We want to reply to the open letter written by academics from mostly English-speaking universities that was published by openDemocracy,* and which was in turn a response to the open manifesto we published in Le Monde (2 November 2020), supporting the statements made by Jean-Michel Blanquer, the Secretary of Education (“Ministre de l’Education Nationale”) in the Macron government. Blanquer had pointed to the development of certain dominant ideological positions in French Academia that ultimately undermine the universal ideals that are fundamental to the French Educational System as well as to the country and that encroach upon any given University's obligation to deliver knowledge and quality research. We take this opportunity, not only to defend our arguments, but to address the ideological attitudes as well as the implicit and explicit mischaracterizations of our manifesto. Overall, we want to describe how the open letter provides a very biased and misleading view of our text.
We begin by pointing out that our manifesto was signed by scores of prominent academics who represent multiple disciplines so, to start off, we point out that the patronizing attitude of the Open Letter was wholly inappropriate and off-putting. The debate that we aimed to engage in, by issuing our manifesto, is not between right and left. Rather, it is between those, on one side, who trust in universalism and believe that the bonds of a nation, if not a civilization, are primarily expressed through its shared values and those, on the other side, who view society as a collection of antagonistic groups – defined on the basis of sex, gender-identity, sexuality, ethnicity and even skin colour (what some even call “race”) – that determines all power-driven relations. We are on the side of those who defend universalist values and we thereby reject the claims made by those who signed the Open Letter who, in our view, fracture society by breaking it down into an ever-increasing number of often-grievance-driven subgroups. In what follows, the signatories of this letter present a detailed rebuttal, with each section focusing on a claim made against us and our manifesto.
In what follows, the signatories of this letter present a detailed rebuttal, with each section focusing on a claim made against us and our manifesto.
Point 1: “At a time of mounting racism, white supremacism, antisemitism and violent far-right extremism, academic freedom has come under attack. The freedom to teach and research the roots and trajectories of race and racism are being perversely blamed for the very phenomena they seek to better understand.”
