President Barnier? Credit: Thierry Monasse/Getty
Over the past month, while the British press busied itself with stories about the type of wallpaper in the Prime Minister’s apartment, France has become embroiled in a crisis that threatens the legitimacy and future of the entire Republic.
Predictably, it all started with a letter. Published in Valeurs Actuelles last month and signed by around 1,000 servicemen and women, including 20 retired Generals, it warned President Macron that Islamist extremists, and the existence of the banlieue ghettos, have the potential to tip France into civil war.
The contents of the letter were disturbing. But so was the timing, coming as it did on the 60th anniversary of the failed generals’ putsch of 1961, when generals of the French Army attempted to topple President Charles de Gaulle. Indeed, it’s hardly surprising that it sparked an extraordinary scandal, with government ministers threatening to punish all the letter’s signatories.
Undaunted by these threats, the warning was repeated this week in a second letter, this time signed by 130,000 members of the French public. Once again the French government condemned it. Elsewhere, their reception has fallen along predictable political lines: mainstream politicians of the Left and Right have criticised the letters, while Marine le Pen has been careful to express support for the signatories.
This is, of course, to be expected. Le Pen will seize on whatever embarrasses the rest of the political mainstream, while the rest of that mainstream will continue to resist anything which could be seen to provide ammunition for Le Pen.
But it is really the longer-term effect of interventions like these that are of most interest. Because what is striking about the debate on immigration, integration and security in France in recent years is not that the same lines keep getting drawn. The interesting thing is that, while this has gone on, French politics has experienced a silent revolution. Indeed, things are today said in France on immigration that would normally end a political career in most English-speaking countries.
The most high-profile demonstration in recent weeks came in the form of Michel Barnier. The Frenchman turned 70 in January, a milestone which precludes him from taking up another job in the European Commission. And perhaps as a result, he is now eyeing up a run for the French Presidency.
How do we know this? Because in an interview on Sunday, Barnier dropped this bombshell:
“There are links between [immigration flows] and terrorist networks which try to infiltrate them… There is a risk of an explosion, particularly on the topic of immigration. We need to introduce a moratorium on immigration. We need to take time to evaluate, check and if necessary, change our immigration policies.”
In this and later interviews the same day, he speculated that France should consider a total suspension of immigration for between three and five years, as well as a reassessment of free movement within the Schengen area. In other words, it is time for France to take back control. Suddenly, external migration and internal movement in the EU are now up for debate in the political centre.
There are several interesting things to note about this. The first is the way in which the events of the last year have already shifted the debate on immigration and border control more than anyone might have expected. For more than a generation, governments in the developed West have argued that high levels of immigration into Western countries are a fact of life; migration cannot be stopped altogether even if the governments of the developed countries wanted to do so.
But the events of the last year have shown this to be a lie. In an extreme event — on this occasion a global pandemic — countries around the world have shown that they are able to close their borders. Even Justin Trudeau’s Canada and Angela Merkel’s Germany, which have made a great show in recent years of being open to migration from around the world, did something that nobody could ever (before the pandemic) have expected them to do: they shut the borders and kept them shut.
The public and some wilier politicians will have noticed something here. If it is possible to close the borders to prevent a pandemic, then it should be possible to close the borders to prevent excessive migration. Whether you agree with the policy or not, it has suddenly become a viable option.
The only discussion, then, is whether a particular set of circumstances is serious enough for a pandemic border response to be enacted. Clearly there are many in France who think they are at this point. And that raises an important question over what is a more serious challenge to the long-term security of France: the Covid pandemic or the ongoing divisions and security concerns brought on by high levels of immigration?
If you go to parts of Paris — even in the city centre — there are migrant tent communities set up that resemble somewhere in the third world, or California. As long as they exist, it is surely understandable for Parisians to wonder why this problem can’t be fixed.
Their Government has shown that it can mandate everyone to stay in their homes, lock the borders and force everyone to wear masks. Why can it not deal with the issue of mass migration? Clearly the thought is out there. Otherwise Mr Barnier would not have taken — utterly cynically, no doubt — up the cause.
And yet it is not just Covid that has changed things. Rather, as I described in The Strange Death of Europe, public opinion in France on immigration has long been shifting in this direction. Very few people, year on year, say that they are less concerned about integration; and very few believe that multicultural France has a happy future if migration continues at the rate of recent years.
Politicians of the Left as well as the Right have long been facing up to this. But the Barnier intervention — like that of the generals — is a demonstration that the political reality, as well as the political rhetoric, in France is changing. Things that were once unthinkable are now being proposed as national policy. No doubt that will all come as a shock to Mr Barnier’s former colleagues, but they would be unwise to ignore it.
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Subscribe“…its president, provost and deans would no longer make public statements on current events…”
So, a handful of administrators will remain studiously mum while–wink wink–thousands of faculty are free to continue indoctrinating students in progressive orthodoxy. These are meaningless actions meant only to silence critics without changing the underlying source of the problem.
Correct, this has got mainly to do with appeasing sponsors. A very important stakeholder in US Ivy league education.
Not so fast. President Pollack was pushed out and her successor is on thin ice while they search for a new Prez. The Cornell Free Speech Association has been at the forefront of bringing pressure to bear on the administration. Things are changing. CFSA will continue to monitor and act on any official actions of the university like deplatforming of speakers, harrassment, etc. I expect the Admin will become neutral.
That’s all you can expect. Individual professors have as much right to speak freely as you do.
Unfortunately many of those professors are still indoctrinated and insist on doing the same to their students. It will take much longer for universities to shed the neo-marxism that has contaminated higher education.
I’m not being fast. You are slow to appreciate the current state of academia. You seem to take comfort in the ability of “individual professors having the right to speak freely” but that is moot if the professors are homogeneously progressive, which they are. Generations of potential conservative professors have opted out of academia for the last quarter century because they rightfully perceived as undergrads that a university neither offers them opportunity for advancement nor even welcomes their presence. They’ve gone into other professions instead. Many existing conservative faculty left academia when they saw the handwriting on the wall. The demographic compositions of faculties is now above 90% liberal. Contracts for new faculty require the signing of progressive compliance documents that make a mockery of free thought. And institutions blatantly discriminate in hiring against those known to profess conservative ideas. So what good is free speech if the composition of faculties are effectively unanimously progressive? There are no longer significant numbers of alternative faculty voices willing to confront the status quo. Academic “freedom” policies in such a context only codify coverage for leftist faculty’s continued condemnation of the rara avis conservative. We also have recently seen the hollowness of university administrative actions vis a vis recent protests where in the overwhelming majority of cases the miscreants who defied policies and (seldom) received some type of suspension or dismissal saw the punishments quietly vacated. Only the credulous would expect administrations to enforce policies in the future if doing so is inconvenient to the prevailing established orthodoxy.
Additionally, the lock on thought-expression in academia extends beyond universities to the realms of academic journals, where heterodox ideas are professionally dangerous to submit and usually rejected, and to professional associations that have become politicized in conformance with progressivism. University administrations have no control over these entities but these entities police and enforce academic orthodoxy. Finally, MY “speaking freely” that you refer to is on any platform like this contingent upon the whims of some nameless, faceless, content mediator and algorithm. Many of them would block what I’ve written or, in the case a social media, withdraw amplification of it.
Institutional neutrality, most famously articulated in the 1968 Chicago Statement
I’m always proud of my alma mater’s continued commitment to academic freedom.
There you are. No speech without responsibility for what’s said.
So a handful of universities are starting to appear to be fair-minded. Whoop-de-do ….
These are important universities that the less famous ones will follow. This represents an early step in the new, conservative march through the institutions to take them back to sanity.
Not a conservative match, thank goodness, but the simple acknowledgement that statements confer responsibility. If you can’t take it, don’t make it.
And the pendulum continues to swing, back and forth, back and forth…
Now only if the major news outlets will get the hint!
Time will tell whether these universities really live up to these commitments, but it is most certainly really encouraging that the dawn following a very dark night of wokism is really breaking in the USA. It is such a shame that the UK is heading further into the darkness with freedom under attack from every direction at the moment. The US experience does however show that it is possible to wake up from the woke nightmare.
Sorry, it’s a dawn following a very dark night of ‘free speech’.
Here are some well developed thoughts on free speech.
Doesn’t seem that complicated.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/not-in-our-name
To find Cornell’s position on anything look up Harvard’s six months earlier.
Ouch!
Which shows how little novelty of thought exists in academia and how much pure mimesis.
I have zero confidence this will make one iota of difference. Progressives are accustomed to, and take actual pride in, being heartily disliked by ordinary people. They will redefine doing the same thing as making a huge change and then carry on as usual.
It’s ‘ordinary people’ who push for progress. That’s what reactionaries can’t stand.
I strongly suspect that most ordinary people want to not have obstructions imposed on their lives and to not be told what they should think. In our times, that would be progress.
Greek life?
I wondered that.
Fraternities and Sororities. Think “Animal House”.
Sounds great…on paper. But will these woke institutions really permit free speech, or will they find ways to continue speech codes and censorship of non-woke beliefs as they have tried to skirt SCOTUS rulings on affirmative action?
What a morose and skeptical (US spelling) collective reaction here! Of course these moves don’t establish a sincere or total change of campus atmosphere, but they are a legitimate good start—right? Even 12-plus years of your favorite MAGA strongmen—for those who are fans of such flame-fanners— won’t create the ideal conservative/radical-right Academy of one’s dreams, but why not relax your pessimism and gloom for a moment?
Those charlatans Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi are exposed—though way belatedly—and Woke Racism by John McWhorter and The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk are more in line with the zeitgeist. That’s better than nothing.
How staggeringly stupid for an institution ever to have taken any other position. That they did speaks volumes for the intellectual mediocrity of these universities.
What matters more than staying mum is that university presidents are not DEI types and know how to handle issues. It is also important that university life is not brought to a halt by any side in a debate.
I’m deeply sceptical. Vast swathes of academia have basically given up on empiricism and trying to think beyond one’s biases. I’m not just trying to be insulting here – many academics across the social ‘sciences’ and humanities will freely admit to that, though language like ‘prioritising individual subjectivities and reflective analysis’ or all things ‘critical’ (which specifically sets out to ‘counter hegemonic narratives and elevate marginalise voices’, meaning ‘I write what I do to further social justice’)
You can’t have free and open debate at an institution when over half of the professors there don’t rely on rationalism as a means of deriving truth, and will hound and isolate anyone who does fundamentally disagree with them as a bigot. It’s like expecting the Catholic Church to be home to spirited debate about the existence of god, it’s not a neutral environment for that discussion.
True political neutrality at these institutions would mean that half of all faculty will need to be replaced by conservatives and/or right wingers. That the administrators will henceforth hold their tongue on political issues is just a gesture to ensure continued enrollments into what are really left-wing indoctrination centers.