Nothing has happened for almost a year. The Ministry of Higher Education is said to have made no more progress in carrying out an investigation on “Islamo-Left radicalism in the universities”. And as the Journal du Dimanche reported on April 10, the judges are losing patience and are asking in vain for the judicial procedures to continue.
It all began on February 14 of this year. The Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, had announced that she would ask “in particular the CNRS” to carry out an investigation into “all research directions” linked to “left-wing Islamism” in universities. This request has since been rejected by the CNRS and Athéna, the national alliance of French public research in the humanities and social sciences. Four months after Frédérique Vidal’s announcement, Le Monde revealed that six teachers and researchers were suing the minister for “exceeding her powers”.
The civil servants and their two lawyers, William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, had therefore filed a complaint with the Council of State on April 13, 2021. On July 13, the complaint was then forwarded to the administrative court in Paris. Since then there has been no news. A situation that Vincent Brengarth described to the Journal JDD on Sunday April 10 as ” absurd “: ” So why let the administrative court work after the Council of State with a report that does not exist?”
In his complaint last year, he wrote, among other things: “A decision to launch an investigation has been taken as it is inconceivable that the minister would announce to the French and the national parliament the opening of an investigation when this decision has not been taken before”. The JDD newspaper asked the Ministry of Higher Education twice – in December and in April – for a statement.