The show "Murmures dans la cité" (Whispers in the City) is being criticized for its funding and its choice of religious figures, deemed incompatible with secularism by a group of heritage professionals. Patrick Henriet explains that the chosen saints played a major role in the Bourbonnais region: their presence is part of a historical, not an ideological, approach.
Pierre Rochette takes a harsh look back at his 44-year career, denouncing the rise of a cumbersome and absurd bureaucracy that seriously hinders scientific research, academic freedom and the functioning of higher education in France.
French public universities, which enroll more than 70% of higher education students, fulfill an essential mission with far fewer resources than the private sector, while relying heavily on state funding. Yet, they suffer from a disconnect between research and teaching, low professionalization, and a lack of institutional recognition, undermining their central role in educating young people and upholding the promise of republican equality.
In "Bad Genre at the Museum," Didier Rykner denounces the growing intrusion of woke and decolonial ideologies into museums, accused of falsifying history, censoring works, and sacrificing art to militant causes. Through a series of concrete examples, he criticizes the trivialization of vandalism, racial obsession, cancel culture, and the ideological rewriting of works—all serious attacks on memory, universalism, and the mission of cultural institutions.
Why do intellectuals, despite being trained in critical thinking, persist in serious ideological errors? In his latest essay, Samuel Fitoussi shows how an educated elite can impose erroneous dogmas on society as a whole without facing the consequences. A review by Emmanuelle Hénin.
Marie-Jo Bonnet denounces the censorship she faces within feminist and LGBT activist circles for expressing critical positions on marriage, medically assisted procreation for lesbians, and gender transition, which she considers to be normative responses to social and identity-based malaise. The new progressive norms are becoming instruments of exclusion, censorship, and the falsification of history, under the guise of defending minorities.
Jacques Robert denounces the ideological instrumentalization of science and protests against those who want to remove the human and social sciences (HSS) from the CNRS. Just as much as the so-called "hard" sciences, the HSS make a major contribution to knowledge of the world.
The collective work Critique de la raison universitaire, edited by Arnaud Bernadet, explores how certain identity-based, managerial, and activist ideologies undermine the foundations of science, reason, and academic freedom within Western universities, particularly in Canada and France. Through contributions from various academics, the book denounces the erosion of intellectual pluralism caused by censorship, EDI policies, the indigenization of knowledge, and the transformation of law into an instrument of activism, calling for a rigorous defense of academic autonomy as a requirement of truth.
The example of a trans actress whose career collapsed after the discovery of comments deemed racist and Islamophobic reveals the contradictions of wokeism. Claudio Rubiliani exposes intersectionality, an incoherent and self-destructive ideology, ridiculed by its own excesses.
In "The Hippocratic Sermon," Caroline Éliacheff and Céline Masson denounce the ideological excesses of transaffirmative medicine, particularly among minors, practices that run counter to traditional medical ethics and are sources of serious physical and psychological harm. Drawing on concrete cases, historical analyses, and the Cass report, they call for rigorous remedicalization based on psychology, clinical prudence, and child protection. A review by Emmanuelle Hénin.