Paul Sebag was a Communist activist, sociologist, and historian of Tunisia. Born into a bourgeois family in Tunis in 1919, he was educated in Paris. On his return to Tunis, he joined the Communist Party in 1936 and was one of its leaders from 1939 to 1943. He was arrested at the beginning of 1941 and sentenced to life at hard labor but was released in late 1942. After the liberation of Tunisia from German occupation in May 1943, he became a member of the editorial board of the underground communist newspaper L’Avenir Social.

Sebag was professor of philosophy at the prestigious Lycée Carn…