A hushed battle had been going on for several months behind the scenes of the Ministry of National Education around questions of secularism. A daily article The world unveiled on April 8 the names of the five new personalities who will soon join the Council of Elders of Secularism and Values of the Republic: Gwénaële Calvès, professor of public law at the University of Cergy-Pontoise; Christine Darnault, Associate Professor of Letters and Academy Inspector, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Rector of Créteil; Jacques Fredj, director of the Shoah Memorial; Thomas Hochmann, professor of public law at the University of Paris-Nanterre; and finally Alain Policar, sociologist and political scientist, associate researcher at Cevipof. The body, created by former minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in 2018, and whose mission consists, among other things, of “clarifying the position of the educational institution in terms of secularism and secular teaching of religious facts”, is therefore preparing to increase from 15 to 20 members. During an interview with L’Express on March 11, President Dominique Schnapper saw this as “good news” and a sign of warming relations with the minister’s office which, for a long time, had held the members of the Council of Elders remotely.
It remained to be seen which profiles would be chosen by Minister Pap Ndiaye. “Dominique Schnapper, consulted upstream, had been asked to give her opinion on these five personalities. However, concerning the proposed appointment of Alain Policar, she had expressed the greatest reservations”, blows an important figure of National Education who knows her well. “It must be said that the political scientist has a very multiculturalist approach to secularism, and therefore very far from the universalist vision that Dominique is committed to defending within the council”, continues the specialist. The eminent sociologist will therefore not have been heard.
On April 6, Pap Ndiaye received the newcomers Rue de Grenelle to begin to outline his roadmap and explain to them the reasons for which they had been chosen. “The minister’s idea is to diversify sensitivities within the Council, hitherto fairly monochromatic, and to make it a space for debate. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that it was not sufficiently so until ‘here”, says Alain Policar, recalling that the current members of the Council had all been appointed by the previous minister. “Which is the rule, of course. The problem, in my opinion, is that some place themselves in the camp of an intransigent secularism, which I call combat secularism. A vision very far from mine.” However, the new member denies underestimating the danger of political Islamism. “This danger exists but it is appreciated differently, which can lead certain associations like that of the Republican Spring, or others on the same line, to cast a certain suspicion on all Muslims”, insists- he, also very critical of the law confirming respect for the principles of the Republic voted in 2021.
The tone is set. According to several sources, these appointments – essentially that of Alain Policar – would raise serious questions and concerns within the Council of Elders of Secularism. On the floors of the ministry circulates an article signed by the political scientist and entitled “The criticism of anti-racism gone mad”, first published on the AOC site then taken up by that of the FSU union’s Research Institute. The Cevipof researcher analyzes “the failures of classic anti-racism (that of Licra, SOS Racisme or Mrap)”. The new generation “realizes that the policy of indifference to color has failed. We must now highlight so-called racial identities because race has discriminatory effects on individuals to whom a non-white race is attributed (‘ the racialized’)”, writes the researcher. And to denounce a little further “the intrinsically discriminatory functioning of our institutions that updates the concept of systemic racism”. Finally, Alain Policar returns to the so-called “Creil scarves” affair of 1989 and to the forum “Profs, let’s not capitulate!”, published in The new observer, on November 2 of the same year, signed by Elisabeth Badinter, Régis Debray, Alain Finkielkraut, Elisabeth de Fontenay and Catherine Kintzler. “According to the signatories, tolerating the headscarf at school was to work for the destruction of it and, beyond that, that of the Republic. A fetishized Republic, inattentive to the persistence of discrimination”, advances he.
A “deep antagonism”
Even if he recognizes “that it raises several questions”, Alain Policar maintains that he is not opposed to the law of 2004, relating to the prohibition of ostentatious religious symbols in school. “Within the Council of Elders, some believe that his position is too ambiguous. For them, a personality who opposes the laws of the Republic has no place in a council like this,” says a source close to the ministry. “This deep antagonism will undoubtedly make it very difficult to find common positions”, predicts this connoisseur of the workings of the Rue de Grenelle.
For Jean-Louis Auduc, former director of the IUFM of Créteil and member of the Council of Elders of Secularism (author of Secularism. How many betrayals are committed in your name! editions Rue de Seine), this appointment will indeed “spice up the debates”. But he does not take a dim view of the arrival of Alain Policar. “Within the Council, different sensibilities rub shoulders. We do not all have the same opinions or the same approaches through our backgrounds as jurists, historians, sociologists and others. Despite everything, so far, we have always managed to work together and to work to answer the questions of the personnel in the field, which is all the same the essence of our mission”, he insists, before welcoming the arrival of the other members. These personalities almost all have in common to have worked for the fight against racism and anti-Semitism throughout their careers. No wonder according to Jean-Louis Auduc for whom this aspect is an integral part of the missions of this body, recently renamed by Pap Ndiaye Council of Elders of Secularism “and the values of the Republic”.
But other members would see a danger there. “It is rumored within the ministry that these questions, certainly important, could take precedence over questions of secularism which would be seen little by little diluted in the middle of the rest”, analyzes a regular on Rue de Grenelle. For many analysts, these new appointments allow Pap Ndiaye to regain control of the Council of Elders, hitherto closely associated with the policy led by Jean-Michel Blanquer, and to impose his own concerns which are the fight against racism and anti-Semitism. “This may not be bad news”, suggests a senior official who is nevertheless known to be in the camp of the “Blanquerists”: “The Council of Elders of Secularism could fear at one time being suffocated and die slowly. By injecting new blood into it, Pap Ndiaye restores its vigor.” For this official, the defense of secularism and the fight against discrimination are not contradictory and must even go hand in hand. “The whole thing is that the two approaches remain coherent on the intellectual level. But I trust Dominique Schnapper, who has written a lot, worked, produced on all these questions to hold the two ends of the chain”, he continues.
All members of the institution, old and new, have received an invitation to participate in the “installation of the Council of Elders” which will take place this Friday, April 14. Some people close to the body wonder about the use of the term “installation”: “Does this announce the beginning of a new era?”. The speech given by the minister that day will no doubt give some clues.