Alec Hargreaves invited to speak in Paris alongside 3 former prime ministers of France

Professor Alec Hargreaves has been invited to speak alongside three former French prime ministers at a colloquium in Paris marking the 30th anniversary of the 1981 elections that brought the left to power in France for the first time since the 1950s.

Hargreaves is one of just six academics – and the only one from outside France – invited to debate with former premiers Pierre Mauroy, Michel Rocard, and Lionel Jospin at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France’s foremost political science school. They are scheduled to meet on May 11, exactly 30 years after Socialist Party leader François Mitterrand won the 1981 presidential elections.

Hargreaves, director of FSU’s Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, will speak on the significance of the left’s election victory in relation to the hotly debated issue of immigration, on which he is recognized as a leading authority.

“Alec Hargreaves is very discreet about his achievements and his reputation,” said William Cloonan, FSU’s Richard Chapple Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics and chair of the department . “He will readily admit to attending a conference, but tends not to mention that he is the keynote speaker.”