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POLITICS

Profile: The historian and minorities expert heading up France’s education ministry

Pap Ndiaye, a historian specialising in minorities who currently heads the museum of the history of immigration in Paris, is President Emmanuel Macron's surprise choice to head the French education ministry.

Profile: The historian and minorities expert heading up France's education ministry
Pap Ndiaye, France's new Education Minister (Photo by Martin BUREAU / AFP)

Whereas most of the top ministerial posts in Macron’s new cabinet that aims to take the government into parliamentary elections next month went according to script, Ndiaye’s nomination was a surprise to most observers.

His appointment carries on a tradition for Macron of taking prominent French personalities from outside politics to lead ministries, after he named star defence lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti justice minister in 2020.

READ ALSO Who’s who in the new French government

Ndiaye is a historian with an international profile, specialising in the social history of the United States and minorities, who was named to lead the Museum of the History of Immigration last year.

He will now need to use all his experience and knowledge for taking on the new challenge of the education ministry, which has seen major tensions in the last years between his predecessor, Jean-Michel Blanquer, and teachers.

Born outside Paris to a Senegalese father and French mother, Ndiaye was for many years a professor at the elite Sciences Po university in Paris.

“In the field of history, he is someone who has been innovative and able to show a new way of understanding the past,” said historian Pascal Blanchard

“He’s a teacher who knows what it’s like to be in front of a class of students,” he told AFP, adding, “In a diverse society, it is important to have someone who is attentive to diversity.”

Ndiaye first gained national prominence with his 2008 work The Black Condition, an essay on a French minority.

“My objective was to provide arguments and knowledge as robust as possible to young people who lack solid references,” he told AFP in March 2021, when he took over at the immigration museum.

“It seemed to me that it was part of my role as a teacher to offer these foundations,” he said.

He said at the time that his appointment at the museum should open “the field of possibilities” to young “non-whites”, while emphasising that his appointment was due to a long career as an academic.

“I am not blind to, and don’t turn my back on, questions of symbol. I also apply the same to the colour of my skin.

In 2019, he was a consultant for an exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris on black models, and in 2020 he co-authored a report on diversity at the Paris Opera.

His sister is the prominent French novelist and playwright Marie Ndiaye.

Some on the French left reacted with astonishment that the celebrated historian of social change was now in the government.

“I am amazed. I did not see him in there at all,” said Alexis Corbiere of the far-left France Unbowed party. He said the “media stunt” would not defuse anger within the French education system.

SNES-FSU, the main secondary school teachers’ union, welcomed the appointment of Ndiaye “as a break with Jean-Michel Blanquer in more ways than one”.

But it also warned that education “is not governed solely by symbols” and that rapid responses were needed “particularly in terms of wages”.

Member comments

  1. Thank you for some of the history of this issue which helps give context to some of the hysteria surrounding the approval of burkinis at Grenoble municipal swimming pools. It’s grotesque to see political opportunists mine the burkini to gain recognition. Perhaps the silliest and most fake argument I’ve heard is that allowing the burkini in municipal pools furthers the oppression of muslim women. This should be a no-brainer. The fact that Grenoble is in the minority in allowing burkinis is troubling.

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POLITICS

How disinformation targeting Brigitte Macron spread to the US and UK

Years after false posts began circulating on social media claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman, the French first lady remains the target of fake claims with the transphobic disinformation now being spread in the US and the UK.

How disinformation targeting Brigitte Macron spread to the US and UK

President Emmanuel Macron, 46, has in recent weeks lashed out at the false information spread about his wife, 70, who is taking legal action against those behind the allegations.

Prominent US right-wing commentator Candace Owens vehemently attacked the first lady in a now-deleted YouTube video posted on March 11th, propagating a false claim that first exploded in France just weeks before the 2022 presidential election.

Brigitte Macron is falsely said to have been born as a man called Jean-Michel Trogneux, her maiden surname, with that name going viral as a hashtag.

Macron is among a group of influential women – including former US first lady Michelle Obama and New Zealand ex-premier Jacinda Ardern – who have fallen victim to a growing trend: disinformation about their gender or sexuality to mock or humiliate them.

While this gendered disinformation is particularly visible in repeated attacks on prominent figures, it also affects women in general and sexual or gender minorities with differing levels of responsibility in public life.

According to the US-based observer group, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the goal is to drive women “off the platforms and out of public life”, which has serious consequences for democracy.

Originally shared in the United States on sites like notorious disinformation hub 4chan, the claim snowballed when figures “with very large audiences gave it visibility”, doctoral researcher Sophie Chauvet, specialising in audience metrics, told AFP.

In her video, conservative commentator Owens cites a “thorough investigation” by so-called independent journalist Natacha Rey, published in the French newsletter Faits et Documents in 2021.

Founded in 1996 by far-right French figure Emmanuel Ratier and now headed by Xavier Poussard, Faits et Documents regularly promotes stories targeting the first lady, a journalist at the French weekly L’Obs, Emmanuelle Anizon, told AFP.

“But what is new is that Xavier Poussard started translating his articles at the end of 2023,” Anizon said, adding that he claims to have sent an English version to those close to former US president Donald Trump.

Anizon, who spoke to Poussard and his associate Aurelien Poirson who advised on the translation, explained that it was no accident that the US far right had taken up the false claim ahead of the November US elections.

“It was their dream to export this claim across the Atlantic,” she said.

And it worked, spreading like wildfire after Owens posted her video with two associated hashtags shared tens of thousands of times on X, according to social network analysis tool Visibrain.

The false claims have also been repeated by tabloid newspapers in the UK.

The disinformation “was available as and when required”, said Sebastian Dieguez, an expert in conspiracy theories at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

The “secretly trans” narrative is a long-standing feature of online, sexist violence, according to a 2021 Wilson Center report.

The bottom line, according to the NDI, is that silencing women has “serious consequences for human rights, diversity in public debates and the media, and ultimately, democracy.”

The impact is also personal for those targeted and their families.

Emmanuel Macron addressed the fake claims on International Women’s Day, saying, “the worst thing is false information”.

“People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your private life,” he said.

The president’s relationship with his wife 24 years his senior, whom he met while she was a teacher and he was still a teenager, is periodically a source of media attention in France and abroad.

On March 22nd, a 51-year-old man was arrested in southwestern France for allegedly writing “Brigitte Macron, transsexual” on his garage, according to the French daily Le Figaro.

The first lady and her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux have taken legal action against two women who posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging she had once been a man named “Jean-Michel”.

A Paris criminal court is to try them on charges of defamation in March next year, a source close to the case has said.

The first lady’s daughter from her first marriage, Tiphaine Auzière, on Tuesday said she hoped the trial could quash the “grotesque” claims.

“Whether it’s my mother or anyone else in society, it can do a lot of harm,” Auzière told the BFMTV broadcaster.

“The justice system… can put an end to this misinformation and severely condemn the perpetrators because it’s a form of harassment like any other.”

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