PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to appoint historian Pap Ndiaye as education minister has reignited a bitter cultural clash over France’s relationship with U.S.-style wokeism.
The nomination of Ndiaye, a specialist in U.S. history and minority issues, has raised concerns he will try to impose a foreign vision on Macron’s plans for sweeping education reforms in France — a country that has long cherished its “universalist” tradition, which in principle is blind to people’s color and origin.
France’s political class has traditionally been wary of wokeism — woke being a term that originally meant remaining alert to racial prejudice and discrimination, but is now used as a catch-all insult by the political right for left-wing and progressive causes...
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