Darwin Cancelled in a French University?

Peggy Sastre reports on some disturbing developments at Sciences Po

Peggy Sastre is a is a French journalist for Le Point, and also an essayist and translator with a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science. Her work focuses mainly on a biological and evolutionary analysis of sex and gender issues. She is the author of eight books, the most recent one of which is : La domination masculine n'existe pas, Comment l'amour empoisonne les femmes and La haine orpheline.. and also translated Bari Weiss’s recent book on antisemitism. Peggy also co-authored the famous 2018 “Deneuve Letter” signed by numerous well known French female artists countering the aggressive US #MeToo movement.

I got to know Peggy in 2020 when she asked to interview me following my Wall St. Journal article on the ideological corruption of science. Earlier this month she contacted me to let me know of a new effort to cancel the introduction of biology, and particularly evolutionary biology, in discussions of gender issues at one of the most distinguished French Universities. I asked if she would write a column describing the situation. Other than helping with the translation of various phrases into English, I did very little editing. Here is her take on the current situation:

Last month, the French magazine L’Express investigated and published a piece on the French university Sciences Po, where two courses on the biological, cognitive and evolutionary approaches to human behavior were canceled. These two courses had been approved by the Academic Dean in November 2021 and the day and time and specific classroom had already been assigned. However, they were canceled twelve days before the start of the semester. The request to terminate these classes came from the direction of PRESAGE, a research and educational program on gender studies at Sciences Po.