Posted on 03/01/2006 11:36:05 AM PST by Caleb1411
Iam a professor of French literature at the University of Minnesota Duluth. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Voltaire at Duke University. I post articles that concern my field next to my office door.
One of those was an article from the Nov. 17, 2005, Christian Science Monitor, which was ripped off my door about Feb. 8. It pointed out that some Muslims in French schools will not read Voltaire and Rousseau (too anti-religion), Cyrano de Bergerac (too racy), Madame Bovary (too pro-women) or Chretien de Troyes (too Christian). It also stated those Muslims will not draw a right angle because it looks part of the Christian cross. In some schools they have separate toilets or locker rooms so that "the circumcised should not have to undress alongside the impure."
Another article I posted outside my office, from the Swiss newspaper Le Matin, describes how the Muslim mosque of Geneva, Switzerland, repeatedly opposed and prevented the performance of Voltaire's play "Mahomet ou le Fanatisme." In December 2005, a group of Muslims set cars and trash cans on fire in Saint-Denis, a French town near Geneva, and thus prevented the simple reading of "Mahomet." According to the theater director, there is nothing offensive toward Muslims in the play, especially since the work is a metaphor in which Voltaire uses Muhammad to criticize Catholicism.
The article from Le Matin on Voltaire was not ripped off the wall, probably because the offended person could not read French.
To me, the attacks on French literature appear more ominous than the attacks on the Danish cartoons, because they encompass a much broader scope than Muhammad. They are an attack on the western civilization some faculty still teach at UMD.
I wonder how in the future the UMD administration will resolve the conflicts between freedom of expression and the distribution of material considered potentially offensive. At present, the administration and the Commission on Diversity display great concern about not offending "diverse" people, but they display no such concern about offending white Britons, white Hispanics, white Swedes, white Jews or white Arabs, when they post fliers all over the campus, offering to pay for six people to attend an April White Privilege Conference (on the white system of supremacy and oppression) at the University of Missouri.
YOLANDE JENNY is a professor of French in the department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Muslims must make great engineers and mathematicians.
She failed to mention that Voltaire had to flee to Switzerland to preserve his life. The Christian zealots in France would have strung him up had they caught him.
Neither he nor his good work were allowed in France.
Professor Jenny completed 4 years of undergraduate work, then went to grad school, did all that coursework, then researched and wrote a dissertation, then competed for a job in academia, landed one, and it's only now dawning that there's a problem?
Book smart isn't common sense, apparently.
That was probably more to do with his impregnating the wife of a French Nobleman who died in childbirth.
Puppage -- be happy she came around. Much better late than never. Plus she has the courage to say something public (and even in English).
I see the church still has propagandists alive and well and functioning.
Voltaire simply did not believe in freedom of religion when it came to the Catholic Church. He went far beyond simply arguing for freedom of cult to other religions and instead said "Ecrasez l'infame" in reference to the Catholic Church. He called for the destruction of the Catholic Church. I believe he also said something about strangling the last king with the entrails of the last priest. Voltaire was neitehr tolerant nor human rights-respecting, and his anti-Catholic bigotry led to the flagrant abuses of the life and liberty of Catholics in France during the French Revolution.
You left out the part about the French enlightenment kindling the fire of liberty that produced the American revolution.
Perhaps I'm missing something but the professor posts numerous articles and one (1) is torn down, so she concludes that Western civilization is under attack at UMD? Unless she has other examples, this appears much ado about nothing.
You left out the part about the Scottish enlightenment kindling the fire of liberty that produced the American revolution
And that whole Reign of Terror thing.
......Scottish enlightenment .....
Ha. as a descendant oF Scots Irish, I ve learned most fled poverty for opportunity. There was no outpouring of philosophy and new ideas from Scotland.
The French on the other hand exported ideas taken up by the Americans who could actually put them into practice. They were not burdened by the church and threw off the yokes of nobility. After seeing the American success, they tried it but failed in the execution.
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
January 3, 1919
The French Revolution did not practice freedom of religion, at least for Catholics, while the American Revolution did produce a broad-based freedom of religion. The American Revolution owes more to Montesquieu and Locke, whereas the French owes more to the intolerant secularist Voltaire and "General Will" Rousseau, hence the totalitarian streak that has infected the French Revolution and its progeny ever since.
It was Hume and the British philosophers who kindled the American Revolution, which preceded the bloodthirsty, vengeful French Revolution.
...no outpouring of philosophy and new ideas from Scotland..
You must be kidding! Read "How the Scots Invented the Modern World." It was on the New York Times bestseller list and is a great read. The Scots had the best universities, developed medicine, provided the Founding Fathers with many of their ideas about individual liberty and representative government--the list goes on and on. Scotland had the highest literacy rate in the 17th and 18th centuries. They had a highly developed printing industry because of the general public's tremendous interest in learning. They made the English look like a bunch of backward hicks.
Even relatively poor Scots sought learning. The Presbyterian Church established schools and insisted on its adherents learning to read the Bible.
Don't denigrate the Scots!
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