crisis between Resident General Alphonse Juin and Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Youssef. Both in Tunis and Rabat, colonial administrations decided to take the lead in improving control of this population from 1946–1947. In October 1946, France’s Resident General in Tunisia, General Charles Mast, and his Director of Public Instruction, Henri Gaston, took steps to set up a “Tunisian student centre”. In Morocco, General Alphonse Juin, Resident General since May 1947, instructed his Director of Public Instruction Roger Thabault on November 26 to “aim for the most urgent achievements” by insisting “on the rapid start-up of a Moroccan pavilion at the Cité Universitaire in Paris” and to “at least quadruple the sum

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ VERMEREN Pierre, *La formation des élites par l'enseignement supérieur...*, op. cit.
p. 357.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ *Ibid.*, pp. 357–358.</footnote>
devoted last year to Muslim students, and increase the rate of scholarships (obviously low) as well as their number<fnref n="16" />”.

The choice of architects, Jean Sebag for the Maison de la Tunisie, and Albert Laprade<fnref n="17" /> for the Maison du Maroc, is not insignificant. Both have made careers for themselves thanks to their links with residential circles. Among others, Albert Laprade was the architect chosen by Lyautey to design the General Residence building in Rabat in 1918. He also built the Musée des Colonies,<fnref n="18" /> as well as the Moroccan and Tunisian pavilions for the Colonial Exhibition in the Bois de Vincennes in 1931. Laprade also knew the CIUP well. He had already built the Maison de Cuba “Abreu de Grancher” in 1933, and after the war he led the construction of the Maison des étudiants d’Outre-mer (Lucien Paye). As for Jean Sebag, he was a close friend of Bernard Zherfuss, chief architect for the Tunisian government. Born in 1909 in Tunis to a Tunisian Jewish family, Jean Sebag was involved in the construction of a Muslim sanctuary in Sidi Bou-Saïd, as well as the creation of 120 housing units in Hussein-Dey, Algeria.<fnref n="19" /> As a member of the Mouvement Moderne, he also had several housing projects underway in the Paris region (notably in Boulogne-Billancourt), when he was commissioned to draw up plans for the Maison de la Tunisie at the CIUP. Backed by this political will, the construction process for the two pavilions was successfully completed. Following the commitment of the French authorities in Tunisia and Morocco to the Académie de Paris and the Fondation nationale de la Cité universitaire, the Maison de la Tunisie was donated on July 9, 1948, and the Maison du Maroc on July 7, 1949.<fnref n="20" /> Building permits were issued in 1951. However, the Maison du Maroc was delayed.

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Letter from General Juin to the Director of Public Instruction, November 26, 1947 (Archives diplomatiques de Nantes, 1 MA 30/5).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ CULOT Maurice and LAMBRICHS Anne, *Albert Laprade. Architecte, jardinier, urbaniste, dessinateur, serviteur du patrimoine*, Paris, Norma Éditions, 2007.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Located near the Porte Dorée, the building now houses the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Archives number catalog: AN, AJ/52/1278, dossier d'élèves; Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, fonds dossiers d'œuvres de la direction de l'Architecture et de l'Urbanisme (DAU), 133 ifa, DAU-0-SEBJE; “Agence de l’architecte Jean Sebag, avenue Marceau à Paris”, *Architecture d’aujourd’hui*, n° 58, 1955, pp. 96-97.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ The donation is a legal arrangement guaranteeing the unity of ownership for the benefit of the Universities of Paris, while allowing the country concerned to enjoy the house and operate it with full responsibility.</footnote>
In addition to the building financed by the general residence, the contractor Jean Walter obtained authorization from General Juin to build a pavilion with 92 additional rooms. Jean Walter was no stranger to the colonial authorities. In 1925, he detected a large vein of zinc and lead some twenty kilometers from Oujda, in a place called Zellidja. This mining find made his fortune. He founded the Société anonyme minière de Zellidja.<fnref n="21" /> Wishing to do charitable work, he created the “Zellidja scholarships” in 1938, followed by the “Fondation nationale des bourses Zellidja” in November 1945. The aim was to enable young people aged 17 to 19 to make one to three solo trips to a foreign country to study a research topic.<fnref n="22" /> The conditions set by Jean Walter for the construction of his pavilion irritated the Fondation nationale and the rector Jean Sarrailh.<fnref n="23" /> In fact, in January 1950, Jean Walter specified that the building was intended solely for Zellidja scholarship holders and French students from Morocco, with no interference from students from metropolitan France<fnref n="24" /> ... These conditions are in total contradiction with the “brassage” rule, which obliges each house to mix the nationalities of its residents according to a quota defined by the CIUP.<fnref n="25" /> On the other hand, the Fondation Nationale wanted the “Pavillon Zellidja” to be twinned with the Maison du Maroc. A compromise was finally reached at the Fondation nationale de la CIUP board meeting on July 2, 1951. The two buildings were linked by a gallery. Administratively, Pavillon Walter was handed over free of charge to the Cherifian State, to be subsequently returned to the University of Paris. The Laprade firm is commissioned to design the “Moroccan ensemble”.

The architecture of the Maison de la Tunisie is above all functional and modern. Nothing in the façade recalls the traditional architecture of

<footnote n="21">²¹ DUBOIS Jean, “Le créateur des mines de Zellidja”, in *Hommages à Jean Walter*, Paris, Association des lauréats Zellidja, 1957, p. 16. Archives number catalog: (AN 20090013/1174). In 1929, this company became the “Société nouvelle des mines de Zellidja”.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² *Ibid.*, pp. 8-9. See also PASSAVANT Éric, “Réformer les lycées français de l’extérieur”, *Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs* [En ligne], 9 | 2010, online October 01, 2012.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Walter Pavilion” file. Archives number catalog (AN, AJ16/7043).</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Letter from L. Bardury to Mr. L. Pehuet (administrative secretary general), January 27, 1950 (AN, 20090013/1176).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Note from Jean Toutée to Raoul Dautry, M. Pehuet and the secretariat of the Fondation nationale, January 31, 1950 (AN, 20090013/1176).</footnote>
the Regency. The building comprises two unequal wings opening onto an inner courtyard, which has been laid out as a patio planted with trees and shrubs. The Foundation houses a cafeteria, a library, a reading room and a meeting room with a stage. Each of the 126 rooms has an individual toilet, while each floor has its own sanitary facilities (showers and WCs) and a kitchen.<fnref n="26" /> The furniture designed by Charlotte Perriand and the interior decoration blend modernity with reinvented Arab-Berber tradition. The rooms and communal areas are fitted with carpets made by Tunisian craftsmen. Painters Ben Abdallah and Boucherle<fnref n="27" /> have also been commissioned to decorate various murals.

At the Maison du Maroc, classicism prevails, with a traditional touch recalling the aesthetics of the country of origin. A monumental door and green tiles are reminiscent of Moroccan architecture, but without falling into the neo-Moorish style of the interwar period then in vogue in the Cherifian Empire. A six-storey tower connects the main building to a gallery, which in turn connects to the Fondation Zellidja building. Like the Maison de la Tunisie, the Moroccan pavilion is equipped with common services on each floor (showers, toilets, kitchens) and a meeting room capable of accommodating around 100 people. A cafeteria completes the facilities available to residents.

While the situation is improving for Moroccans and Tunisians, Algerian students continue to live in often precarious conditions. Being “legally French like the others, they do not benefit from a national pavilion at the CIUP, nor a reserved hotel<fnref n="28" />”. In November 1953, they grouped together to form the Union des étudiants algériens de Paris (UEAP), and took the opportunity to draw up a charter of demands:

1°) Pre-salary or generalized scholarship; 2°) Algerian pavilion at the Cité universitaire; 3°) Free annual trip; 4°) Guaranteed outlets in Algeria.<fnref n="29" />

<footnote n="26">²⁶ “Synthèse sur la Maison de la Tunisie à la Cité universitaire de Paris”, *L’Oblique*, pp. 2-4.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ “Maison de la Tunisie à la Cité universitaire de Paris. Jean Sebag, architecte”, *L’architecture aujourd’hui*, n°47, April-May 1953, pp. 62-68.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ PERVILLÉ Guy, *Les étudiants algériens de l’université française 1880-1962*, Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 1984, p. 51.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ *Ibid.*</footnote>
In February 1955, the UEAP carried out a survey on housing for Algerian students. Out of 100, only 10 were now housed at the CIUP in various pavilions, 22 in student community houses (such as the Jean Zay residence in Antony) and 68 in hotel rooms or private homes.<fnref n="30" /> While the Moroccan and Tunisian pavilions were completed, the problem remained for the Algerians on the eve of the war of independence.

## THE NATIONALIST MOMENT (1953-MID-1960S)

The image of a modern Morocco and Tunisia conveyed by the architecture does little to mask the deep malaise shaking the region. The opening of the Tunisian pavilion on April 15, 1953, and that of the Moroccan pavilion on October 15, 1953, took place at a time when the political situation in the protectorates was explosive. The arrival in Tunis of Resident General Jean de Hautecloque in January 1952, followed by the assassination of trade unionist Ferhat Hached in December of the same year, triggered a cycle of violence that did not end until 1955. In Morocco, the forceful deposition and exile to Corsica, then Madagascar, of Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Youssef on August 20, 1953, by the Resident General Augustin Guillaume and a comradeship of leading figures around the civil controller Philippe Boniface, also ushered in a period of serious unrest, with attacks and police repression inextricably intertwined. The directors of the two pavilions were appointed directly by the general residence. In March 1953, Eugène Tardieu, Inspecteur de l'Instruction Publique, was appointed first Director of the Tunisian House on the initiative of Resident General Jean de Hautecloque. For the Maison du Maroc, Resident General Augustin Guillaume decided to “entrust the management of the Moroccan pavilion at the Cité Universitaire to Jean Arnaud, former director of Télévision and Radio Maroc, a particularly delicate task at a time when it is essential to bring back to France young minds led astray by the mirages of nationalism<fnref n="31" />”.

At the same time, student organizations in the Maghreb were in the throes of restructuring. AEMNA, now AEMNAF in France, was losing ground to new organizations. The pan-Maghreb ideal, still alive

<footnote n="30">³⁰ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ Letter from the Minister of National Education to the Rector of the Academies of Paris, December 3, 1952 (AN, AJ16/7043).</footnote>
at the end of the war, definitely lost ground to national patriotism. As early as 1951, Moroccan students submitted a request for authorization to create a National Union of Moroccan Students<fnref n="32" /> (UNEM), which was refused on the recommendation of General Juin. It was not until 1954 that a Union des étudiants marocains de Paris was formed. The Union générale des étudiants tunisiens (UGET) was founded in Paris in July 1953, followed two years later by the Union générale des étudiants musulmans algériens (UGEMA). Faced with these competitors, AEMNAF disappeared in 1956, just as Morocco and Tunisia were gaining their independence.

At the start of the 1953–1954 academic year, there were 148 Algerian residents (including 19 girls), 154 Moroccans (including 15 girls) and 212 Tunisians (including 28 girls). This population remained under close surveillance. But this doesn’t stop some from playing cat-and-mouse with police officers from the Renseignements Généraux, whose mission is to inform the government about movements that could jeopardize state security. One police officer, for example, notes with disappointment that it “is possible” that the nationalist medical student Meddah Abdelaziz “has been harbored clandestinely by fellow students staying at the Maison du Maroc in the Cité Universitaire, no effective control having yet been exercised over the occupants of this building<fnref n="33" />”. Indeed, it was not uncommon for *Hizb*<fnref n="34" /> militants living in the Maison du Maroc, such as Ezzedine Laraki, future Minister of Education, and Mohamed Mehdi Abdeljalil, “to be very active in North African student circles in the Cité Universitaire and the Latin Quarter, promoting the nationalist theories advocated by the Istiqlal<fnref n="35" />”. On July 15, 1954, a police commissioner and two inspectors carried out a search of the bedroom of medical student Ahmed Snoussi, under a rogatory commission issued by an examining

<footnote n="32">³² UNEM was finally founded when Morocco gained independence in 1956.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ Note dated November 21, 1953 (Archives de la Préfecture de police de Paris, HA 23).</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ The “party”, in this case the Istiqlal.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ Note dated November 21, 1953 (Archives de la Préfecture de police de Paris, HA 23).</footnote>
magistrate in Casablanca. Suspected of arms trafficking, he was eventually released,<fnref n="36" /> the police having mistaken him for his brother...

However, the police did note “the presence of various inscriptions inside the Maison du Maroc on the kerbs, ‘Vive le Maroc libre’” (Long live free Morocco). Shortly before leaving his post as director of the Maison du Maroc in 1955, Jean Arnaud confided to his successor Yves Renouard that “psychologically and morally, the situation is more delicate. In October 53, I inherited [...] some sixty students [...] marked by communist and nationalist propaganda, and this hypothec has hampered my action. After having had vast cultural projects, I had to resign myself to a semi-immobilism<fnref n="37" />”... Despite his predecessor’s difficulties, and with the support of the Fondation nationale, Yves Renouard, a medieval historian teaching at the Sorbonne, managed to avoid an explosion of the Maison, by focusing on cultural activities and actively helping residents to succeed in their studies (creation of a library well-stocked with scientific works...).<fnref n="38" /> The return of the Sultan from exile on November 16, 1955, and the country’s independence, also helped to calm tempers.

As soon as the Regency gained independence, the new Tunisian authorities tried to regain control of the company from the French authorities. On September 23, 1957, the Tunisian embassy submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “a request to modify the statutes, and in particular article 3 of the deed of donation, under which Tunisian and French students born or resident in Tunisia<fnref n="39" /> may be admitted without distinction”. The Tunisian embassy also contests the fact that the director is of French nationality. The lack of Tunisian academics capable of running the Maison at the time is one of the reasons why the first Tunisian director was not appointed until 1962.<fnref n="40" /> At the Maison du Maroc, it wasn’t until

<footnote n="36">³⁶ Report by the police commissioner of the Parc-Montsouris and Petit Montrouge districts on the search carried out by the Sureté nationale at the Cité universitaire (Maison du Maroc), July 20, 1954 (Archives de la Préfecture de police de Paris, HA 23).</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ Letter from Jean Arnaud to Yves Renouard, June 16, 1955 (AN, AB/XIX/43332, fonds Renouard).</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ See Yves Renouard’s handwritten correspondence for 1955 and 1958 (AN, AB/XIX/43332, Renouard fonds).</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Letter from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the Minister of National Education, September 23, 1957 (AN, AJ16/7044).</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ File on the appointment of Mohamed Talbi as director of the Maison de la Tunisie, October 1962 (AN, 20090013/1196).</footnote>
1964! On the other hand, the issue of co-education was not a topical one at the Tunisian pavilion (as it was at most of the CIUP's houses before 1968).<fnref n="41" /> The director was firmly opposed to admitting female students, fearing “unfortunate promiscuity with our young men<fnref n="42" />”. From the end of the 1950s, the Maison de la Tunisie became a stronghold of the Bourguibian authorities, and remained so for decades. Shortly after the Bizerte crisis, during which the French army clashed with Tunisian troops for control of the naval base between July 19 and 23, 1961, the Maison de la Tunisie fell victim to an explosive attack: a device was thrown against the glass façade of the meeting room on August 14, 1961. Various rooms in the basement, on the first floor and on the first two floors were damaged by shards of glass.<fnref n="43" />

This attack also echoes the context of the Algerian war. The creation of an Algerian pavilion at the CIUP had been on the table since 1954, at the initiative of the General Government of Algeria.<fnref n="44" /> On April 8, 1955, a conference was held at the Ministry of National Education to examine the project. The outcome of the discussions was a rejection. The deteriorating security situation in Algeria played a key role in this decision.<fnref n="45" /> In the absence of documents on the political activities of Algerian students at the CIUP during the War of Independence, it is very difficult to determine their degree of militancy. Were they supporters of the Front de libération nationale (FLN)? The Algerian National Movement (MNA)? It's likely that Moroccan and Tunisian residents showed strong solidarity with their Algerian “brothers”.

In May 1956, to the astonishment of far-right students from the Cercle Fustel de Coulanges, leaflets in favor of Algerian independence “were abundantly distributed” in the CIUP “and the police were called in only when the distribution was completed<fnref n="46" />”. More generally, the number of

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ BLANC Brigitte, *La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. De la Cité-jardin à la cité-monde*, Paris, Lieux-dits éditions, 2017, pp. 305-307.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Letter from the Director of the Maison de la Tunisie to the Tunisian Secretary of State for National Education, November 4, 1957 (AN, 20090013/1197).</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ “Synthèse sur la Maison de la Tunisie à la Cité universitaire de Paris”, *L'Oblique*, p. 4 and consult the file “Attentat Maison de la Tunisie août 1961” (AN 20090013/1196).</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ MATUSZEWSKI Violette, *op. cit.*, p. 89.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ Cercle Fustel de Coulanges, Paris, June 18, 1956 (AN, AJ16/7033).</footnote>
Algerian students in France has been rising steadily since the early 1950s. However, as early as 1956, UGEMA decided to disperse its militants to other countries. From the start of the 1957–58 academic year, 33 scholar-ship holders decided to continue their studies outside France. The arrest of UGEMA’s General Secretary on November 12, 1957, in Montpellier, and the holding of its third congress behind closed doors in the Paris region, from December 23 to 26, 1957, confirmed the organization’s proximity to the FLN. However, UGEMA was dissolved on January 28, 1958, while the university section of the FLN’s French federation was subjected to a major wave of arrests until 1959.<fnref n="47" /> The intensity of the Algerian war in Paris (raids on Algerians, settling of accounts between the FLN and the MNA, the October 17, 1961 events, the Charonne subway tragedy, etc.) played an additional role in North African student militancy until 1962, before Maghreb solidarity collided with the rivalry between the regimes of Ben Bella and Hassan II in 1963. Once independence was achieved, the CIUP became the scene, to varying degrees, of the rise of leftist student protests against the new authoritarian regimes.

## 1968 AND THE 1970S: THE DIVERGENT PATHS OF THE “MAGHREB” AT THE CIUP

The May 1968 movement had contrasting repercussions on the CIUP.<fnref n="48" /> While some residences were clearly affected by the takeover by left-wing residents or by a rent strike (Hellenic Foundation, Collège d'Espagne, Maison de l'Italie, Andrea de Gouveia Foundation, Maison de l'Outre-mer, Argentine Foundation...), other residences remained calm, even hostile to protest movements against Gaullist rule (Maison des étudiants arméniens, Fondation Biermans-Lapôtre, Maison du Mexique, Maison des étudiants canadiens, Fondation des États-Unis...). The same contrast can be applied to the houses in Morocco and Tunisia. While the former played a key role in the history of May 1968 at the CIUP, the latter has not budged. At the same time, negotiations for the creation of a Maison

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ PERVILLÉ Guy, *op. cit.* pp. 172–174.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ For a complete overview of the events of May 1968 at the Cité universitaire, we refer to a first-rate source: Préfecture de Police, Direction des Renseignements généraux et des jeux, “La Cité internationale de l’Université de Paris”, June 1970 (Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, GD 57).</footnote>
de l'Algérie, although well advanced, failed due to the vagaries of coop-
eration between France and its former colony, independent for barely six
years.

Shortly after taking office, Pierre Marthelot, General Delegate of the CIUP, decided to relaunch the project to build a Maison de l'Algérie in December 1966. The Algerian ambassador to France, Rhéda Malek, was aware of the project from the outset. At its meeting on September 27, 1967, the Board of Directors of the Fondation nationale de la CIUP endorsed the decision to build a pavilion for Algerian students. An agreement in principle with Algerian diplomats seemed to be taking shape. On March 11, 1968, two months before the student revolt, an important meeting took place between the Fondation nationale, the French ministry of Foreign Affairs, the "France-Algérie" association and the Algerian Embassy, with the aim of "examining how we are going to proceed in order to find the promoter and the funds". The minutes<fnref n="49" /> of the discussions between the representatives of the four entities suggest that the process of building the Maison de l'Algérie is well underway.

Pierre Marthelot is confident. He told the Secretary of Embassy for Cultural Affairs, M. Benstaali, that the land at 48 boulevard Jourdan could accommodate a 150-room building for Algerian students. As for the promoter of the future house, the Délégué général proposes three solutions to the Algerian authorities. The house could be managed either by the Algerian government, by an existing association, or by an entity created for the purpose. Mr. Benstaali points out that "particular consideration should be given to the solution of creating an ad hoc association which could include, for example, the Algerian government, the French government, a 'France-Algeria' association, perhaps also Algeria, France, etc.". The Délégué général estimates the cost at 7 to 10 million francs. Work could start during the 1970–1971 academic year. For his part, Mr. Poussard, deputy director of cultural relations at the Quai d'Orsay, "feels it is important to point out that the creation of a house at the CIUP does not mean the creation of a hostel for all nationals of the country in question arriving in Paris. It is simply a residence, study, and leisure centre for Algerian students attending university or higher education courses in Paris". A technical report is sent to Mr. Benstaali, who confirms his government's interest in the project. He promised to send

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ "Meeting for the creation of a Maison de l'Algérie", Monday March 11, 1968, file "Projet de maison de l'Algérie" (AN, 20010243/15).</footnote>
"a report on the present meeting to Algiers shortly" and to answer questions concerning the promoter, the method of financing and the choice of architect.<fnref n="50" />

Despite optimism on all sides, two events put an end to the project. Firstly, the chosen site was occupied by temporary buildings run by the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles. The move was scheduled for 1968-1969. But the timetable was called into question by the Ministry of Education's decision to temporarily assign the building intended for the École normale supérieure to a teaching unit for dental surgery students, hence the postponement of the Maison de l'Algérie<fnref n="51" />". This setback was compounded by the decision of Edgar Faure, Minister of Education, not to increase the number of students at the CIUP.<fnref n="52" /> Despite protests from the CIUP's authorities, the project was abandoned in July 1969 on France's initiative. A quick look at the difficult context of cooperation between the two countries at the end of the 1960s gives an idea of the underlying reasons that prompted the French government to halt the project. Although an agreement was reached on December 27, 1968 to regulate the emigration of Algerians to France, this did not mean that relations between Algiers and Paris had returned to normal. Algeria's alignment with Eastern European countries, the Third World rhetoric of Houari Boumediene's regime, the departure of General de Gaulle in 1969, restrictions on the entry of Algerian workers into France and trade taxes<fnref n="53" /> certainly weighed on the final decision-making process. The creation of a Maison de l'Algérie became a recurring issue, regularly brought up again and again, without ever coming to fruition.

As far as the House of Morocco is concerned, the 1968 revolt was clearly a tipping point.<fnref n="54" /> All the ingredients were in place for an explosion of protest against the Hassanian regime. The dismantling of an alleged

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ See "Divers projets de création de maisons (1924-1995), Projet d'une maison de l'Algérie, note" (AN, 20090013/1199). See also MATUSZEWSKI Violette, *op. cit.* p. 96.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² MATUSZEWSKI Violette, *op. cit.*, pp. 95-97.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ VAÏSSE Maurice, *La grandeur. Politique étrangère du général de Gaulle*, ed. Paris, CNRS, 2013, pp. 460-473, and ARIHIR Mustapha, *Les relations extérieures franco-algériennes à l'épreuve de la reconnaissance. De 1962 à nos jours. Analyse de la coopération et de la réconciliation*, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2015, pp. 100-103.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ BOUAZIZ Mostafa, DENGLOS Guillaume, *La Maison du Maroc à la Cité U. Lieux de mémoire des étudiants marocains à Paris*, Paris, Riveneuve, 2022, pp. 137-160.</footnote>
plot by the Union nationale des forces populaires (UNFP) in 1963, the popular riots in Casablanca in March 1965, the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka in the middle of Paris in October 1965, and the repression imposed by General Mohamed Oufkir on the Moroccan left, could only radicalize the students. Inside the Maison, Abdelmalek El-Ghoul, the first Moroccan director appointed in 1964, tried to impose a moral order on the residents (refusal of female visitors, no compromise with the demands of students close to the UNEM...). Although El-Ghoul's successor, Omar Senoussi, managed "in accordance with the instructions of his government"<fnref n="55" />, to keep his establishment more or less under control, the house appeared to be in a state of virtual dissidence from 1966 onwards. As noted by the Renseignements généraux, "planned to house 300 students, a third of whom were foreigners, the residence was almost entirely occupied by Moroccan nationals. However, as the management refrained from exercising strict control over residents, illegal immigrants found refuge there".

The May 1968 crisis served as a detonator, while the situation in the house was tense.<fnref n="56" /> The Moroccan-born director was ousted by the residents. In June 1968, on the initiative of the Fondation Nationale, he was temporarily replaced by François Della Sudda. Della Sudda was an important figure. A former teacher, anti-colonialist activist and member of the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU), Della Sudda was an expert of Morocco and Algeria.<fnref n="57" /> Throughout his term of office, he supported the political demands of Moroccan students hostile to the Hassan regime, even if this meant coming into conflict with Délégué Général Pierre Marthelot. Generally speaking, until it was hit by the attempted coups d'Etat in Skhirat in July 1971 and the "Boeing" in August 1972, the Hassan regime was unable to control its opponents in France satisfactorily. The "regime of exception" (1965–1970), then the multiparty facade advocated by the government, prevented it from selecting the most loyal students.

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ Préfecture de Police, Direction des Renseignements généraux et des jeux, "La Cité internationale de l'Université de Paris", June 1970, pp. 56–57 (Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, GD 57).</footnote>

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ *Ibid.*, pp. 56–57.</footnote>

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article41902.</footnote>
This was not the case in Tunisia, where the Parti socialiste destourien (PSD),<fnref n="58" /> the only authorized political structure, and the “national organizations”,<fnref n="59" /> provided the closest supervision of society from the early 1960s onwards.<fnref n="60" /> This context explains why, unlike Moroccan residents, Tunisians stayed out of student unrest. Of the 140 students at the school, 90% are Tunisian nationals, the majority of whom receive grants from the Tunisian government and the French government’s technical cooperation program. The authority of director Abdelaziz Ghacham, a medical doctor preparing for the agrégation, is, according to the Renseignements généraux, almost absolute. To be admitted as a resident, you have to show your credentials. The “residents, all of whom support President Bourguiba’s Destour regime, are members of the Union générale des étudiants tunisiens (UGET), whose headquarters are on rue de Monsigny in the IIe arrondissement<fnref n="61" />”. Under these conditions, it is easy to understand why “the events of May–June 1968 had no impact on the behavior of the house’s residents. As they were all subject to strict political screening by the Tunisian authorities, they remained cautiously neutral. On the other hand, the authority exercised by the director does not authorize disorder of any kind”. Unlike the Maison du Maroc, “no illegal immigrants have been able to find refuge in this foundation<fnref n="62" />”.

Two years after the events of May 1968, several houses are still in a state of virtual secession, including the Collège d'Espagne, the Fondation Argentine, the Maison de l'Afrique and, of course, the Maison du Maroc. According to the CIUP's General Delegate, the latter “continues to live outside the common rules”. What's more, “the Maison lives from day to day in a situation whose political frenzy cannot disguise its seriousness<fnref n="63" />”. The years 1970–1975 marked the height of dissidence at the Maison du Maroc. The residents' committee was controlled by the UNEM, and the

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ This was the new name of Néo-Destour from October 1964.</footnote>

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ For students, UGET became the only authorized union.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ CHOUIKHA Larbi and GOBE Éric, *Histoire de la Tunisie depuis l'indépendance*, Paris, La Découverte, 2015, pp. 20–21.</footnote>

<footnote n="61">⁶¹ Préfecture de Police, Direction des Renseignements généraux et des jeux, “La Cité internationale de l’Université de Paris”, June 1970, pp. 70–71 (Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris, GD 57).</footnote>

<footnote n="62">⁶² *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="63">⁶³ Rapport moral sur l'année 1970 presented by Délégué général M. Laurent (Archives diplomatiques de La Courneuve, DG RCSRT/111).</footnote>
conference room served as a meeting place for a number of repressed organizations in the kingdom, such as the March 23 Movement and *Ilal Amam* (Forward!). Residents occupied the building in early 1970 to protest against the house arrest of UNEM activist Hamid Barrada by the French police.<fnref n="64" /> Faced with the threat of the Maison becoming part of the Fondation Nationale and the Moroccan embassy returning to the board of directors, a hunger strike was called in June 1970, under the slogan “Assassins of Ben Barka, you will not enter. No to the return of the embassy”<fnref n="65" /> !” Following these demonstrations, a precarious *status quo* was established. Faced with this situation, the Fondation Nationale decided in June 1970 to close the establishment on July 15. However, “this measure, which the administration wanted to be salutary, already had a double effect: it provoked violent reactions from the residents, and embarrassed the Cherifian authorities. They feared that, by taking over the running of the house, they would soon find themselves in trouble with the revolutionary elements.<fnref n="66" /> The closure was finally cancelled. Four years later, faced with fresh threats from the National Foundation to close the lecture hall and, above all, the Maison, a hunger strike lasting over 36 days took place in August–September 1974. Although the event received considerable media coverage, it did not prevent the closure of the conference room, a veritable “Agora” for the left-wing opposition in exile, for almost seven years.<fnref n="67" /> While the Maison du Maroc remained a hotbed of protest throughout the 1970s, the Moroccan university was gradually brought into line. When the UNEM was re-authorized in 1978, a new generation of Islamists gradually took control in the 1980s.<fnref n="68" />

Meanwhile, the Maison de la Tunisie seemed much quieter. It was briefly occupied on two occasions. On the night of February 22 to 23, 1972, around a hundred students from outside the country attempted

<footnote n="64">⁶⁴ Hamid Barrada had been placed under house arrest shortly before a visit by King Hassan II to President Georges Pompidou. French authorities feared he would disrupt the monarch's stay in Paris.</footnote>

<footnote n="65">⁶⁵ Photograph of the façade of the Moroccan pavilion overlooking Boulevard Jourdan (AN, 20090013/1176).</footnote>

<footnote n="66">⁶⁶ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="67">⁶⁷ Interview with Mostafa Bouaziz, professor of contemporary history at Hassan II University in Casablanca and witness to the event.</footnote>

<footnote n="68">⁶⁸ **VERMEREN** Pierre, *Histoire du Maroc depuis l'indépendance*, Paris, La Découverte, 2006, pp. 59–60.</footnote>
to occupy the house to protest against President Bourguiba's social and security policies. They were finally expelled by the police at three in the morning.<fnref n="69" /> At the beginning of 1974, a hunger strike by left-wing Tunisian students who had taken possession of the living room was halted "calmly, without us [the management of the house] needing to resort to the police<fnref n="70" />". Nevertheless, the contrast with the Maison du Maroc is significant. At no time did the Tunisian pavilion and its predominantly Destourian residents' committee enter into effective dissidence with the power of *Mujahid Al-Akbar*.<fnref n="71" />

## THE BREAK WITH THE PAST IN THE 1980S: THE EMERGENCE OF NEW, LESS POLITICIZED ELITES

To weaken their left-wing opposition, in the mid-1970s the Maghreb regimes initiated new educational and university policies centered on Arabization, the dismantling of humanities courses and social and religious conservatism. The re-Islamization of southern Mediterranean societies contributed to the weakening of the Left, and gave way to a new generation of less politicized students. In addition, the end of educational cooperation agreements with France, in favor of Arabized teachers, reshuffled the deck when it came to attracting young academics. As the Quai d'Orsay's General Directorate for Cultural, Scientific and Technical Relations noted in 1989, the problem posed by the situation of Maghreb students in France "has three essential characteristics: the size of the student body involved, the inadequacy of the resources of those not receiving French government grants, and the declining standard of students<fnref n="72" />". While the sons and daughters of the French-speaking elite continue to be trained in French schools and lycées (this is particularly true in Morocco), the gaps are widening irreparably with the majority of students graduating from Arabized public schools.

<footnote n="69">⁶⁹ "Pneumatique to M. Bourcier, Agence France Presse" (AN, 20090013/1198).</footnote>

<footnote n="70">⁷⁰ Letter from director A. Frad to Pierre Marthelot, May 7, 1974 (AN, 20090013/1198).</footnote>

<footnote n="71">⁷¹ The "supreme fighter". This has been Bourguiba's nickname since the late 1930s in Neo-Destour circles.</footnote>

<footnote n="72">⁷² Note "Moroccan students in France", July 7, 1989 (Archives diplomatiques de La Courneuve, DGRCST/104).</footnote>
The new Maghrebi generations arriving at the CIUP from the 1990s onwards have less and less in common with the protesting students of previous decades. These structural trends are combined with attempts to regain control of the Moroccan pavilion. The latter was threatened with closure by the Fondation nationale de la CIUP, due to its chronic indebtedness since 1975. In June 1980, a veritable ultimatum was sent to the Moroccan authorities to pay off 900,000 francs in unpaid bills. The Moroccan authorities' decision to renovate the house marked the beginning of a new chapter. The building was "Moroccanized" in terms of "tradition and modernism" by Hassan II and his appointed decorator André Paccard, with the addition of, among other things, an Andalusian patio, a hamam, a prayer room and a lounge decorated with zelliges.<fnref n="73" /> The re-inauguration on October 6, 1982, in the presence of the Crown Prince (now King Mohammed VI) and the Minister of Education responsible for Arabization, Ezzedine Laraki, symbolically marked the end of "leftist dissidence", but certainly not the end of the institution's cultural dynamism during the 1980s. Although the elected residents' committees were still left-leaning for several years, the Islamists became the majority in 1995 and remained so until the end of the 1990s. At the same time, a "squat crisis" broke out during the winter of 1995-1996, and again between 2001 and 2002. The eviction of the squatters by the police and a new renovation of the house between 2002 and 2008 confirmed the "normalization" of a place with a rebellious past.

The Maison de la Tunisie was also expanded in 1984. In 1989, a conflict broke out between Tahar Manoubi, the director, and the residents' committee. The latter was visibly unhappy with the new administration's desire to put an end to certain privileges in the pavilion. The committee sent "a black file on the director of the Maison de la Tunisie" to President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in person. Isolated, the director was immediately dismissed<fnref n="74" /> ... Until the renovation of the late 2000s and the 2011 revolution, this building remained one of the most controlled houses in the CIUP.<fnref n="75" /> Since the Arab Spring, marked by the fall of the Ben Ali regime, the Maison de la Tunisie appears to be in the midst of a

<footnote n="73">⁷³ "Inauguration by the Crown Prince of the Maison du Maroc in Paris", article in the newspaper *Le Matin*, October 6, 1982 (AN, 20090013/1177).</footnote>

<footnote n="74">⁷⁴ Tahar Manoubi" file (AN, 20090013/1196).</footnote>

<footnote n="75">⁷⁵ Interviews with former residents from the 1990s and 2000s.</footnote>