Contrary to what we had become accustomed to, the meeting did not take place under the imposing plane tree so often praised by Jean-Michel Blanquer. This Friday, August 26, for his back-to-school press conference, Pap Ndiaye, the new Minister of National Education, innovates by receiving journalists not in the gardens, but in the main courtyard of the ministry. In a calm and composed tone, he begins by unrolling the roadmap for the coming year, built on a three-part plan. No room for improvisation. Opposite him, in the front row, the members of his cabinet watch. When the time comes for questions, Pap Ndiaye does not hesitate to call them to the rescue when he loses sight of a figure or a request for clarification. All in front of microphones and cameras. “Blanquer, who valued his image as an expert so much, would never have done that,” noted a connoisseur of the education system at the end of this baptism of fire.
Since the transfer of power, orchestrated on May 20, many observers have played the game of differences between the two men. On the one hand Jean-Michel Blanquer, jurist, having spent his entire career between the administration and a right-wing ministerial cabinet. On the other, Pap Ndiaye, a historian specializing in minorities, close to the left. On the method, in particular, the rupture is already asserting itself, although the person concerned kicks in touch at the slightest comparison. “It seems essential to me to escape a simplistic alternative which would be either perfect continuity or the 180 degree turn and the break”, he argued in an interview with the Parisian June 20.
The new minister seems to have learned from the stylistic errors of his predecessor. His rounded way of addressing the teaching community is the most striking example of this. “I am happy to write to you directly, with the charge of a ministry which has structured not only my career but shaped my life”, thus begins the long letter that this university professor – himself “the son of a professor second degree” and “pure product of republican meritocracy”, as he likes to point out – addresses them a month after taking office. The trade unions, very reassured during the five-year term of Jean-Michel Blanquer, salute in unison “the sense of listening and dialogue” of the one who consults at all costs since his arrival. His trademark according to Constance Rivière, secretary general of the Defender of Rights, with whom he produced a report on diversity at the Paris Opera in 2021. “For him, every opinion counts. At the time, we We had organized with him a vast consultation by Zoom, Covid obliges, with all the employees of the Opera: more than 300 people, out of the 1,500 that the institution has, had connected”, she says.
“I never saw him get angry”
If the Minister receives today at all costs, it is also because he has everything to learn about the workings of the immense machine that is National Education. Unlike Jean-Michel Blanquer, who knew the ministry from the inside long before being appointed to its head for having served there as deputy chief of staff and director general of school education, Pap Ndiaye is a total novice. His appointment was also greeted with surprise in his former houses, the EHESS and Sciences po. “In a school like ours where egos are often oversized and where we tend to present ourselves as potential saviors of France, Pap was a little out of place,” says a former colleague from rue Saint-Guillaume. “Very focused on his actions as a professor and researcher, he did not seem very interested in piloting missions,” she continues.
For now, his extreme discretion marks the spirits. During his first major trip, dedicated to the experiment carried out in Marseille, called “the school of the future”, aimed at giving more educational freedom to establishments, the new minister had remained almost silent, standing back behind Emmanuel Macron, who occupied all the ground, without it seeming to weigh on him. Marc Lazar, the former director of the Sciences Po history center, who worked with him for several years, praises his unfailing calm. “As in any professional environment, we have been able to go through episodes of tension. But I have never seen him get upset,” he says. Unlike a Jean-Michel Blanquer who did not hesitate to lose his temper in the event of an attack, especially during questions to the government in the National Assembly, Ndiaye was content to read his notes in a tone equal during the parliamentary session last July.
It must be said that Pap Ndiaye has no political experience and no established support network. “Which does not mean that he is devoid of political sense, because he has his youth training and his intellectual qualities on his side”, warns the former leader of the PS Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, who has known Pap Ndiaye since the 1980s and their joint participation in the socialist Convergences group. Discreetly, the new minister does not hesitate to send messages – especially winks to his left. A few days ago, during the traditional debate on the back-to-school allowance which blooms again at the end of each summer, he stood out from Jean-Michel Blanquer: “This aid is necessary and just for the back-to-school expenses of more than 3 million families. Casting suspicion on its use is unfounded and stigmatizing,” he posted on Twitter on August 18. Recall that in 2021 his predecessor had been controversial: “We know, if we look at it in the face, that sometimes there are larger purchases of flat screens in September than at other times”, declared Jean-Michel Blanquer.
His participation in a symposium organized in Arc-et-Senans (Doubs) by the International Platform on Racism and Anti-Semitism and entitled “Universalism in the storm” is even more significant. Almost no publicity was made around this event: only the daily The cross was invited there. Pap Ndiaye, who was attacked for a long time on his relationship to wokism when he was appointed, clarified his position, clearly distinguishing himself from a Jean-Michel Blanquer who has never ceased to slay “Islamo-leftism” and the cancel culture over the past five years. On the subject of community demands, the new minister spoke of an approach “not only legitimate, but also necessary for democratic life”, because it brings up “issues of gender, sexual identity, disability historically badly treated by the grammar French politics. The sociologist Michel Wieviorka, at the initiative of the event, clarifies the thought of his colleague: for him, “it is not bad that at one time or another actors are constituted on an identity basis. Provided whether it is temporary, whether it is a stage in a moment of survival or resistance for example, but that it does not lead to a confinement of identities”.
The director of studies of the EHESS insists on the fact that Pap Ndiaye intervened above all as a teacher-researcher. “His participation was planned long before he was appointed minister”, he adds, anxious to avoid the parallel with the participation of Jean-Michel Blanquer in the famous colloquium organized at the Sorbonne last January by critical academics of “decolonial” thought – a position which will be strongly reproached to the former minister and will mark the beginning of his disgrace.
“I will not lead a doctrinaire ministry. I do not want to make this institution an ideological ministry”, warned for his part Pap Ndiaye in an interview granted to the World last June, expressing the wish that this ministry be that of “national reconciliation”. He can count on the support – some say the surveillance – of his cabinet, made up of several former collaborators of Jean-Michel Blanquer. Proof that the new minister is part of a certain form of continuity … despite the winks.