3 Comments

Thank you for writing this article and posting it here. We all could study more how the people of other countries think about issues. In the USA we would do well to think about and to practice more laïcité than we do.

President Macron addressed a ceremony of a posthumous induction of Samuel Paty, who you mentioned, into the legion of honor at the Sorbonne in Paris. He said...

We will defend the freedom that you taught so well, and we will strongly proclaim the concept of laïcité. We will not disavow the cartoons, the drawings, even if others recoil. We will provide all the opportunities that the Republic owes all its young people, without any discrimination.

https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/secularism-and-religious-freedom-in-france-63815/article/national-tribute-to-the-memory-of-samuel-paty-speech-by-m-emmanuel-macron

The coffin of the teacher, Samuel Paty, was brought in by an honor guard to the sounds of U2's One. I find it very touching. A few of the lyrics:

One love, one blood

One life, you got to do what you should

One life with each other

Sisters, brothers

One life, but we're not the same

We get to carry each other, carry each other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXrFR3tDweU

Expand full comment

"But we, researchers and teachers, are paid to produce knowledge and to transmit it." This concept of the University has become the problem within it in the US and has led to the production of graduates who do not know how to think for themselves and are unable to seek the growth of knowledge, but only to become transmitters of current notions like 'wokism'. The University is meant to be a place to learn to think, not to become academic, then corporate and government, stenographers. There will always be politics in academia since it is a human undertaking, but critical thinking (not to be confused with critical identity theory) should be the raison d'etre and in itself the counter to these coercive Orwellian tendencies.

Expand full comment

Thank you to Professeur Heinich for this wonderful essay. As a non-STEM member of Heterodox Academy -- who actually studies and teaches Foucault and Bourdieu -- I appreciate your perceptive summary of their theories. And let me echo your plea to re-read Max Weber about value neutrality and sociological rigor. Grappling with this arguments is a good way to enrich the Heterodox Academy mission. (See, for example, his essays in "The Methodology of the Social Sciences").

Expand full comment