On French Laicite

Is French Laicite -– secularism in state funded public schools and, more generally, in the public sphere –- a valid unifying social concept in a multicultural world, or is it cultural imperialism, as often described by American liberals?

Our panel will address a question that lies at the heart of the debate on national identity and integration policies. With Pascal Bruckner, philosopher, leading French public intellectual and author of An imaginary racism: islamophobia and guilt; Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, and the author of The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, and The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, to be published next fall; Patrick Weil, Visiting Professor at Yale Law School, and a senior research fellow at the CNRS in the University of Paris 1; Pantheon-Sorbonne, author of Le Sens de la Republique.

The conversation will be moderated by Adam Gopnik, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of Paris to the Moon.