French minister sparks storm over warning of 'Islamo-Leftist' scourge in universities
French academia is in uproar after the government ordered an investigation into cancel culture on campuses, accusing some Leftist lecturers of turning a blind eye to Islamism.
France’s higher education minister Frédérique Vidal said she was launching a “scientific study" into Islamo-gauchisme (Islamo-Leftism) - a hazy term suggesting some academics refuse to criticise radical Islam because of perceived persecution of French Muslims.
The row erupted as France is in the midst of a fraught debate on what President Emmanuel Macron has termed "Islamist separatism". This week, French MPs approved a tough draft law bolstering the state's powers to shut down religious groups deemed extremist.
Ms Vidal's comments were in response to wider concerns notably on the French Right that the country's campuses are prey to cancel culture, notably regarding race, gender and post-colonialism.
Claims of censorial pressure came as the British government said it was bringing in legislation to defend free speech on UK campuses amid concerns about the rise of “silencing and censoring” both academics and students.
Speaking to CNews, Ms Vidal said: “I think Islamo-Leftism is gangrening society as a whole and that university is not impermeable and is part of society."
She said that a “minority” of lecturers were using “their titles and aura” to “see everything through the prism of their desire to divide, split, designate the enemy”.
On Tuesday, she told MPs she had asked the French National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS, to comb through research, “notably in the domain of post-colonial studies”, to distinguish “what harks from academic research and what harks from activism and opinion”.
Her comments triggered howls of protests from French academics, starting with the CNRS itself, which dismissed “Islamo-Leftism” as a “political slogan that fits no scientific reality”.
France’s reputedly conservative conference of university presidents, CPU, expressed its “astonishment” over what it called a “sterile row”.
“Islamo-Leftism is not a concept,” it wrote in a statement, adding that it was better left for the gutter press or “more widely the far-Right that has popularised it”.
Eric Fassin, sociology lecturer at Paris 8 university, said on Twitter that “the row against cancel culture aims at justifying censorship”.
“The McCarthyist witch-hunt intensifies in France,” tweeted Philippe Marlière, professor of French and European politics at University College London, calling the minister’s comments “an unbelievable attack on academic freedom on the part of a democratically elected government”.
“This crazy government is playing with fire.”
In December, Prof Marlière wrote a tribune in BiblioObs saying the terminology expressed the “moral, intellectual, even physical hatred of individuals who speak about discrimination of which Muslims in France are victims”.
Sandrine Rousseau, vice president of Lille University, called the row a “smokescreen” to mask the government’s failings in supporting students “who are going through unprecedented distress” during the Covid pandemic.
The term Islamo-gauchisme was reportedly defined around 20 years ago by philosopher-historian Pierre André-Taguieff who in October called it a “militant alliance” between Leftists and “Islamists of various persuasions (Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, jihadists)”.
Historian Jacques Julliard claimed Islamo-Leftists were “extremist 'bobos' (bourgeois bohemians)” and heirs of “French intellectuals who adhered in the 20th century to fascist violence for some and Communist violence for others”.
Long the preserve of the far-Right, French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer employed the term after the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist in October. He said it mirrored a mindset that was “wreaking havoc” on some French universities, which he accused, under American influence, of being complicit with terrorists by justifying their actions on the basis of the victimisation of Muslims.
A group of 100 prominent scholars then wrote an open letter supporting the minister and slamming theories “transferred from North American campuses” in Le Monde.
One signatory, Gilles Kepel, an expert on Islam, said that American influence had led to “a sort of prohibition in universities to think about the phenomenon of political Islam in the name of a Leftist ideology that considers it the religion of the underprivileged".
In November, Mr Macron accused parts of the English-speaking media, including the New York Times, of "legitimising...violence" from Islamists by "saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic".
He received praise from former Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who wrote in the Telegraph in November: "There are well-meaning officials who worry that Islamism, a term with credible and established meaning, could be seen as implicating the entire religion of Islam and all its diverse and peaceful adherents.
"And there are woke activists who are quick to victim-blame the West and cry Islamophobia at all attempts to deal with the issue."
Mr Macron has recently been accused by critics of pandering to the far-Right ahead of next year’s presidential elections in which polls suggest he will face off once again with Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration National Rally.
Interior minister Gérald Darmanin raised eyebrows even in Mr Macron’s centrist camp last Thursday after accusing Ms Le Pen of "softness" on Islam during a televised debate.
