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This is one of the surprise appointments of the new government team: Pap Ndiaye is the new Minister of National Education and Youth appointed on Friday May 20. Portrait of a historian sensitive to questions of identity and immigration. He takes over from Jean-Michel Blanquer.
He takes the head of the biggest ministry of the State. At 56, Pap Ndiaye succeeds Jean-Michel Blanquer in education and Sarah El Haïry in youth. “I may be a symbol, that of meritocracy, but perhaps also that of diversity. I take no pride in it, but rather a sense of duty and responsibility”, says Pap Ndiaye. He was until then director of the Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris.
Born of a Senegalese father and a French mother, he is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, has a history degree and is a professor at Sciences Po. In 2005, he co-founded the Representative Council of Black Associations in France (Cran). “He is a teacher and we need people like him”, believes Louis-Georges Tin, former chairman of this council. But Pap Ndiaye has sometimes had controversial remarks, as in 2020 on the French police. Its profile contrasts with that of its predecessor.