Cleared at the end of an administrative investigation after being accused of “sexist and homophobic” remarks during his course in Human Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine of Lyon, Professor Gilles Freyer returns to this affair through a book which has just been published. ‘be published.
It is a societal debate that has hit the world of health. Would freedom of expression be threatened today in France? On November 4, 2019, a collective of academics published in the newspaper The world a forum calling for “preserving academic freedom”. Among its signatories, great intellectuals little suspected of complacency vis-à-vis extremist remarks, Pierre Nora and Marcel Gauchet. At the origin of this forum, the cancellation “to preserve public order” of a conference by the philosopher Sylviane Agasinski, a conference threatened with being seriously disrupted by its opponents on the subject of the extension of the PMA adopted within the framework of the bioethics law and to which it opposes.
“Universities should not be monopolized by followers of obscurantism”, denounced the signatories of the text published by The world. Today, a doctor, Professor Gilles Freyer, oncologist at the Hospices Civils de Lyon, joins this crusade against what some call the “dictatorship of well-meaning” which would impose its law on matters of politics, society and even on… the impertinence of comedians.
Comments made during a social sciences course
In the spring of 2019, following words spoken during a humanities course in front of first-year students of medical studies in Lyon, Gilles Freyer was accused by a local media of “sexist and homophobic remarks”, an accusation which quickly extended to a suspicion of “racism”.
The case gave rise to a referral, by the Minister of Higher Education, to the general inspection of the administration of National Education and Research. Since then, Gilles Freyer has been cleared of the charges against him following this administrative investigation.
But the oncologist does not want to stop there. He has just published a book to denounce in turn “the progressive obscurantism” of which he claims to have been a victim. “I had to wait until the age of 51 to become a bastard”, he writes from the first lines of this book in which he draws the parallel between his place in this affair and the character of the Trial, of Franz Kafka, innocent who does not know what he is being accused of but who ends up accepting the need to … defend himself against it.
“My classes are a denunciation of racism”
And Gilles Freyer to advance the arguments of his defense. Sexist? “I treat female cancers (Gille Freyer is a recognized specialist in breast cancer, editor’s note), my patients are 80% women, it would be curious for a sexist and a misogynist!”, He is indignant. adding that “the denial of the difference between the sexes is a bad way to eradicate sexism”. Racist? “You cannot make racist remarks when fundamentally you are not racist, I do not believe in a hierarchy of races, my classes are essentially a denunciation of racism”, replies the oncologist.
Although he admits that he is now more measured in his presentations to first-year medical students, he expects the publication of his book to “provoke an outcry” against what he calls “the camp of the good, which does not debate but kills”: “Freedom is dying, but I do not give up, I hope!”.
“Denouncing and Banning or Progressive Obscurantism”, by Gilles Freyer, Editions Jacques André.
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