In solidarity with French academics targeted by the republic

The French state is trying to censor and make invisible the critique of its colonial history and present.

We write to express our solidarity with the scholars, activists, and other knowledge producers who are targeted by the February 2021 statements by Frédérique Vidal, France’s minister of higher education, research, and innovation. In them, she denounced “Islamo-gauchisme” (Islamo-leftism) and its “gangrene” effect on France, and called for an inquiry into France’s national research organisation, the CNRS, and the university. The specific kinds of knowledge in question analyse and critique colonialism and racism, and support decolonial, antiracist, and anti-Islamophobia projects within the academy and on the streets. Vidal’s statements show the discomfort these challenges are causing the state, and hence the desire to repress them rather than engage them. The state’s intentions are found in the language it uses. The relatively new term “Islamo-gauchisme” reflects a much older convergence of right-wing, colonial and racist ideologies working in opposition to anticolonial, anti-Islamophobia and antiracism struggles. Vidal claims that anticolonial, decolonial and postcolonial critique, antiracist, anti-Islamophobia, intersectionality, and decolonial feminist and queer analyses are imports from the US academy.