Short answers, pulled from the story.
EHESS is a graduate grande école and grand établissement in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences, humanities, and applied mathematics. It became an independent institution on the 23rd of January 1975, having previously been a department of the École pratique des hautes études.
EHESS admits students through a rigorous selection process based on the quality of their proposed research projects rather than general entrance exams. Once admitted, students are free to design their own curriculum from the school's fields of research.
Notable figures include sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, philosophers Jacques Derrida and Catherine Malabou, economist Thomas Piketty, historian Fernand Braudel, and structuralist thinker Roland Barthes. Novelist Milan Kundera and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan also appear among past faculty.
The Rockefeller Foundation supported the creation of social science research within the École pratique des hautes études from the 1920s onward. After the Second World War, the Foundation invested additional funds in French institutions with the aim of encouraging non-Marxist sociological studies.
EHESS has approximately 830 researchers for 3,000 students, a ratio of 27.6 percent. This small ratio reflects the school's emphasis on intensive, research-oriented education.
The conference was disrupted by Polish nationalists. EHESS President Christophe Prochasson said he could not recall such a violent disturbance at any scientific conference. French Minister Frédérique Vidal condemned the Polish authorities in response.