Dear friends of the Decolobs,

It was in 2003. As part of a conference on "secularism at university" organized in September by the Conference of University Presidents, the First Vice-President of the Conference of University Presidents (the “CPU”) Michel Laurent affirmed that the " communitarian tendencies, most often at religious character [...] constitute both a reality that some of us experience on a daily basis, and, more broadly, a subject of political tension and demands in our society." Recent news bears witness to the vitality of the challenges of Research in Human Sciences at a time when we are witnessing the emergence of numerous subjects put forward by politicians. 
The Observatory publishes texts to help understand and interpret the debates… Get your tablets ready!

Articles on the site

Attacks on academic freedom: between policed ​​censorship and wild censorship by Wiktor STOCZKOWSKI In France, we have recently seen conferences disrupted by the intrusion of militant groups, seminars boycotted, invitations cancelled, books torn up, and threats made to university rectors and deans. Academic circles are alarmed by this, seeing it as unacceptable attacks on their freedoms. However, academic freedom of expression has always been limited: what changes over time are the forms and objects of censorship. 

Peer review and scientific rigor, between myth and reality by Philippe from IRIBARNE The shared reaction of the conference of university presidents and the president of the CNRS to the statements of the Minister of Research concerning the place of Islamo-leftism in the university, a reaction echoed by many academics, was a radical rejection. The autonomy of the University, the critics affirmed, prohibits political power from interfering in its functioning and claiming to influence the choice of research objects as well as the methods adopted by researchers. 

Who is a McCarthyist?By Yana GRINSHPUNIn his book This Lancinating Pain of Freedom, addressed to Western readers, Vladimir Bukowski, a former Russian dissident, human rights defender and former Soviet political prisoner, compared the communist system he escaped from and Western democracy. Among other things, he made an interesting observation.

Let's reinstate the University of the Republic by Charles CUTLERYThe university institution is in crisis. The causes of this crisis are undoubtedly distant. It may be useful to insist on the seriousness of the crisis that this institution is going through1. This is particularly the case for the French university whose fundamental missions seem to be unknown, or even forgotten, at the highest level of the State. This crisis is obscured by an unconsidered use of the term innovation. This term, which appears in the very name of the ministry responsible for higher education, amounts, in fact, to delivering French public university research solely to the requirements of the economy and industry, themselves never really defined. 

 Even more 

We also recommend that you read or watch our interventions in the mainstream media to extend your reading:

Medicine put to the test by “critical race theory” by Andreas BIKFALVI in The Point Decolonial vocabulary penetrates the hard sciences…

Once colonial, always colonial?,by Pierre VERMEREN in The Point Rumination on the suffering and humiliations of the past blocks and distracts one from the present…

Islamism at the university: should the investigation be entrusted to the main suspect? by Xavier-Laurent SALVADOR and John SZLAMOWICZ in The Point

How jazz is impervious to decolonial discourse, by Jean SZLAMOWICZ in The Point This music is part of the artistic movements that remain impervious to decolonial theses...

Islamo-leftism: “The university is the hostage of radical ideologues” by Hubert HECKMANN et XLS in Figaro et Vox 19 of February 2021

The three interviews published by Marianne with Pierre-André Taguieff:Interview with Pierre-André Taguieff (1/3); Interview with Pierre-André Taguieff (2/3); Interview with Pierre-André Taguieff (3/3) 

  But still ?  

We can also see the Observatory (Renée Fregosi and Xavier-L. Salvador) exceptionally invited on the Point des Idées set on LCI Friday February 26 at 21 p.m.
And as always, we recommend our “Cancel Feuilleton”:This week, we cancelled… (episode 4) 

Finally, to conclude, we remind you that we have put online a virtual library of interesting books and theses to consult and question: decolonial and intersectional database. This database allows you to locate quotes for terms of interest to your search in one click (“race”, “whiteness”, “decolonial”) and possibly to deepen your discovery by searching through all the books, or by targeting just one!
Hoping to see many of you on our site,

The DECOLOBS