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Paris
Some resignations come from conviction, others from exhaustion, and a select few display timing worthy of a Swiss watch. The departure of Santiago María Guillermo Adolfo Muzio, director of the Argentine House in Paris, appears — at least on the surface — to belong to the latter category.
His exit comes only days before President Javier Milei’s visit to France, after months of complaints, protests, public letters, academic criticism and mounting unease that had long since escaped the walls of the residence and entered diplomatic territory.
A remarkable amount of noise for a house whose principal mission was considerably less heroic: to accommodate students, researchers and artists and allow them to study in peace.
The Argentine House belongs to the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, an institution created after the First World War around an almost charmingly idealistic proposition: bring young people from different countries together so that knowledge and coexistence might accomplish what European governments had proved rather less successful at doing.
Muzio arrived with a different conception.
One of the earliest controversies concerned his refusal to sign the Cité’s Charter of Values, which sets out principles including respect for human rights, privacy and non-discrimination. Muzio later explained that some of its provisions conflicted with his convictions and with what he described as the Argentine government’s political position.
And there lies the first problem.
A public official may be Catholic, atheist, conservative, progressive, liberal, vegetarian or passionately devoted to an unfortunate football club. What he cannot do is confuse his personal convictions with the rules of a public institution he administers on behalf of the State.
Because the Argentine House was not Muzio’s house.
Nor was it Milei’s.
It did not belong to the left, the right, the so-called woke, or those who spend a considerable portion of their lives fighting them.
It was — and remains — the Argentine House.
The allegations accumulated. Residents spoke of surveillance, restrictions, fear and ideological discrimination. More than a thousand academics, writers and artists publicly called for the director’s departure and requested an administrative, financial and technical audit following questions raised about renovation works and the use of funds.
Those allegations must be established through the appropriate procedures. This deserves to be stated clearly: an accusation is not a verdict.
But a thousand signatures are not exactly a draught blowing under the door either.
More sensitive still was the removal of a plaque commemorating Argentina’s disappeared and victims of state terrorism. Its removal provoked a controversy extending far beyond an object attached to a wall. Several Argentine residents who had participated in activities marking the Day of Remembrance later found themselves outside the House and were accommodated in other Cité residences.
Those affected described it as political persecution.
The management offered different explanations.
And a House intended to generate academic exchange began generating files and complaints instead.
There is a particularly delicious irony here. A government that made freedom its political banner found itself dealing with an international controversy generated by people claiming that they did not feel free inside an Argentine institution.
Freedom has these irritating habits.
Once invoked, it tends to insist on being available to everybody else as well.
The internal dispute was compounded by another sensitive matter: meetings and activities associated with sectors of Europe’s radical right. Muzio never concealed his intellectual and political connections. He had previously headed the Madrid branch of ISSEP, an institution founded by Marion Maréchal, a prominent figure of the French far right.
None of this is, in itself, a crime. Nor should conservative political expression be driven underground. Freedom of expression claimed for one side must also exist for the other.
The question is different.
Should a university residence under the authority of the Argentine State become a platform for political activities capable — even indirectly — of entering the domestic political debate of its host country?
At that point, the discussion is no longer merely ideological.
It becomes diplomatic.
The City of Paris called for the situation to be investigated. Officials at the Cité Universitaire publicly expressed concern. Directors of other residences began questioning whether they could comfortably send students to the Argentine House through the Cité’s exchange arrangements.
When a university residence manages simultaneously to alarm students, academics, administrators, legislators and municipal authorities, the problem is probably no longer an unusually efficient left-wing conspiracy.
There is probably a problem.
Then September arrived.
Milei prepares to visit France. Paris watches. The controversy grows. French journalists ask questions. And Santiago Muzio heads for — or is shown — the exit.
Former director Marcelo Balsells believes the timing is no coincidence.
We cannot know.
Perhaps, after all these months, the Argentine government suddenly discovered an enthusiasm for tranquillity in university residences.
It is possible.
Administrative miracles do happen.
They generally happen before the President’s aircraft lands.
The announced successor, Alfredo Mario Soto, a university professor and specialist in private international law, will inherit something considerably more complicated than a building containing bedrooms. He will inherit an institution whose internal and external trust needs rebuilding.
That should now be the real issue.
Not whether the House should belong to the right or the left.
But remembering that it should belong to neither.
Argentina already possesses more than enough political committees, ideological foundations, doctrinal clubs and gatherings where people can debate until dawn about who will save Western civilisation.
It does not need to turn a student residence into another trench.
Especially not in Paris.
The Argentine House opened in 1928. Through its rooms passed people who went on to write, research, teach, paint and argue about ideas. Julio Cortázar was part of that universe. It hardly seems excessive to expect today’s residents to be allowed to do exactly the same without presenting, alongside their passports and university papers, a certificate of ideological good conduct.
Santiago Muzio is leaving.
The plaque can be restored. The accounts can be audited. The regulations can be reviewed. Any responsibilities, where they exist, can be established.
But one question remains considerably more uncomfortable than the name of the departing director:
How could an institution of the Argentine State remain in such a situation for so long without Buenos Aires considering intervention urgent?
Because if Muzio acted properly, the government should have defended him.
If he acted improperly, it should have removed him.
And if, for months, it preferred to look elsewhere until the presidential aircraft bound for Paris appeared on the horizon, then there is a third possibility.
And that, dear reader, is no longer about Muzio.
It is about the Government.
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