Controversy at the Toulouse Law School: “Wokism and cancel culture have posed a major problem in universities”
The fiery controversy over the consolidation of the three Toulouse universities into a single entity rebounded in Caen, where a professor defended his colleague from the Toulouse Capitole law school (UT1), pinned for a tweet deemed “unacceptable and inappropriate” by its president Hugues Kenfack. By reviving the debate on the “dominant ideology” in higher education…
You are contesting the conditions under which the project to unite Toulouse universities was voted on in relation to the very clear opposition of certain academics. Are the decision-making methods to be reviewed in this type of procedure?
The conditions for progress of the Toulouse project are not different from those that are too often observed in France: the desire to create groupings between teaching and research structures in order, it is hoped, to gain international visibility , leads to forcing together components of different cultures. But if, indeed, a majority must prevail, it is still necessary, when the rejections are important, within elements which are pillars of the institution concerned, to try to make prevail the consensus, the opposite auguring besides evil of the synergies supposed to be created. This is what Joël Andriantsimbazovina, professor of public law, recalled in the two tweets which are reproached to him by his president.
You denounce the outcry against Joël Andriantsimbazovina’s tweet by pointing to an example of the “wokism” that plagues universities. How is this dangerous for you?
It’s not so much the “wokism” in itself that poses a problem here as its use. I find it hard to believe that the readers of the offending tweet can see what they are denouncing there. But, more broadly, “wokism” and its corollary, the “cancel culture”, have effectively demonstrated a major problem in higher education establishments, where free discussion and open debate must be the rule, when “cancel culture” is content to “erase” anyone who expresses a different idea. If it is not a question of tolerating everything, neither should we tolerate nothing: John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville and many others have said everything there is to say about the risks society by undermining freedom of expression.
You come back opportunely to the etymological meaning of the word rape in French law, but isn’t it the explicit insinuation and sexual connotation of Joël Andriantsimbazovin which poses a problem?
When we speak of “rape of conscience”, is the sexual connotation explicit? No more and no less than in the relevant message. At no time, in any case, the use of the term or its implicit evocation as in this case, does not imply, as some have claimed, to relativize the atrocity that is rape, criminally condemned. Except therefore to prohibit any use of the word “rape” other than to evoke this last reality, there is no solution.
You consider that this controversy is a way to divert attention from the real issues and condemn the disguising of words, but in this case were those of the famous tweet really?
Once again, I do not believe for a single moment that anyone could, in good faith, believe that there was the slightest desire on the part of Joël Andriantsimbazovina to imply what he was accused of. Supposing those who attacked him thus intelligent, but I could be wrong, bad faith seems to me to be the only logical explanation, and I will be allowed to find it worrying. This attempt to destabilize a contradiction by seeking to stigmatize it in the most violent way, by making it, if not the accomplice of a crime, at least the one who relativizes its scope, cannot be a decent response to a criticism bearing on an institutional question which I said was not, in my view, unfounded.
Is the French university really threatened by an ideology of deconstruction?
“Deconstructionism” aims to challenge a number of points taken for granted in many fields. Like any questioning of the realities that surround us, it has its full value as such. On the other hand, it loses its interest when it is no longer a matter of a legitimate question but of an attempt to impose a vision of the world by force and intimidation, for example, by prohibiting a conference from being held, what type of people to attend a meeting, or the use of a term. It is indeed then, as you write, an “ideology of deconstruction”, and I believe that our students are better suited than that for the formation of their critical spirit.