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PARIS Stepping up its attacks on social science theories that it says threaten France, the French government announced this week that it would launch an investigation into academic research that it says feeds Islamo-leftist tendencies that corrupt society.

News of the investigation immediately caused a fierce backlash among university presidents and scholars, deepening fears of a crackdown on academic freedom especially on studies of race, gender, post-colonial studies and other fields that the French government says have been imported from American universities and contribute to undermining French society.

While President Emmanuel Macron and some of his top ministers have spoken out forcefully against what they see as a destabilizing influence from American campuses in recent months, the announcement marked the first time that the government has moved to take action.

It came as Frances lower house of Parliamentpassed a draft law against Islamism, an ideology it views as encouraging terrorist attacks, and as Mr. Macron tilts further to the right, anticipating nationalist challenges ahead of elections next year.

Frdrique Vidal, the minister of higher education, said in Parliament on Tuesday that the state-run National Center for Scientific Research would oversee an investigation into the totality of research underway in our country, singling out post-colonialism.

In an earlier television interview, Ms. Vidal said the investigation would focus on Islamo-leftism a controversial term embraced by some of Mr. Macrons leading ministers to accuse left-leaning intellectuals of justifying Islamism and even terrorism.

Islamo-leftism corrupts all of society and universities are not impervious, Ms. Vidal said, adding that some scholars were advancing radical and activist ideas. Referring also to scholars of race and gender, Ms. Vidal accused them of always looking at everything through the prism of their will to divide, to fracture, to pinpoint the enemy.

France has since early last century defined itself as a secular state devoted to the ideal that all of its citizens are the same under the law, to the extent that the government keeps no statistics on ethnicity and religion.

A newly diversifying society, and the lasting marginalization of immigrants mostly from its former colonies, has tested those precepts. Calls for greater awareness of discrimination have met opposition from a political establishment that often views them as an invitation to American multiculturalism and as a threat to Frances identity and social cohesion.

In unusually blunt language, the academic world rejected the governments accusations. The Conference of University Presidents on Tuesday dismissed Islamo-leftism as a pseudo notion popularized by the far right, chiding the governments discourse as talking rubbish.

The National Center for Scientific Research, the state organization that the minister ordered to oversee the investigation, suggested on Wednesday that it would comply, but it said it firmly condemned attacks on academic freedom.

The organization said it especially condemned attempts to delegitimize different fields of research, like post-colonial studies, intersectional studies and research on race.

Opposition by academics hardened on Thursday, when the association that would actually carry out the investigation, Athna, put out a sharply worded statement saying that it was not its responsibility to conduct the inquiry.

The seemingly esoteric fight over social science theories which has made the front page of at least three of Frances major newspapers in recent days points to a larger culture war in France that has been punctuated in the past year by mass protests over racism and police violence, competing visions of feminism, and explosive debates over Islam and Islamism.

It also follows years of attacks, large and small, by Islamist terrorists, that have killed more than 250 French, including in recent months three people at a basilica in Nice and a teacher who was beheaded.

While the culture war is being played out in the media and in politics, it has its roots in Frances universities. In recent years, a new, more diverse generation of social science scholars has embraced studies of race, gender and post-colonialism as tools to understand a nation that has often been averse to reflect on its history or on subjects like race and racism.

They have clashed with an older generation of intellectuals who regard these social science theories as American imports though many of the thinkers behind race, gender and post-colonialism are French or of other nationalities.

Mr. Macron, who had shown little interest in the issues in the past, has won over many conservatives in recent months by coming down hard against what he has called certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States.

In a major speech on Islamism last fall, Mr. Macron talked of children or grandchildren of Arab and African immigrants revisiting their identity through a post-colonial or anticolonial discourse falling into a trap set by people who use this discourse as a form of self-hatred nurtured against France.

In recent months, Mr. Macron has moved further to the right as part of a strategy to draw support from his likely main challenger in next years presidential election, Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader. Polls show that Mr. Macrons edge has shrunk over Ms. Le Pen, who was his main rival in the last election.

Chlo Morin, a public opinion expert at the Fondation Jean-Jaurs, a Paris-based research group, said that Mr. Macrons political base has completely shifted to the right and that his ministers use of the expression Islamo-leftism speaks to the right-wing electorate.

It has perhaps become one of the most effective terms for discrediting an opponent, Ms. Morin said.

Last fall, Mr. Macrons ministers adopted a favorite expression of the far right, ensauvagement, or turning savage, to decry supposedly out-of-control crime even though the governments own statistics showed that crime was actually flat or declining.

Marwan Mohammed, a French sociologist and expert on Islamophobia, said that politicians have often used dog-whistlewords, like ensauvagement or Islamo-leftism, to divide the electorate.

I think the government will be offering us these kinds of topics with a regular rhythm until next years presidential elections, Mr. Mohammed said, adding that these heated cultural debates distracted attention from the governments mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic, the economic crisis and even the epidemic-fueled crisis at the nations universities.

The expression Islamo-leftism was first coined in the early 2000s by the French historian Pierre-Andr Taguieff to describe what he saw as a political alliance between far-left militants and Islamist radicals against the United States and Israel.

More recently, it has been used by conservative and far-right figures and now by some of Mr. Macrons ministers against those they accuse of being soft on Islamism and focusing instead on Islamophobia.

Experts on Islamophobia examine how hostility toward Islam, rooted in Frances colonial experience, continues to shape the lives of French Muslims. Critics say their focus is a product of American-style, victim-based identity politics.

Mr. Taguieff, a leading critic of American universities, said in a recent email that Islamophobia, along with the totally artificial importation in France of the American-style Black question sought to create the false narrative of systemic racism in France.

Sarah Mazouz, a sociologist at the National Center for Scientific Research, said that the governments attacks on these social theories highlight the difficulty of the French state to think of itself as a state within a multicultural society.

She said the use of the expression Islamo-leftism was aimed at delegitimizing these new studies on race, gender and other subjects, so that the debate does not take place.

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Heating Up Culture Wars, France to Scour Universities for Ideas That Corrupt Society - The New York Times

It was a rain-sodden Friday night at the end of another week of lockdown ennui and anxiety; what could be more soothing than pottering about, aperitif on the go, listening to some decent tunes? And hark! A brand new radio station to ring the changes, one promising not merely a schedule brimming with aural treats but one carefully curated to reflect the tastes, the sensibilities and the vitality of an entire generation.

Boom Radio, launched last week on Valentines Day, set its stall out in uncompromising fashion, with a poem, an Ode to Boomers that is part mild grievance (You are the original influencer, it insists, there when music was fearless and came from the heart, when live performances were more than an experience to film on your phone) and part rallying cry to the postwar babies who, it says, changed the world and are still running at full speed (Theres still too much to live/Too much to love). As I listened, adverts for fresh-fish deliveries and Dormeo mattresses punctuated a beguilingly odd mixture of numbers from post-Manfred Mann Paul Jones, Tom Petty and Jamie Cullum.

Friday nights host and, in Groundhog Day fashion, also Saturday mornings was Roger Twiggy Day, an alumnus of Radio Caroline and Manchesters Piccadilly Radio, more recently heard on the Costa Blancas Bay Radio, which explains why he was celebrating falling Covid infection rates not merely in the UK but also in Spain. He has a pleasantly random presenting style, flexible enough to take in the challenges of getting to grips with new technology, exhortations to cheeriness No gloom on Boom! and, somewhat startlingly, an expression of sadness at the recent death of US talk radio controversialist Rush Limbaugh.

But early-days output is often a little uneven, and Boom Radio has some heavyweight expertise behind it, not least in the shape of industry veterans Phil Riley, who launched the listener-magnet Heart FM and relaunched LBC, and David Lloyd, who has done his time at several radio stations and the UK Radio Authority, now part of Ofcom. They have identified the UKs 14 million boomers, noticed the money in their pockets, and realised that in the great identity-driven media land-grab, they are catnip to advertisers.

Alongside Day, theyve signed up DJs David Kid Jensen, David Diddy Hamilton and Nicky Horne. Esther Rantzen will chat to her daughter, Rebecca Wilcox; distinguished agony aunt Anna Raeburn will advise on listeners problems; Grahame Dene, who inherited Kenny Everetts breakfast show for Capital in the 1970s, will wake them up every morning.

Booms overwhelming message is one of empowerment, its mantra also the title of Rileys interview show, which today features Chris Tarrant that its audience is Still Busy Living. And it is not alone in understanding that, as platforms and technologies converge, audiences themselves are ripe for atomisation. Bubbles whatever defines them are how to maximise returns on investment.

Hence, of course, the emergence of Andrew Neils GB News, busy signing up a roster of presenters from Sky News and TalkRadio; hence the boom of TalkRadio itself, whose most voluble and contrarian presenters, from Julia Hartley-Brewer to Dan Wootton and the mask-ripping Mark Dolan, have created a very special niche for themselves during the pandemic by taking a position of so-called lockdown scepticism.

Age, though, is something else. Who are these boomers? I am listening to Boom Radio illegally, as it were; I was born four years after its official cut-off birth year of 1964 and must, I suppose, wait for a radio station dedicated entirely to me. But my partner himself a radio broadcaster, and music addict sneaks under the wire. I shout downstairs for him to come and listen to this new channel created for him, but he is too busy curating his own experience, playing his collection of singles by the reggae genius, U-Roy, who also died last week. What else is on his turntable at the moment, I ask? Fontaines DC and Fiona Apple, comes the answer.

And therein lies the issue. If you love music, you dont stop listening to it; you dont freeze it in time and, as much as you cherish and replay the songs of your youth indeed, your Big Youth you make room for the new.

Which is not to say that Boom Radio isnt on to something. Nostalgia is big business; but so too is the creation of identity silos, in which those who feel or, indeed, might be encouraged to feel that their needs are not catered to will be welcomed and made to feel at home.

In a broader context, covertly pitting the generations against one another has become a disquieting feature of our collective psyches problems. Greedy old people flouncing us out of Europe and millennials splurging their house deposits on flat whites and avocado toast are equally pernicious caricatures of disparate groups of people that foster mistrust and division.

The biggest problem with the culture wars? Theres so little culture in them. Reliant on a view of humans as unchanging, incurious and desperate to set up gated communities from which to defend their territory against all-comers, they ignore the opportunity for flexibility and renewal, for difference and diversity.

It would be unfair, of course, to project all this on to a pleasant enough radio station which, as I type, is belting out Barbra Streisand. Because, lets face it, young or old, we all love a bit of Barbra.

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Hello, boomers radio. How did you end up in the culture wars? - The Guardian

Traditional Tories and working-class converts agree on culture but little else

Feb 20th 2021

LONG BEFORE he or any of his readers had ever heard the term, Boris Johnson cast himself as the antithesis of all that is woke. His columns in the Daily Telegraph, the house journal of the Tory Party, took aim at assaults on common sense, real or imagined. If political correctness is not resisted, it will go on and on, becoming more and more irrational, he wrote. Even then, he had an eye on the culture war raging across the Atlantic. He praised the counter-revolutionaries opposing a ban on British fox-hunting, noting that their protest march was organised by an American who understands the weapons that must be used in the Kulturkampf.

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Mr Johnson has hardly changed his tune since becoming prime minister. He made clear his displeasure at the absurd form-filling initially required of volunteers helping with the rollout of the covid-19 vaccine and insisted last year that Rule, Britannia! be played at the Proms, an annual festival of music and pomp. This week, two more such sallies were enthusiastically trailed by his former employer as a major government escalation of the war on woke.

The first is an attempt by Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, to protect guest speakers at universities whose views cause offence. Mr Williamson plans to expand the scope of a legal duty to promote freedom of speech on campus to cover not just university authorities but also student unions, in the hope of preventing controversial talks being cancelled.

Such instances are rarea study at Kings College London found freedom of expression had been infringed at only six of about 15,000 events over five yearsbut attract considerable publicity. And there is more evidence that students and academics censor their own views for fear of adverse reaction from peers. Polling for Policy Exchange, a right-leaning think-tank, found only four in ten Leave-supporting students would be comfortable expressing their views about Brexit in class.

The second concerns the past. Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, has reportedly called a meeting to urge museum and charity bigwigs to defend Britains culture and history. The National Trust, a charity that tends historic houses and gardens, caused a fuss by highlighting the colonial ties of its properties and their original owners; other bodies are mulling the removal of statues of figures such as slave-traders who are now considered villains of the empire. Mr Dowden wants the statues to stay, arguing that confident countries do not airbrush the history upon which they are founded.

Such worries may seem rather small during a pandemic that has closed the museums Mr Dowden is fretting about and cancelled even the least controversial university events. Nor do most voters care about cultural issues as much as vocal lobbies on either side. In a poll for The Economist last year, more than twice as many Britons thought the empire a source of pride than one of shame. But just under half of those polled reckoned it was neither or had no opinion.

That will not prevent more skirmishes in the culture wars. Senior Tories argue that such fights help them unite two distinct types of Conservative voter: Telegraph-reading traditionalists in southern England and working-class voters in red wall seats in northern England and Wales who switched from Labour to the Tories in 2019. That is probably true. Paula Surridge of Bristol University has shown that Labour did particularly poorly among left-leaning voters with authoritarian views, a good proxy for cultural issues. Support for Labour among such voters dropped by 17% between 2017 and 2019, the biggest decline among any group of voters. Not all cultural issues resonate equally. Voters who did not go to university themselves are unlikely to be concerned about campus politics, says one of the new breed of Tory MP, who represents an ex-mining constituency. But they are receptive to appeals to defend British history. Theres a huge sense of pride, he says.

There are two problems with the strategy. Sir Keir Starmer, who replaced Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader last spring, does not share his predecessors lack of enthusiasm for the national anthem and the queen. A greater danger for the Tories is that culture is just about the only topic on which their old and new voters agree. As the pandemic recedes, the government will have to make choices about the future role of the state and how to steady the nations finances, which cannot please both camps. How much easier, then, to put off such thorny decisions and play a little more Elgar.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Bonfire of the insanities"

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Bonfire of the insanities - Tories bet on culture wars to unite disparate voters | Britain - The Economist

Protesters burn an effigy of French President Emmanuel Macron during an anti-France demonstration in Pakistan last November. Photo: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images

PARIS, France On the 17th of October, the day after French school teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school, threats from Frances far-right began to rain down on liberal academics across the country.

ric Fassin a professor of sociology at the University of Paris 8 who had written a blog arguing the reaction to terror attacks must at all costs avoid falling into their trap of becoming a conflict of civilisations became a lightning rod for their anger.

Traitor wrote one far-right supporter on Twitter; collaborator added another. But one individual known in the neo-Nazi scene struck a more chilling tone with an overt death threat: Ive put you on my list of assholes to decapitate when it begins.

Fassin is among a group of French academics that supposedly embody the concept of Islamo-gauchisme (Islamo-leftism), a term suggesting an alliance between extremist Islamists and left-wing academics that had until recently only been used in neo-Nazi circles. The insult is levelled at those whose so-called woke theories point out the discrimination suffered by Muslims in France, where deep-set discrimination touches hiring, housing, policing and beyond paralleling culture wars currently raging in the US and the UK.

The term has found its way into the lexicon of prominent members of the French government. Islamo-gauchisme is an ideology which, from time to time, leads to the worst, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told French radio station Europe 1. Then Grarld Darmanin, Frances right-leaning Minister of the Interior, used the term in the National Assembly, referring to intellectual accomplices in terrorist acts.

On Sunday, events took a dramatic turn. Frdrique Vidal, the University Minister, went on TV channel CNews and denounced how Islamo-gauchisme plagues society as a whole and pledged to launch an investigation into academic research considered in breach, particularly postcolonial studies.

They are in the minority and some do it to carry radical ideas or militant ideas always looking at everything through the prism of their desire to divide, to fracture, she said, likening it to an alliance between Mao Zedong and Ayatollah Khomeini.

The comments have sparked outrage. On Tuesday, Frances Conference of University Presidents called for the debate to be elevated and that the government should not talk nonsense. On Wednesday, the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who Vidal said should carry out the investigation, criticised the political exploitation that is... emblematic of a regrettable instrumentalisation of science. On Thursday, daily newspaper Libration dedicated its front page to the debacle, quipping that Vidal had lost her faculties.

However, for Fassin, and numerous other academics across France, the efforts to target them are cause for serious concern and could pose a very real danger. This is very worrying, he told VICE World News. This is a political attempt to control knowledge. One imagines that it will not succeed, but the effect sought is intimidation. Above all, it helps to justify repression.

Frdric Sawicki, professor of political science at Paris 1 University Panthon-Sorbonne, said he felt targeted by the move. If you declare yourself hostile to the ban on the wearing of the veil or to the organisation of a mandatory minute of silence in schools after a terrorist attack, he said. You are therefore an accomplice and as a consequence, you become an Islamo-left-winger!

I am outraged, he added. The French Republic, except during the period of the Vichy regime, has always protected academic freedom. The Minister should protect this freedom at the foundation of any democracy.

Eyebrows have also been raised at the timing of the move by Vidal, with protests in response to the widespread problem of sexual assault on campus and huge numbers of students forced into financial uncertainty during the pandemic leading to snaking queues for the subsidised university canteens.

The minister's words are just a political diversion to make us forget her catastrophic management of higher education and research, said Lon Thbault, a student at SciencesPo University Paris. If Frdrique Vidal put as much energy into fighting these problems as she does into the media show, we wouldn't have any more students living in precarity. She is out of touch with universities and students.

Michel Deneken, president of the University of Strasbourg, said the underlying motives behind Vidals announcement are purely political. The regional and presidential elections are on the horizon, he said. The government is using this as a way to capture the support of the right. [Right-wing daily newspaper] Le Figaro writes every day about Islamo-gauchisme every day now.

French Muslim campaign groups express little doubt that it is an attempt to flirt with the far-right. One has the impression that every week they want to find a new reason to talk about Islam, said Sefen Guez Guez, a lawyer for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).

But the French governments crackdown on campuses also extends to legislation to limit research that is deemed unacceptable. The Senate last month adopted a bill setting the research budget for French universities, and while it is yet to pass through the National Assembly, critics say will curtail student protests and put freedom of research at stake by requiring it to align with the values of the republic.

Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French legal academic and PhD candidate in comparative law at the University Toulouse Capitole, said the vast majority of people working in academia are shocked and terrified for the future of research in this country. She added that French academia has been falling apart due to budget cuts and lack of recruitment.

For Alouane, its the latest in a long line of tightening of civil freedoms, including the controversial separatism law aimed at tackling the Islamist terrorism that has grown since 2015 but labelled Islamophobic by rights groups that was passed by the National Assembly, and the Global Security law, which at the end of last year proposed banning the filming of police, despite several high-profile cases of police violence.

You need to integrate this kind of announcement into a broader scope which is the hyper securitisation of our society, that is processed by limiting civil liberties on the ground of national security and public order, she said.

It comes as part of a wider reckoning in France, with woke leftist theories on race, gender and post-colonialism said to be imported from the US and the UK the target of the governments ire. Theres a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities, Blanquer said in October.

Philippe Marlire, professor of French and European Politics at University College London, says that those Anglophone countries are themselves facing battles over freedom of speech, wokeness and so-called cancel culture at universities.

I think that theres a bit of a deja-vu with whats happening in the UK, he said. But the French situation is far worse. In the UK, the attacks remain quite implicit, but in France the government is trying to taint the personalities and reputations of academics. These are highly dangerous means that is the usual approach of the far right.

Marlire, who has himself been the target of far-right attacks including in a recent article claiming he has not ceased to work to promote racialist ideology warns there could be serious repercussions for this approach.

France is in complete denial when it comes to race, he said. Islamo-gauchisme is of course an insult. Its almost a physical aggression because you put people at risk. What is remarkable is that its becoming more mainstream.

The Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation did not respond to a request for comment. But government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday that French President Emmanuel Macron has an absolute attachment to the independence of teacher-researchers.

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If You Thought the Culture War in the US and UK Was Dumb, Check Out Frances - VICE

Anglo-Saxon shareholders appear to have the backing of the yogurt-makers French patriarch

Feb 20th 2021

EMMANUEL FABER used to be seen as the spiritual son of Franck Riboud, honorary chairman and former boss of Danone, whose father Antoine co-founded the French yogurt-maker. Mr Riboud handpicked Mr Faber as his successor and loyally backed his transformation of Danone into Frances first entreprise mission, a corporate form with a defined social purpose.

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In recent months the relationship has soured. According to the French press, Mr Riboud thinks Mr Faber is more interested in saving the planet than saving his firm. Danones share price fell by 27% in 2020 while those of rivals such as Nestl and Unilever made gains amid pandemic larder-stocking. Its full-year results, due on February 19th, are unlikely to inspire investors confidence.

Danone has been hit harder by covid-19 than rivals because of its large bottled-water business. Its Evian, Badoit and Volvic brands make money mainly from sales in restaurants, bars and airports. But that is not the only problem. In 2017 Danone overpaid for WhiteWave, an American maker of health-focused fare that it bought for $12.5bn. The deal, which strained the balance-sheet but did not produce hoped-for returns, is the main reason for Danones current malaise, says Alan Erskine of Credit Suisse, a bank. Bruno Monteyne of Bernstein, a broker, points to years of underinvestment in brands, which face stiff competition from supermarkets private labels, at a time when Danones dairy and baby-food businesses slow as birth rates fall and people drink less milk.

Faced with these challenges, in October Mr Faber announced an overhaul of the business along more geographic lines. Perhaps 2,000 jobs will be cut. It was the fifth reorganisation on his seven-year watch.

Enough already, huffs Artisan Partners, an American investment fund which says it is Danones third-biggest shareholder with a 3% stake. In a meeting with board members on February 16th it demanded Mr Fabers exit, a stop to his latest restructuring, and the sale of struggling brands such as Mizone, a Chinese vitamin drink, and the Vega range of plant-based foods.

Artisan is the latest Anglo-Saxon meddler to pile on the pressure. In November Bluebell Capital Partners, a London-based hedge fund that owns a stake in Danone, demanded that the firm boot out Mr Faber and split the role of chairman and CEO. Causeway Capital Management, an American fund, has echoed Bluebells call.

Mr Fabers entourage refers to the demands, which appear to have the blessing of 65-year-old Mr Riboud, as a revolution of gunslinger grandpas. The activists may still succeed, and not just because they are not in fact that wizened. Helpfully, the French state is staying out of the fray; its spokesman said it had no comment. The government has no stake in Danone, but in 2005 declared it an industrial jewel to be defended against foreign buyers. Maybe not when they have an ally on the inside.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Culture wars"

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Culture wars - Can Anglo-Saxon activist investors whip Danone into shape? | Business - The Economist