France holds grip on old ideas
Anti-progressive French politicians say social theories from the US are a real threat to national identity as well as the republic
PARIS — The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. They say it attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage. The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.
French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Macron’s education minister.
Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture.
Pitted against them is a younger, more diverse guard that considers these theories as tools to understanding the willful blind spots of an increasingly diverse nation that still recoils at the mention of race, has yet to come to terms with its colonial past and often waves away the concerns of minorities as identity politics.
Disputes that would have otherwise attracted little attention are now blown up in the news and social media. The new director of the Paris Opera, who recently said he wants to diversify its staff and ban blackface, has been attacked by the far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, but also in Le Monde because, though German, he had worked in Toronto and had “soaked up American culture for 10 years.”
The publication this month of a book critical of racial studies by two veteran social scientists, Stephane Beaud and Gerard Noiriel, fueled criticism from younger scholars — and has received extensive news coverage. Noiriel has said that race had become a “bulldozer’’ crushing other subjects, adding, in an email, that its academic research in France was questionable because race is not recognized by the government and is merely “subjective data.’’
The fierce French debate over a handful of academic disciplines on U.S. campuses may surprise those who have witnessed the gradual decline of American influence in many corners of the world. In some ways, it is a proxy fight over some of the most combustible issues in French society, including national identity and the sharing of power.
With its echoes of the American culture wars, the battle began inside French universities but is being played out increasingly in the media. Politicians have been weighing in more and more, especially following a turbulent year during which a series of events called into question tenets of French society.
Mass protests in France against police violence, inspired by the killing of George Floyd, challenged the official dismissal of race and systemic racism. A #MeToo generation of feminists confronted both male power and older feminists. A widespread crackdown following a series of Islamist attacks raised questions about France’s model of secularism and the integration of immigrants from its former colonies.
Some saw the reach of American identity politics and social science theories. Some centerright lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities and singled out “guilty’’ scholars on Twitter.
Macron — who had shown little interest in these matters in the past but has been courting the right before elections next year — jumped in last June, when he blamed universities for encouraging the “ethnicization of the social question’’ — amounting to “breaking the republic in two.’’
“I was pleasantly astonished,’’ said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who last month helped create an organization against “decolonialism and identity politics.’’ Made up of established figures, many retired, the group has issued warnings about American-inspired social theories in major publications like Le Point and Le Figaro.
For Heinich, last year’s developments came on top of activism that brought foreign disputes over cultural appropriation and blackface to French universities.
At the Sorbonne, activists prevented the staging of a play by Aeschylus to protest the wearing of masks and dark makeup by white actors; elsewhere, some speakers were disinvited following student pressure.
“It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture,’’ Heinich said.
To others, the lashing out at perceived American influence revealed something else: a French establishment incapable of confronting a world in flux, especially when the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic has deepened the sense of ineluctable decline of a oncegreat power.
“It’s the sign of a small, frightened republic, declining, provincializing, but which in the past and to this day believes in its universal mission and which thus seeks those responsible for its decline,’’ said Francois Cusset, an expert on American civilization at Paris Nanterre University.
France has long laid claim to a national identity, based on a common culture, fundamental rights and core values like equality
“On the question of Islamophobia, it’s only in France where there is such violent talk in rejecting the term.”
and liberty, rejecting diversity and multiculturalism. The French often see the United States as a fractious society at war with itself.
But far from being American, many of the leading thinkers behind theories on gender, race, post-colonialism and queer theory came from France — as well as the rest of Europe, South America, Africa and India, said Anne Garreta, a French writer who teaches at universities in France and at Duke in North Carolina.
“It’s an entire global world of ideas that circulates,’’ she said. “It just happens that campuses that are the most cosmopolitan and most globalized at this point in history are the American ones. ‘’
The French state does not compile racial statistics, which is illegal, describing it as part of its commitment to universalism and treating all citizens equally under the law. To many scholars on race, however, the reluctance is part of a long history of denying racism in France and the country’s slave-trading and colonial past.
“What’s more French than the racial question in a country that was built around those questions?’’ said Mame-Fatou Niang, who divides her time between France and the United States, where she teaches French studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.
Niang has led a campaign to remove a fresco at France’s National Assembly, which shows two Black figures with fat red lips and bulging eyes. Her public views on race have made her a frequent target on social media, including of one of the lawmakers who pressed for an investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities.
Pap Ndiaye, a historian who led efforts to establish Black studies in France, said it was no coincidence that the current wave of anti-American rhetoric began growing just as the first protests against racism and police violence took place in June.
“There was the idea that we’re talking too much about racial questions in France,’’ he said. “That’s enough.’’
Three Islamist attacks last fall served as a reminder that terrorism remains a threat in France. They also focused attention on another hot-button field of research: Islamophobia, which examines how hostility toward Islam in France, rooted in its colonial experience in the Muslim world, continues to shape the lives of French Muslims.
Abdellali Hajjat, an expert on Islamophobia, said that it became increasingly difficult to focus on his subject after 2015, when devastating terror attacks hit Paris. Government funding for research dried up. Researchers on the subject were accused of being apologists for Islamists and even terrorists.
Finding the atmosphere oppressive, Hajjat left to teach at the Free University of Brussels, in Belgium, where he said he found greater academic freedom.
“On the question of Islamophobia, it’s only in France where there is such violent talk in rejecting the term,’’ he said.
Macron’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, accused universities, under American influence, of being complicit with terrorists by providing the intellectual justification behind their acts.
A group of 100 prominent scholars wrote an open letter supporting the minister and decrying theories “transferred from North American campuses” in Le Monde.
A 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.’’
Along with Islamophobia, it was through the “totally artificial importation’’ in France of the “American-style Black question” that some were trying to draw a false picture of a France guilty of “systemic racism’’ and “white privilege,’’ said Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a historian and a leading critic of the American influence.
Taguieff said in an email that researchers of race, Islamophobia and post-colonialism were motivated by a “hatred of the West, as a white civilization.’’
“The common agenda of these enemies of European civilization can be summed up in three words: decolonize, demasculate, de-Europeanize,’’ Taguieff said. “Straight white male — that’s the culprit to condemn and the enemy to eliminate.”
Behind the attacks on U.S. universities — led by aging white male intellectuals — lie the tensions in a society where power appears to be up for grabs, said Eric Fassin, a sociologist who was one of the first scholars to focus on race and racism in France, about 15 years ago.
Back then, scholars on race tended to be white men like himself, he said. He said he has often been called a traitor and faced threats, most recently from a right-wing extremist who was given a four-month suspended prison sentence for threatening to decapitate him.
But the emergence of young intellectuals — some Black or Muslim — has fueled the assault on what Fassin calls the “American boogeyman.’’
“That’s what has turned things upside down,’’ he said. “They’re not just the objects we speak of, but they’re also the subjects who are talking.’’
— Abedllali Hajjat, an expert on Islamophobia
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It’s been more than 1,000 days since a gunman with an AR-15 rifle burst into a Florida high school, killed 17 people and wounded 17 others.
Yet, with Valentine’s Day on Sunday marking the three-year milestone, the trial of 22-year-old Nikolas Cruz is in limbo.
One reason is the coronavirus, which has shut court operations down and made in-person jail access difficult for the defense.
Another is the sheer magnitude of the case, with hundreds of witnesses from Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
The case could have been all over by now. Cruz’s lawyers have repeatedly said he would plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. But prosecutors won’t budge on seeking the death penalty at trial.
“We are dedicated to ensuring that justice is done and we are working diligently to ensure that the criminal trial begins as soon as possible,” said Broward County State Attorney Harold Pryor, who was elected in November.
The longtime state attorney he replaced, Michael Satz, is staying on to personally prosecute Cruz. Satz has said Cruz’s fate must be decided by a jury, not by Cruz himself through a guilty plea.
Parents of those slain and wounded are divided over the death penalty, said Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter, Gina, was killed in the shooting and who is president of the victims’ family group Stand With Parkland.
There’s no doubt where Montalto stands.
“The option for a long life was not given to our children and spouses — it was taken that day,” Montalto said. “Society in general should demand that someone who attacked the most vulnerable, our children, at their school, a place of learning, should be held ultimately accountable. Our families have already paid the ultimate price.”
Michael Schulman, the father of shooting victim Scott Beigel — a school cross-country coach and geography teacher hailed
for protecting students — wrote a newspaper opinion piece in which he said it would be better for everyone if Cruz could plead guilty and be locked away for life.
“Going for the death penalty will not bring our loved ones back to us. It will not make the physical scars of those wounded go away,” Schulman wrote.
Even in the best of times, death penalty cases typically take years to go to trial. In Broward County, the average time between arrest and trial is about 3 years. Some complex cases have taken up to 10 years to get to trial.
“Even if we didn’t have the pandemic to contend with, getting a death penalty case with this many victims to trial, in Florida, would have taken at least this long,” said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Miami. “The deposition process alone can take years, and then there are the experts and mitigation specialists.”
If Cruz is convicted and sentenced to death, the appeals would probably stretch for decades. It’s also possible the case could get reversed and sent back for another sentencing hearing or trial, forcing victims’ families to confront it all again.
Cruz is represented by the Broward County public defender’s office, which has taken depositions so far from about 300 witnesses. His lawyers declined
to comment for this story, but in court papers they have insisted there is no intent to delay the case.
Cruz had a well-documented history of mental problems, including an obsession with violence and death, before the shooting rampage when he was 19.
His defense isn’t focused on his guilt or innocence; it’s more about sparing him from the death penalty, his lawyers have said in court.
One big sticking point is access to Cruz in jail. His lawyers say that mental health experts they need for the trial must interview him in person, which they will not do as long as the coronavirus remains a threat in the nation’s jails.
But officials have raised security concerns about transporting Cruz from jail to meet with defense experts elsewhere.
In recent weeks, there has also been a lengthy battle over prosecutors’ desire to let the jury — whenever the case gets to that point — visit the now-closed school building to see it for themselves. Defense attorneys say that would be too prejudicial and that ample video and other evidence exists.
Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer initially hoped to begin the trial in January 2020. That obviously did not happen. Then everything was shut down when the coronavirus pandemic struck in mid-March.
No trial date has been set. The next hearing is a status conference, conducted remotely like other such proceedings over the past several months, on Feb. 16. Since the 2018 massacre:
The sheriff at the time, Scott Israel, was removed by the governor because of the agency’s performance that day.
The school security officer on duty the day of the shootings, former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson, faces 11 criminal charges, including child neglect and negligence, for not entering the school building to confront Cruz. He has pleaded not guilty and also awaits trial.
A commission set up to study the tragedy recommended that teachers be trained and armed in schools, and the state Legislature in 2019 passed a law to that effect.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed over the shootings and will probably take years to resolve. The coronavirus outbreak has hindered those cases as well, though a judge recently ruled the school system had no duty to warn of the danger posed by Cruz, by then a former student.
In that case, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning said the Broward County school district cannot be held liable for failing to predict actions that were beyond its control, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.
“The District had no control over Cruz,” the judge ruled. “They did not have custody over him. He was not a student in the system and had not been for over a year. In fact, he was refused access to the campus once he left school.”
The judge also said the plaintiffs are relying on too many “what if ” questions to build a solid legal claim for damages.
“There is no foundation for the argument that if Cruz had been sent to a different program, and if he had been treated as a higher threat years before the incident, and if he had been criminally charged years earlier so he’d have been convicted and could not buy or own a gun, and if he had never been permitted to attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas, then he would not have been on this campus and would never have committed the crime,” the ruling said.