In the Michelet amphitheater of the Sorbonne, there will be a conference, Friday, May 12, but it will be given by the former minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, instead of the sociologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler. A few days before the deadline, on May 8, the dean of the faculty of letters at Sorbonne University, Béatrice Perez, wished to suspend the planned conference, where the researcher was to present her latest work. The Brotherhood and its networks: the investigationpublished in January (Odile Jacob, 416 pages, 24.90 euros). “However, there had been no demonstration against the event”is surprised Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who was not directly informed of the deprogramming.
Sorbonne University specifies that the conference “was neither censored nor cancelled, but postponed”, to June 2, the date when the former Minister of National Education was to present his thoughts on “the political challenges of secularism”. In this establishment, in 2019, a representation of Supplicants by Aeschylus had been prevented by demonstrators protesting against the use of black masks and make-up by white actors.
The intervention of the anthropologist, CNRS researcher, is part of the university diploma (DU) “referent secularism” which, once a month, offers an open debate to the public in partnership with the College of Philosophy, an association chaired for twenty-five years by Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, also organizer, in January 2022, of the symposium “Rebuilding science and culture” under the patronage of Jean-Michel Blanquer then in full denunciation of “wokism”. This university degree “is aimed at professionals, mostly national education executives, who will then be trainers on the issue of secularism”details M. Tavoillot, who teaches philosophy at Sorbonne University.
The request for suspension is not based on “completely legitimate reasons”according to him. “The dean reminded me that there had just been many blockages of universities and that it was to be feared that some wanted to add fuel to the fire at a time when students were taking their exams”, he says. All measures had been taken with the rectorate of the Paris Academy, responsible for the security of the buildings, which provided for a check of the tickets at the entrance and possibly a search of the bags, adds Mr. Tavoillot.
“The only CNRS researcher who is threatened”
THE “enlightened public” of the “referent secularism” DU and of the College of Philosophy should make it possible to open a debate on the content of the work by Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, the object of which is to describe the “Brotherhood”its vision, its identity, its plan, its hold on European Muslims, but also the “mechanisms of this conquest which is exerted first on the Muslims before concerning the whole of society”.
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