French inquiry into cancel culture causes stir

PARIS • 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, Frederique Vidal, said she was launching a “scientific study” into Islamo-gauchisme (Islamo-leftism) — a hazy term suggesting some academics refuse to criticize radical Islam because of perceived persecution of French Muslims. The row erupted in the midst of a fraught debate on what President emmanuel Macron has termed “Islamist separatism.”

This week, French MPS approved a draft law bolstering the state’s powers to shut down religious groups deemed extremist.

Vidal’s comments were in response to wider concerns, notably on the French right, that France’s campuses are prey to cancel culture 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 u.k. campuses as part of a cancel culture crackdown.

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 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 protests from French academics, starting with the CNRS itself, which dismissed “Islamo-leftism” as a “political slogan that fits no scientific reality.”