Samuel MAYOL
Since the 12th centurye century the French university gradually forged a tradition of universalism, first Christian then progressively objective and reasoned. As part of this universalism, our university has worked to ensure that the spirit of the Enlightenment, well before it officially existed, is the foundation of all its teachings. Since the French Revolution, our university has worked to ensure that therepublican universalism, a doctrine of French origin supported by famous academics, is considered as a universal ideal model.
This ideal describes the Republic as one and indivisible, within which all citizens have equal rights. However, for several months, the university has been placed at the center of the fight for the values of the Republic. Incidents linked to the offensive of extremists of all kinds are daily occurrences. Some, through extreme positions, are in reality trying to call into question the very foundations of our Republic.
In the name of this universalism, we have no reason to be afraid of debates entering our universities. In France, research is free. It is therefore normal that this kind of debate enters universities. This is part of the independence of teacher-researchers, recognized as a constitutional principle.
No one has to fear that reason will be exercised on such concepts, quite the contrary. One condition, however, is essential: is that it is good from the research angle and knowledge that this kind of theme, like all others, be addressed.
But let us not be fooled by the use that extremists of all stripes have always wanted to make of the university. An object of desire because it is the University that certifies and structures the knowledge of tomorrow's adults, it is coveted by capitalism and by all fanaticisms. Yesterday, the extreme right tried to make a large Lyon university the laboratory of its ideological experiments within the very racialist Institute of Indo-European Studies; today the defenders of "indigenism" are trying to force the doors of our universities to preach hatred there, racisme, anti-semitism, separatism et ethnicism.
Secularism: a major challenge
The university community is therefore facing a major challenge: that of not letting itself be carried away on the paths of the negation of our values and of constantly questioning the legitimacy of those it invites to its work. If debates are to be opened within the university, the latter must, traditionally to its great history, only invite researchers who have a real scientific corpus to put forward and who will then come in their capacity as academics.
Others have no legitimacy to express themselves in the context of a research seminar. Activists of all kinds must not confuse the platform of a meeting with the stage of an amphitheater.
The role of the university is precisely to promote research and only research. All the teaching provided is based on academic research recognized in its time by other academics. To renounce this ideal is to take a lethal risk for national cohesion, it is to weaken once again the importance of intellectuals in our country, it is to deliver part of our youth to crooks who, under the cover of academicism, try to extinguish the spirit of the Enlightenment. The University must not be the next lost territory of the Republic and has a fundamental role to play, particularly in these troubled times when the Republic is so often attacked.
The university is universalism.
And in this respect, the French university, more than any other university in the world, must shine throughout the world, as the sole bearer of the fundamental values of the spirit of the Enlightenment.
Through their commitment against religious and political oppression, the members of the spirit of the Enlightenment saw themselves as an advanced elite working for world progress, fighting the irrationality, arbitrariness, obscurantism and superstition of past centuries. They carried out the renewal of the knowledge, ethics and aesthetics of their time. The influence of their writings was decisive in the major events of the end of the 18th century.e century that are the United States Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution.
We must restore the spirit of the Enlightenment.
To achieve this, the entire Republic must roll up its sleeves. And as in the time of Descartes, Diderot, D'Alembert or Montesquieu, it is thanks to a strong and radiant university that we will achieve this.
