A row has split radical chic Parisian intellectuals over the relocation of their college from the affluent Left Bank to an impoverished, multiethnic suburb where they fear being deprived of bistros and boutiques.

Some of France’s most eminent academics are campaigning to stop the elite College of Higher Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) from moving to Aubervilliers in the Seine-Saint-Denis département north of the capital. But the move’s backers say that the real concern of the intelligentsia is to remain within walking distance of cafés in Saint Germain des Prés and shops selling Prada clothes, Ferragamo shoes, wholemeal bread and smoked salmon.

The row arose after the college announced it would leave Boulevard Raspail in the well-heeled 6th district for an American-style campus – nicknamed Berkeley-on-Seine – in what is an industrial estate in Aubervilliers. The move was brought forward from 2012 after the Raspail building became unsafe because of asbestos.

The academics said a delegation had visited the new site in Aubervilliers and was “appalled”. “No inhabitants. No green spaces. Practically no trees. No businesses. No cafés. No restaurants,” they said in a blog.

Philosophers, historians, economists and sociologists have lined up to denounce the suburb as a cultural desert, far removed from the Parisian café society they have known since the days of Jean-Paul Sartre. They say Seine-Saint-Denis – infamous as the centre of the 2005 race riots in France and known from its registration number, 93, as le Neuf-Trois – is a “zone lacking all the necessary tools for intellectual work”.

They claim the EHESS has fallen victim to a Machiavellian plot hatched by President Sarkozy’s centre-right Government in an attempt to dismantle an antiEstablishment bastion. The college is famed for producing some of France’s greatest left-wing thinkers, such as Pierre Bourdieu, the sociologist, and for its role in the May 1968 student protests in Paris.

Some lecturers have poured scorn on the campaign. Francis Chateau-raynaud, director of the Pragmatic and Reflective Sociology Group, said: “The well-to-do people of the 6th district don’t want to move their bums and they are scared of le 93.”

Supporters of the relocation say that it could help to bridge the gulf separating Paris’s white and wealthy city centre from a periphery marked by immigration, unemployment and violence. Catherine Sautter, a member of the college administration, said: “Maybe our intellectuals are not that intelligent at the end of the day.”

6th district

— Hélène Darroze’s Michelin-starred restaurant Tour d’Argent
— Historic literary brasserie Café le Procope
— Café de Flore, intelligentsia’s favourite postwar haunt
— Les Deux Magots, Jean-Paul Sartre’s café
— Agnès b designer clothes

Aubervilliers

— Kentucky Fried Chicken
— Délice Pizza
— Class’croûte, takeaway meals
— Lauryll Afro-Européenne hairdresser
— Mechakou Abdelaziz café
— Modern Hotel

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin