Are universities really controlled by feminists and anti-racists who would threaten the whole of society in the name of “political correctness”? In his new essay, panic at the universityFrancis Dupuis-Déri (Anarchy explained to my father, We will no longer go to the polls) dismantles these ideas conveyed by a certain right-wing press, which is increasingly present in our media.
“I am a white, heterosexual man over 50 years old,” he says in an interview. “I should be the first to worry about the portrait that some make of the university. But I am on the contrary angry, because I consider that this portrait is false, distorted and that it is an intellectual manipulation. »
In his book, the professor of political science deconstructs, chapter after chapter, the supporters of the reactionary and conservative doxa – columnists, polemicists, editorialists, here as elsewhere – with regard to student life on campus, this horde of young people “ agitators” who would only have words in their mouths cancel culture.
Dupuis-Déri recalls that the demonization of progressives on campuses is not new and that it is similar to the process of moral panic already theorized by Stanley Cohen. The book looks back on the research of this sociologist who described the phenomenon of demonization of young people considered deviant and perceived as a threat to society.
“These polemicists have been using what I call scarecrow words for more than thirty years in order to create and maintain a panic effect, hence the title of the book,” he explains.
The 56-year-old Quebec essayist, who teaches at UQAM, says he became interested in this “invention” of this feeling of threat very early on, which he attributes to right-wing reactionaries and other supporters of conservative thought. . He also notices a very strong push, whether in Quebec, but also in France and the United States, of this type of discourse that exploits the university.
On US campuses
The book also comes back to these words that were unknown a few years ago (woke, wokism, cancel culture, etc.), but ubiquitous in the current media sphere. According to him, it is no coincidence that the terms have kept their English form, because the idea is maintained that American universities “are run by leftists”, he notes.
“The university network in the United States is huge, with approximately 5,000 institutions attended by more than 20 million students. To think that feminists and anti-racists dominate all these institutions is ridiculous,” he says.
Dupuis-Déri recalls, moreover, that our neighbors to the south have a multitude of denominational university institutions. “There are more than 200 religious universities in the United States, 70 of which are run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which teaches the creationist theory of the beginning of the universe! »
Of course, continues the author, American universities look into all sorts of subjects and produce studies on gender, feminism and racism, but this is not an omnipresent theme within the establishments.
“But it’s very marginal, it concerns 5 to 10% of American universities. And then, these studies produce quality research by opening up new avenues of reflection for the humanities and society in general. »
For the professor, there are far more influential forces on American campuses. He regrets, for example, that the media hardly ever talk about reactionary and conservative movements that maneuver against progressive teachers.
“A transgender teacher was fired because of her gender identity, another was fired after supporting an anti-fascist group. There was also this theologian whose conference was canceled because she taught the thesis that Jesus was queer. Recent cases that never make the headlines. »
University, place of confrontation
In his book, Dupuis-Déri paints a portrait of protest movements and social struggles in universities over time. “The idea of a calm and peaceful campus is an illusion,” he says.
As such, the essay somehow sets the record straight by brushing the history of the first academic institutions in Europe. For example, we learn that from the twelfthe century, student strikes broke out in Christian universities. In medieval Italy, students could even suspend their teachers!
“The political and religious authorities then created university chairs precisely to remove teachers from this student control. »
In the 1980s and 1990s, the author relates that feminists and anti-racists were accused of “political correctness” and of wanting to censor classic books, especially by great philosophers.
“In fact, since CEGEP, at the baccalaureate and at the master’s, I had to read and reread all these authors. Even today, in 2022, in political science at UQAM, yet considered by these polemicists as a “bastion of radicals”, the obligatory readings remain Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx”, affirms the author .
These ideas conveyed through the time of a totalitarian system and censorship are “grotesque” and are out of step with the reality of the teaching body, here as elsewhere. “University professors are governed by collective agreements and enjoy freedom of expression protections that have no equivalent in the private sector or elsewhere in the public sector. We are far from censorship. »
Whether we are talking about the wokes in Quebec or the Islamo-leftists in France, the situation remains the same, insists Dupuis-Déri. If the discourse of these polemicists always targets feminists and anti-racists, it is because they question the established order. “The qualifiers used are a reaction to popular movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matters. These movements today have concrete impacts on society and undermine the privileges of the white male,” concludes the author.