"In Tunisia, the challenge to free scientific research is the other side of the violation of public rights and freedoms."

The policy of "double standards" seems to have become the norm in the field of academic freedom. The French government is rightly offended by what is happening in the United States and offers to welcome American researchers . However, the financial resources of the program for welcoming academics in danger (Pause), created in 2017 with the aim of supporting researchers forced into exile, remain very insufficient in view of the multiplication of crisis centers. For their part, researchers in social sciences are still excluded from the "Choose France For Science" program.

We publicize the attacks by Donald Trump and Elon Musk on research programs on climate, the environment, infectious diseases, diversity, or gender studies, but we talk much less often about the attacks on academic freedom that are taking place throughout the non-Western world, often thought of as subordinate. Who has heard, in the context of the Tunisian trial for "conspiracy against state security" , of the prison sentences received by 40 defendants , all found guilty without even having been heard and without their lawyers having been able to plead? Who has heard of the thirty-three-year prison sentence requested against the Franco-Tunisian researcher Hamza Meddeb?

The newspapers reported on the accused political activists, lawyers, judges, journalists, and businessmen, but not on this researcher, who worked for the European University of Florence, Italy, and the Carnegie Endowment. Internationally recognized for his analyses of political economy, political Islam, and migration, Hamza Meddeb has always been committed to pursuing independent research in his native country.

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