His remarks sparked many reactions on social networks.
Since her passage, Sunday, at the microphone of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach on the CNews channel, the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation has pointed to a problem which, according to her, "gangrene" universities French: Islamo-leftism.
To take the measure of the phenomenon, it also announced the order of a survey with the CNRS on the question.
We take stock.
What Frédérique Vidal said
On social networks, Internet users relay an extract of just over four minutes.
In the image, the journalist Jean-Pierre Elkabbach launches the subject of Islamo-leftism in universities, citing the headline of the Figaro dated February 12.
"I think that Islamo-leftism is corrupting society as a whole and that the university is not impermeable, the university is part of society", continues Frédérique Vidal.
Then she develops: "What we observe in universities is that there are indeed people who can use their title and the aura they have, they are in the minority, to bring forward radical ideas or militant ideas.
"
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- The Sound of Science (@SoundofScFr) February 15, 2021
Frédérique Vidal then denounces those who look at everything through the prism of their will to divide, to fracture, to designate the enemy, agrees with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach when he considers that the situation in the universities looks like a "kind of" alliance between Mao Zedong and Ayatollah Khomeini ”.
"I believe that the vast majority of academics are aware of this and fight against it," she nuances to conclude.
What is this survey?
Beyond these positions, and in an attempt to shed light on this phenomenon that she deplores, Frédérique Vidal has announced her intention to order a survey from the CNRS.
Researchers will be asked to distinguish within research currents "what is academic research" and what is "activism and opinion".
Contacted, the CNRS is satisfied on Tuesday to indicate that "discussions have been launched with the minister's office on the subject", without further comment.
Also contacted, the minister's office has not returned to us.
Is this a first?
This is not the first time that the subject of "Islamo-leftism" in French universities has been controversial in the public debate.
Last fall, it was the Minister of National Education who had already explicitly mentioned the subject.
On the airwaves of Europe 1, already, he estimated on October 22 that "what is called Islamo-leftism is wreaking havoc."
Before continuing: "It wreaks havoc at the university, it wreaks havoc when the UNEF [National Union of Students of France] gives in to this type of thing, it wreaks havoc when in the ranks of La France rebellious, you have people who are of that current and show themselves as such.
These people favor an ideology which, then, from time to time, leads to the worst ”.
After LR officials Julien Aubert and Damien Abad demanded from the President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand the opening of a parliamentary fact-finding mission on what they qualify as “intellectual ideological drifts in academia”, the conference of university presidents cracked a press release to show “solidarity with his colleagues”.
The CPU also said it shared "the indignation of the entire university community".
"If requests for the creation of fact-finding missions are the strictest right of any parliamentarian [...] it signals above all, in the name of populist opportunism, the disrespect and questioning of academic freedoms, a fundamental principle of constitutional value and present in any democracy, ”she added.
How do academics react?
Several professors and researchers have once again castigated the words of Frédérique Vidal.
"The university community is once again the target of the electoral strategy aimed at attracting sympathies from the far right," tweets the philosopher Pierre Charbonnier, researcher at the CNRS.
Islamo-leftism is a media tinkering, but it hides a reality, which is the existence of certain anti-capitalist circles which delegate to Muslims their own anti-Semitism, he assures us.
These environments are extremely rare at university.
"
Frédéric Sawicki, professor of political science at Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne and researcher at CESSP-CNRS, for his part deplored that this media release comes at a time when the minister should be monopolized by student precariousness in these times of health crisis.
The latter published the email which would have been sent by a student regretting not to have attended assiduously to the online courses, having become homeless.
While @vidal spits in the face of # universities brandishing the imaginary threat of # isalamogauchism, this is the daily life of academics: desperate emails from students largely abandoned by this government.
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- Frédéric Sawicki (@FredericSawicki) February 16, 2021