Requiem for a Teacher

By Stephen Eric Bronner, Reader Supported News

05 November 20

n the 19th of October 2020, a young French high school teacher named Samuel Paty was decapitated. An apparently devout 21-year-old Muslim had become furious that caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being shown in class. Demonstrations all over France greeted news of this senseless tragedy. A slain high school teacher instantly turned into a symbol of republican secularism, or what the French call läicité. Police raids were launched against Muslim associations, and there was talk in official circles of deporting hundreds. Mr. Paty’s death has sparked a new wave of Islamophobia and, while Marine La Pen’s neo-fascist National Front is having a field day, President Emmanuel Macron is covering his right flank in preparation for the 2022 election.

Such is the context of a religious “honor killing” that is nothing more than a fanatical act of egoism and revenge. The progressive response is not very difficult to articulate: make clear who is the victim, seek prosecution of the alleged killer and all accomplices, oppose ideological exploitation of the incident, reject arbitrary deportation of Muslims, and affirm the principle of free speech and academic freedom. But it would be a mistake to consider this self-evident. This “post-truth” society of hyper-sensitized “woke” and “cancel” culture too often turns abdication of responsibility into an ethical principle.

From reporting in The New York Times (October 20, 2020) and personal conversations with acquaintances, “explanations” abound that tend to mitigate or even disqualify outright condemnations of what took place. They highlight Mr. Paty’s supposed lack of sensitivity; he should have known that using religious caricatures in class could only cause conflict and hatred. If this teacher’s murderer clearly took matters too far, he still supposedly represents the oppressed, and he was thus justified in feeling insulted. Satirizing someone’s religion is “hurtful.” Whatever Mr. Paty’s intentions, he should have anticipated a controversy that might provide grist for the mill of anti-immigrant reactionaries. In short, he should have been more careful and circumspect.

No one should be allowed to scream fire in a crowded theater; respect for all beliefs is required in a multicultural universe, and so is empathy for the subaltern. Freedom of speech has its psychological and social – bordering on the political – limits.

Little wonder that civil liberties are imperiled. Is pandering to prejudice the criterion for responsible pedagogy? No better objective apology for anti-immigrant sentiments exists than this fanatic’s reaction to a set of cartoons: “devotion” of this sort is nothing but a way of avoiding social responsibility and the dictates of reason. Mr. Paty might have expected criticism and controversy, but not what occurred. Teaching something volatile in a class is not the same as screaming fire in a crowded building: Mr. Paty’s actions occurred in a class where free discourse should be taken for granted. As for empathizing with the marginalized: the murder of this teacher was a decision based on the arrogant and self-righteous assumption that this youth’s feelings somehow expressed the interests of Islam. Not only the act, but this whole line of thinking, is inexcusable. Enough important Muslim leaders in France, such as the imams Hassan Chalgoumi and Hocine Drouiche, whom I am proud to count as friends, make no such excuses and offer no qualifications for such barbaric behavior.

Academic freedom exists to protect the teacher intent on saying something that might provoke controversy; not pandering to parochialism. Mr. Paty apparently did not endorse the blasphemous cartoons but, even if he did, showing them might have rested on little more than the desire to discuss them. Lack of empathy, or the like, should itself have become a topic of debate. There is nothing racist about this pedagogue having his students see the cartoons. In this same vein, the first pages of my book on the notorious Protocols of Zion – A Rumor about the Jews – were devoted to a reprint of this fabricated anti-Semitic pamphlet about a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. I felt that reading what has been called a ”warrant for genocide” would give students a jolt; it did.

Education should make students uncomfortable. In fact, Theodor Adorno once said that great works should “hurt.” He was right. Critique is predicated on questioning the assumptions underpinning any idea that is taken on faith alone, and unsettling individuals is the most basic purpose of “critical thinking,” no matter what the subject. No intolerant or absolutist interpretation of religion or any body of knowledge that is insulated from criticism can demand respect. Authentic believers have enough confidence in their convictions to extend the rights they exercise to those who worship differently – or do not worship at all. It is those outside the mainstream, the heretics and the free-thinkers, who most rely on the right to free speech. It is for their benefit, not those in power, that this right must be understood as universal.

Immanuel Kant was initially a supporter of the French Revolution; that is, until censorship was imposed and the right to free speech was suppressed. He realized that it underpins all other rights, which is what renders Samuel Paty’s murder doubly senseless. Without free speech, the liberal rule of law and due process cannot function. There can be no freedom of assembly, no right to protest, no meaningful education – and no freedom of religion – without free speech. Through the attack on free speech and academic freedom, indeed, the dogmatists and fanatics are simply taking another step in destroying the very system that enables them to exercise their faith.

R.I.P. SAMUEL PATY

Stephen Eric Bronner is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University and Co-Director of the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue. His most recent book is The Sovereign (Routledge).

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.