On the points of view (Le Figaro TV), Jean-Michel Blanquer returned with force on the controversial question of Islamo-leftism at university, denouncing those who deny its existence. For the former Minister of National Education, to affirm that this phenomenon does not exist is to “say that the earth is not round”. He deplores that the term be rejected on the pretext that he has no precise academic definition, and insists on the reality of ideological convergences between certain Islamist activists and the fringes of the extreme left.
If he ensures that he does not want to create unnecessary controversy, Jean-Michel Blanquer responds directly to the words of Philippe Baptiste, Minister of Higher Education, who had minimized the existence of the phenomenon. Blanquer claims that beyond the words, it is the “thing” that matters: an ideological rooting, sometimes violent, as illustrated according to him the aggression suffered by Fabrice Balanche, lecturer in Lyon II, accused of “Zionism” and “racism” by students in the course.
Today President of the “Laboratory of the Republic”, a republican think tank, Blanquer also commits the cause of the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, still detained in Algiers. In January, he had co-signed an open letter with 30 South American writers calling for international mobilization in favor of the author of “2084”. Faced with inaction, Blanquer now evokes concrete levers, such as a questioning of the agreements between the European Union and Algeria, or the restrictions on the visas and the assets of the relatives of the Algerian regime in France.
Finally, for the presidential election of 2027, Jean-Michel Blanquer intends to weigh in the public debate. He plans, during the summer university of his laboratory, to organize confrontations of “outside extreme” ideas, in order to refound a republican project and to refocus the political debate around the values of the Republic.
