… This is how the intellectual world works according to Alain Policar… What, he said something good about a book by Dominique Schnapper and she doesn’t return the favor? It’s incomprehensible!
Let us recall the facts: in 2018, the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, created the Council of Elders of Secularism; he chose its members intuitu personae, based on their commitment to the fight for secularism: those who have written on the subject, who have campaigned, who are sociologists, philosophers, researchers, teachers, etc. Is it democratic? Well yes! We have a legitimate government, which followed the election of a President of the Republic and a National Assembly, which allowed the appointment of the ministers who make up the government, and who in turn appoint the members of their cabinet, the advisors they wish to surround themselves with, etc. Normal process in a democracy: no, the various advisors are not elected and do not have to be. They report to their supervisory minister, who reports to the Prime Minister, who is responsible to Parliament.
And when an advisor has lost the confidence of the minister who appointed him, the latter can keep this thorn in his side or choose to remove him from the circle of his advisors. A new Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, decided that because of the public positions taken by a member of this Council of Elders of Secularism, Alain Policar, who had been appointed to this council in 2022 by another Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, it was preferable to remove him from this council and end his mission. It is clear that these positions are at odds with a 20-year-old law, applicable and applied, albeit sometimes with difficulty, but which the government wishes to respect and ensure is respected. If appointing an advisor is a fully democratic process, removing him from this restricted circle is also fully democratic. And it is not, as he claims, "an attack on his freedom of academic expression".
It is therefore impossible to understand how a hundred people could have stated, in a column published in Le Monde [1], that "this act of authority questions the state of democratic morals". Yes, it is an act of authority! What would happen if the ministers of the Republic no longer had any authority and if any random person could impose his presence if it was no longer desirable to them? Is this act of authority anti-democratic? Certainly not! Because if it were, the appointment of the members of this council would have been too! And anyone, me first, would have had to round up his groupies to complain about not having been appointed to this council. I do not consider it anti-democratic or contrary to my "academic freedom of expression" that I was not appointed to this council (and yet I am wise!)... At least I was not excluded from it.
Instead of adopting the only possible attitude when one is threatened with being removed from an organization, which is to resign without waiting for the shame of being dismissed, and thus to be able to say: "I'm leaving like a prince", Alain Policar chewed and re-chewed his bitterness by going to whine on social networks and in various media. I have already seen plagiarists cling to a position that they obtained by the favor of the prince and wait to be dismissed from their position to leave it, even if these are most of the time honorary positions that are surely not paid. And they take advantage of this to say that they are misunderstood, going so far as to claim that they were "condemned" without having been heard, that the writings they are accused of saying something completely different from their deep thoughts and, in this specific case, that he had not reread the interview in which he said that the Muslim veil was a "vector of emancipation". It is not enough to claim that one is a universalist to be one, nor to think that one is a "fierce supporter of secularism" to really be one.
But the funniest thing is not in this column in Le Monde nor in Policar's statements, but in the interview he gave to Philosophy Magazine [2] : he explains that his conversation with the president of the Council of Elders of Secularism, Dominique Schnapper, when it was a question of his being removed "was perfectly courteous" and he adds: "we have known each other for 33 years and I have often given favourable reviews of his works". Wow! He had done everything to win her good graces and it didn't work... So all you have to do is flatter the people in place so that they return the favour, in short! And support you when you say incongruities. This kind of attitude of course refers to the book by Pierre-André Taguieff The New Age of Stupidity [3], who describes without embellishment the way André Policar handles the shoe polish brush in one of his books [4] :
"He thus cites […] the “inspired book” of an influential woman, the “fundamental book” of a mandarin or the “happy expression” of another mandarin, he notes that, in an “important work”, an ideologically correct “author” “writes with happiness” or that another of the same ilk “speaks gold”, he continues by mentioning the “strong figure” of a famous decolonial intellectual who should be treated with care, the “beautiful book” of a philosopher whose good graces it is a question of attracting or, once again, the “inspired book” of a renowned essayist".
Thank you, dear Pierre-André Taguieff, for having so well characterized the Policar method that we have seen put into practice these days! But if it worked well sometimes, it did not work with Dominique Schnapper. He gave her the rhubarb, she did not give him the senna… It was well worth stooping to flattering intellectuals! Hey, he is going to flatter politicians now: it will perhaps work better, some are used to cronyism.
