This is the great surprise of this government. Academic, recognized historian and brother of the novelist Marie Ndiaye, Pap Ndiaye has been appointed Minister of National Education.
A surprise, a real one. While the rumor announced Gabriel Attal to this ministry, it was the historian Pap Ndiaye who was appointed Minister of National Education. Associate and doctor in history, university professor at Sciences Po Paris and former director of the history department of the Institute of Political Studies (IEP), Pap Ndiaye is a specialist in the social history of the United States, particularly that minorities – Black Studies. After having been scientific adviser to the exhibition “The Black Model” at the Musée d’Orsay, Pap Ndiaye had taken over the general management of the public establishment of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, which brings together the National Museum of the History of immigration and the Tropical Aquarium.
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He paid tribute to Samuel Paty
Born in Antony in the Hauts-de-Seine on October 25, 1965, to a Senegalese father and a French mother, Pap Ndiaye’s sister is the novelist Marie NDiaye, who had obtained the Goncourt for “Three powerful women”. He also wrote many books, including “Obama in Black America” and “The Black Condition: Essay on a French Minority”. In an interview with “Le Monde”, after his appointment to the Palais de la Porte Dorée, he explained that he was taking the risk of being an alibi. “This risk is completely secondary compared to the interest of opening a route. When a child of African origin sees the director of the Palais de la Porte-Dorée on television, and he reads my name, typically Senegalese although I am French, he can say to himself: “Hey, there’s something new , and it’s a cultural establishment, it looks interesting…” To use the American lexicon, we need “role models”. In terms of diversity in cultural establishments, there is still a lot to do!”, he confided in 2021.
During the transfer of power with his predecessor Jean-Michel Blanquer, he paid tribute to his “colleague historian” Samuel Paty, assassinated in October 2020, and advocated “dialogue with the entire educational community”, for his first speech. as minister. “I have a thought for a fellow historian, Samuel Paty, whose example and memory are engraved in our minds and in our hearts,” said Pap Ndiaye.