Damien Ernst, a prominent engineer and energy expert, was seen on footage getting assaulted by several masked Antifa members as he was speaking to the class present. The professor was shown on the viral video getting cream pies thrown on his upper body and face over his research on using AI in the military.
Ernst said after the incident that he feared for his life, according to the Hungarian Conservative. Soon after the attack, a group that calls itself the " Vrai Comité (Populaire) d’Éthique de l’ULiège" or "Real Popular Ethics Committee of the University of Liège," claimed responsibility for the assault and accused the professor of collaborating with the military industry and creating AI for military purposes.
The group said in a statement translated from French, "We, VC(P)E-ULiège, staged this pie-throwing incident to ridicule Damien Ernst—Wallonia’s most moronic engineer—and to highlight the array of harmful practices he embodies; we also sought to shame the University of Liège for organizing what can only be described as a criminal conspiracy—namely (and at the very least) the collusion between scientific research and the arms industry."

The professor thought that it was a student prank at first before it became serious. The incident follows a far-left campaign against the defense industry; the University of Liège has been in a major research partnership with Thales, the French defense and aerospace group.






