Olivier Vial is Director of CERU, the university ideas lab and President of UNI and the Deconstruction Observatory.
"Sociology is a combat sport",
said Bourdieu.
Applying the formula to the letter, some of his heirs have transformed university research into a fist fight whose objective is to annihilate those who do not think like them in order to "erase" them purely and simply from the public space.
The cabal directed against two teachers from the Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble illustrates wonderfully the methods and the aims of these little Torquemadas of "
politically and scientifically correct"
.
Last week, messages were plastered on the walls of Sciences Po denouncing the supposed presence of
“Islamophobes”
and
“fascists in the lecture halls”.
The names of two teachers are thus subjected to vindictiveness in order to force them to resign.
To increase the pressure, left and far left activists will immediately and massively relay these accusations on social networks.
The hunt is on against these teachers: two months of harassment and denigration for having simply tried to question the relevance of the concept of "Islamophobia".
Read also: Two professors from Sciences Po Grenoble accused of Islamophobia on the walls of the IEP
Each year, at the beginning of December, the IEP organizes a “week for equality”.
The 2020 edition wanted to dedicate a day entitled “Racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism”
.
One of the incriminated teachers expressed to the organizers his doubts about the place reserved for the concept of Islamophobia.
Careful, he does not ask for its removal.
He is content, in an email, to propose
"as a basis for discussion, a day worded as follows: racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of contemporary discrimination (Islamophobia, homophobia, misogyny ...)"
.
This very timid request is however perceived as a declaration of war by the Union Syndicale de Sciences Po (Editor's note, the majority student union born of a split of the UNEF with its left wing).
The student union placards the teacher's email and denounces a
"lunar"
demand
, a
"historical falsification"
, a
"reactionary vision"
!
To classify Islamophobia as contemporary discrimination would be a form of revisionism which would aim to make invisible the millennial character of this oppression.
The teacher then proposes to intervene during a round table to clarify his conception.
“This teacher said he wanted to participate as a discussant in the round table called“ Racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism ””.
Equality week is not equal points of view week.
All points of view are not the same, we consider the speech of this teacher intolerable, "
belching the union calling
" the management to rule on his case.
In addition to these threats, there is a press release signed by the leadership of the Pact, a local research laboratory which claims “decolonized thinking”.
The latter accuses the teacher, on the grounds that he questions the concept of Islamophobia, of
"denying, in the name of a personal opinion, the validity of the scientific results of a colleague and of all the field to which she belongs. "
.
This simple stance, which in the past was called debate, is now qualified by the management of this research laboratory
"as harassment and violent moral injury".
The strength of these student activists as well as of these academics is to know how to pass in an instant from the status of prosecutors to that of victims in order to avoid any discussion and discredit their adversaries.
The strength of these student activists as well as of these academics is to know how to pass in an instant from the status of prosecutors to that of victims in order to avoid any discussion and discredit their adversaries.
Olivier Vial
But then, if all points of view are not equal, who decides on the relevance of such and such a concept?
By reading the writings of those who investigate Islamophobia trials, one understands, for example, that Islamophobia is a
“legitimate”
notion
while
“speeches that use the expression“ Islamo-leftism ”are pernicious”,
according to the USSP.
However, these two concepts grew up in the bosom of the CNRS.
The concept of Islamo-leftism was forged in the early 2000s by Pierre-André Taguieff, political scientist and research director at CNRS to describe a political and historical reality: the alliance of a part of the left with the political Islam.
This one does not date from yesterday.
From 1920, Lenin organized in Baku a conference of the peoples of the East during which a
"call to jihad" was
launched by Sultan Galiev against imperialism.
This alliance will be theorized again in the mid-1990s by Chris Harman, a Trotskyist leader, in his book
“the prophet and the proletarian”.
Subsequently, Tariq Ramadan will embody this alliance at the European Summit in London.
Why would this concept be less scientific than that of Islamophobia which was popularized in the early 2000s by Vincent Geisser, a former student of the IEP of Grenoble (short circuit thought), also a researcher at the CNRS?
In 2003, this sociologist published
The New Islamophobia
and began a lecture tour on campuses, with the help of the Muslim Students of France (close to the Muslim Brotherhood) to publicize his theses.
If it is not the "quality" of the person who creates the concept that makes it possible to guarantee its scientificity, what is it?
The unanimity of the scientific community on the subject?
The two concepts are in fact the subject of debate.
The notion of Islamophobia has even been the subject of a severe and well-documented criticism from Philippe d'Iribarne, also director of research at the CNRS.
If it is not the "quality" of the person who creates the concept that makes it possible to guarantee its scientificity, what is it?
Olivier Vial
It is in the name of a moral, political and ideological conception that some arrogate to themselves the right to award good points and ukases.
Convinced of embodying "Good", as their predecessors thought they embodying "the meaning of history", they still believe that the end justifies the means.
This explains why they do not have the slightest hesitation in discrediting anyone who opposes them.
Thus, when the accused teacher received the support of one of his colleagues, the Union Syndicale Sciences Po did not hesitate to launch a call for an anonymous denunciation against the latter on social networks to collect
"the problematic comments. »
He could have held: the stated objective is to withdraw his lessons and break his career.
These attacks make it possible to keep their opponents in check, to make examples of them so that everyone is well warned: questioning Islamophobia is at best taking the risk of a career, or even a life. broken.
The Grenoble prosecutor's office has opened an investigation for public insult.
Inspections were carried out.
Hopefully we will learn the lessons of the drama that cost Samuel Paty his life, and that those responsible for this cabal will be punished.
If the social sciences continue to be seen as a combat sport, it is the University that will end up on the mat.