Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on March 18, 2025. It was translated into English from French by the Observatory before being edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission.
In a text entitled “Regarding the cancellation of FBB’s visit to the University of Lille,” two CERAPS researchers, Karim Souanef and Julien Talpin, are working to demonstrate that my conference scheduled for March 5, 2025 was not canceled by the University for political reasons but for scientific and ethical reasons.
How and with what arguments? And who are these researchers? Why, in my opinion, is this a political decision?
Let us review their arguments on form and substance.
On the form, first.
Let us note that the authors immediately place the matter on the political level, which seems quite contradictory with the announcement of their demonstration aimed at proving that the matter is “not political” but “scientific” and “ethical”.
They make me out to be a right-wing woman who would attack the radical left.
- The first paragraph directly informs readers that two elected officials and ministers from Les Républicains, Xavier Bertrand and Bruno Retailleau, “very quickly” supported the speaker —myself, therefore—and publicized her “non-attendance.”
- He points out that the conference was organized by the student organization UNI—one of the few known for its proximity to the right.
- The authors claim that I accused the dean of having decided to deny authorization “under pressure from the far left.” However, I specifically said this in an interview with Céline Pina for the newspaper: Conversationalist that, if there was a demonstration against me coming from far-left student associations—with insulting and defamatory posters to support it—the decision was indeed taken by the dean with the support of the president and it is to them that I attribute full and entire responsibility for this censorship.
- The authors also cite the right-wing “political-media” spaces that have devoted articles to my book , Current Values, Le Figaro, Revue des Deux Mondes, and forget those on the left like Libération, Le Monde, La Croix et Mediapart. They also wrote about my book, sometimes involving anonymous researchers, following dubious journalistic practices, as analyzed by linguist Yana Grinshpun.
By highlighting these political dimensions from the beginning of their article, the authors, who are addressing the readership of Mediapart, a left-leaning audience, do not just provide information; they direct readers towards political analysis while claiming to offer scientific analysis.
Let us examine the arguments that claim to be scientific and ethical.
The decision not to allow me to give a lecture at the University of Lille.
The Dean’s decision was explicitly motivated by a risk of public order disruption, as the authors state. Is this ethical?
Neither the dean, nor the president of the university, nor the authors question or explain how my mere presence could cause a “disturbance of public order.” And even if an academic in a university represented a danger because of a book acclaimed by several prizes—from both the right and the left—and work rewarded by a Legion of Honor it would be necessary to explain why this would justify an absolute and total ban on my presence in this university.
In an email to the organizer, the dean explained that a “laboratory” of his faculty would not support my presence. CERAPS, to which the authors of the Mediapart text belong, is, in my opinion, close to the sphere of influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both authors report this without defending themselves.
I don’t make this connection with Freemasonry for nothing. I believe that when you recruit respondents for research work with Freemasonry figures, you’re working with them, or even for them. This is, for example, what they did in the book co-authored by Julien Talpin. You love France, but you leave it. An investigation into the French Muslim diaspora.. Now, my book Freemasonry and its networks published by Odile Jacob in 2023 deals specifically with the influence strategies of the Brotherhood, particularly in the academic world to which I devote several chapters. I regret that the authors do not present any citations from my book. This is a shame, because this is where the academic debate begins, which has its rules that these two improvised deontologists seem to ignore: read your opponent, understand him, cite him and oppose him with arguments.
The misconception that I refuse peer-review.
Both authors are distressed that I did not publish my work in an academic house, thus escaping, they say, peer-review. Are they questioning their own behavior, consisting of inflicting this criticism from a journal known for its political activism (Mediapart)? Didn’t they themselves refuse any debate within the academic framework?
On top of that, these researchers accuse me of not having responded to criticisms of my book in a newspaper, forgetting to specify that almost all of these criticisms come from activist newspapers and social networks—their criticism is also published in a simple Mediapart blog and J. Talpin’s book in a commercial publishing house. We must, however, cite one exception: that of the article by Margot Dazey, which they cite, published in an abnormally rapid time in REMMM, the supposedly peer-reviewed from the IREMAM laboratory. Why supposedly. First, an article peer-reviewed takes an average of two years to be published due to the cumbersome peer-review process, but this one was published in a few months. Then, because my former laboratory, IREMAM, is still under the influence of François Burgat, a CNRS research director now retired, whose closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer in doubt I myself had to flee IREMAM following an accusation of “closeness to the Zionists” even though I was not working on Israel or Judaism, and I am not Jewish. A very convenient accusation to exclude me from this laboratory where some cultivate a pathological anti-Zionism.
The misconception that I would take my colleagues to task to fuel my theory.
Talpin and Souanef claim that I attack my colleagues on social media. I comment on the criticisms made of me. I regret that some hateful and threatening messages from my followers result from this, but I have no control over them. As for the accusation of “taking advantage of this problematic process to fuel (my) thesis of infiltration of the University by the Muslim Brotherhood,” that is taking readers for idiots, which they are right to disapprove of.
The misconception that I don’t quote “classic authors.”
The two CERAPS researchers claim that I do not compare my interpretations with certain classic authors such as Pierre Bourdieu, Roger Chartier, and Michel De Certeau. It is true that the 400 footnotes citing bibliographical references provided in my book do not use these authors; why should I do so? We will never know. Why do Talpin and Souanef say nothing about the long list of authors I cite, including “classics” more relevant to my work—Weber, Gellner, Geertz, Rodinson, Saïd, etc.?
Conclusion.
The two CERAPS researchers, taking themselves for the university, write: “Contrary to what Florence Bergeaud-Blackler claims, it is not because of its political commitments that the university maintains its distance.” They have not demonstrated this. On the contrary, they have demonstrated that they condemned what they considered to be a political position deemed too right-wing. Yet there is nothing to show that my book, which has been equally well-received on the right and the left, is partisan.
As for my critical stance towards the Brotherhood, it does indeed exist, and I accept it in conclusion. The two researchers accuse me of directing “Islam in (my) direction, by issuing injunctions to reform” (…) “(showing) in the book, a normative stance that no longer allows us to distinguish the researcher (understanding the Muslim Brotherhood) from the activist (fighting against the Muslim Brotherhood).” Having demonstrated the theocratic nature of the Brotherhood project, which brings about the end of democracy, the end of contradictory debate, and therefore of science, I could not, as a scientist, be content with “understanding” it. This is why my conclusion contains recommendations.
The fact that the president of the University of Lille is relying on a few CERAPS researchers in league with the frérosphère to decide to ban me from the University of Lille—and from debate with students and peers—is all the more surreal given that one of these two researchers has been singled out for his ideological and political biases. The Point, Jean-François Braunstein, philosopher, Julien Damon, sociologist, Philippe d’Iribarne, economist and anthropologist, Nathalie Heinich, sociologist, Jean Szlamowicz, linguist, Pierre-André Taguieff, political scientist, Shmuel Trigano, sociologist write about the book co-signed by Julien Talpin and published by La Découverte You love France, but you leave it. An investigation into the French Muslim diaspora: “To speak of methodological weakness is an understatement: it is quite simply an editorial construction falling within the scope of agitation-propaganda and aiming to popularize an ideological allegation within the framework of a political-cultural combat … This work constitutes a methodological and ethical disgrace, serving the electoralist base works of a radical left deviated into Islamo-leftism, and which considerably tarnishes the reputation of a once respected publishing house.
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Image: “University of Lille” by PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ on Wikipedia.