who is Pap Ndiaye, the new Minister of National Education?

Among the most significant arrivals of the first government of Elisabeth Borne, announced this Friday after several days of waiting, that of Pap Ndiaye at the Ministry of National Education. He thus replaces Jean-Michel Blanquer, who has set a longevity record at the head of this ministry, the first state budget. Everything opposes them, and it is a real choice of rupture on the part of Emmanuel Macron. First, because Pap Ndiaye is a man very marked on the left, who had called to vote for François Hollande in 2012.

But it is above all a radical change that is looming in relation to the policy pursued for five years. Jean-Michel Blanquer has indeed shown himself to be very committed to the fight against communitarianism and wokism at school. Two terms, two phenomena apprehended on the contrary in a positive way by Pap Ndiaye who, for example, was one of the first French researchers to have developed a thought falling within this woke movement, imported from the United States.

Outings on structural racism and police violence

The new Minister of National Education and Youth is a 55-year-old historian specializing in the social history of the United States and minorities. He was until now at the head of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, which houses the national museum of the history of immigration.

Pap Ndiaye is known for some of his positions. For example, he had declared that there is indeed structural racism in France, racism in the state. He also spoke about police violence, explaining that there was a denial on the issue in France.

Tribute to Samuel Paty

During the transfer of power with Jean-Michel Blanquer, he paid tribute to his “colleague historian” Samuel Paty, assassinated in October 2020, and advocated “dialogue with the entire educational community”. “My first thoughts are with the world of teachers, which has always been mine,” he said.

Defining himself as “a pure product of republican meritocracy”, this 56-year-old historian, of Senegalese father and French mother, claimed to be “perhaps a symbol, that of meritocracy, but perhaps also that of diversity”.

Figure of “size” on minorities

Professor for many years at Sciences Po Paris, Pap Ndiaye is a “size” on issues related to minorities. “In the field of history, he is someone who was innovative”, says of him the historian Pascal Blanchard, specialist in colonization, for whom “his work on the black presence in France is founding”. “It’s good to get a pedagogue when there is a malaise among teachers.”

“On everything relating to minorities, he embodies orientations which are certainly not those that Jean-Michel Blanquer has implemented”, notes sociologist Michel Wieviorka.

An asset for reconciliation?

A former student of the École Normale Supérieure de Saint-Cloud, graduate in history, holder of a doctorate from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and a graduate of the University of Virginia (Master in History of United States), Pap Ndiaye is the older brother of the writer Marie NDiaye, winner of the 2009 Goncourt Prize. In 2008 he published The Black Condition, an essay on a French minorityhis reference work.

In 2019, always with the desire to popularize his subjects of study, he became scientific adviser to the exhibition “The black model”, at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, on the representation of blacks in the visual arts. More recently, he co-presented a report on diversity at the Paris Opera.

Supporter of consensus

When he arrived at the head of the National Museum of the History of Immigration in March 2021, he told AFP that his appointment was a symbol for young “non-whites”, even if it was explained ” first” by his work as a historian and his “long career as an academic”. “I assume myself as is with my skin color,” he continued.

Reputed to be a supporter of consensus, his personality could be an asset in promoting reconciliation with the teaching world, which is very critical of Jean-Michel Blanquer.