"Islamo-leftism plagues society and universities."
The little sentence pronounced ten days ago on CNews by the Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, aroused angry reactions within the political class and the academic world.
What do the French think of it?
According to an Odoxa-Blackbone Consulting poll carried out Tuesday and Wednesday for
Le Figaro
and Franceinfo, 66% of them approve of the minister's remarks.
This support is found mainly on the right and in the center of the chessboard: the supporters LREM (79%), LR (85%) and RN (79%) consider his remarks justified.
The left, on the other hand, is fractured: if 60% of PS sympathizers support the minister, they are on the other hand in the minority at EELV and LFI (47%).
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Islamo-leftism: the debate shakes the faculties
For 69% of respondents, there is indeed a problem of Islamo-leftism in France.
Here again, the supporters of the right and the center find themselves in this position (80% to LREM, 83% to LR, 82% to the RN), and the left forces are divided (63% to the PS, 50% to EELV and 46% to LFI).
The ideological divide is also generational.
The older the French, the more they consider that Islamo-leftism exists and constitutes a problem: 57% among those under 35, 68% among 35-49 years, 71% among 50-64 years and up to at 80% among those 65 and over.
Electoral motivations
The Minister's approach of entrusting the CNRS with the task of carrying out
"an assessment of all the research"
taking place in France, in order to distinguish between what comes under academic research and what relates to activism, is also supported by 65% of respondents.
The French, on the other hand, are in the majority to consider that the motivations of the executive on this issue are above all electoralist: while 44% of French people think the government is seeking to resolve a social problem that really concerns it, 53% of those polled believe that the government acts above all to "capture or retain part of the right-wing electorate".
The French polled by Odoxa are also keen on the independence of research: 57% of them consider that university studies carried out on the subjects of religion, race, gender, or post-colonialism, are "legitimate "And that researchers should be interested in" relations of domination in our society ".
A largely dominant position among LREM (73%), EELV (68%) and PS (65%) supporters.
Odoxa poll for Le Figaro published by LeFigaro