Sarkozy's Biggest Challenge

...He had not realized we were together...

...Even Prime Minister François Fillon finds it hard going...

...Given his personal involvement in most fields, delegating urban affairs to a minister who does not feel backed to the hilt is bound to be viewed as a sign of indifference...

...Increasing university presidents’ control of finances is also seen as a twofold risk: On the one hand, presidents are elected from faculty and are unequally competent in managerial matters...

...The evening of November 25, in Villiers-le-Bel, a town on the outskirts of Paris, two teenagers riding a motorbike careened into a police car and were killed...

...Early in December, Abdeljalel El Haddioui, a police officer applying for promotion appealed to France’s Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Egalité (High Authority Against Discrimination and for Equality...

...In the ensuing rampage several dozen policemen were wounded, a school and other public buildings were burned down, and hundreds of cars were set on fire...

...At the behest of the Socialist Party, the Constitutional Council has restricted the use of genetic testing, but the fact remains that family ties are henceforth to be defined differently in French law according to where one lives or comes from...

...This unprecedented presidential presence in the media worries sociologist Pierre Bitoun, who has created the Rassemblement pour la démocratie à la television (Gathering for Democracy on Te levision...

...Brought to France after the war, they were herded into camps in the South, some of which had been used after 1939 as detention centers for refugees from Spain’s Civil War...

...France recognizes this, but we cannot forget the men and women who served their country in good faith . . . who built roads, hospitals, schools, who taught, cured, planted vineyards and orchards on arid soil...

...Human rights associations joined forces with leading geneticists such as Axel Kahn (a scientific director at the CNRS) and JeanClaude Ameisen to appeal to members of Parliament not to pass the clause...

...But the fall term has been marked by several weeks of strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins in a majority of universities across the country...

...The President’s irrepressible energy, almost uncanny ability to give the illusion of ubiquity, and zeal to be constantly on the front line make it very difficult for the government to govern...

...Moreover, decisions are masterminded from the Élysée Palace, principally by Sarkozy’s Secretary-General Claude Guéant and Special Adviser Henri Guaino, who are his éminences grises...

...The law was nonetheless passed...

...Bridging the gap between the Élysée and towns like Villiers-le-Bel, which Sarkozy avoided during the election campaign, may well prove a greater challenge for him than visiting America or China or negotiating with Colombian rebels...

...DEALING WITH today’s rifts, though, is a more difficult matter, in spite of Sarkozy’s appointment of ethnically diverse ministers: Justice Minister Dati was born in Morocco...

...Today, the nation owes the harki its solemn recognition...

...They tend however, to extend their hostility toward illegal immigrants to anyone from the Maghreb or Subsaharan Africa...

...These concerns are shared by members of France’s prestigious research institute, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), a unique structure created 70 years ago in a bid to encourage research...

...Journalists were also set upon by youths, who accused them of reporting on such districts only when there is a crisis...

...This 400,000-strong community is formed by the families of about 90,000 Muslim Algerians who sided with France during the war that led to Algeria’s independence in 1962...

...Junior Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Minister Rama Yade was born in Senegal...

...Bitoun and his group urged individuals and journalists alike not to mention Sarkozy whether in praise or critically, to “help the French break with their addiction to media-instilled Sarkozyitis...

...This kind of tension worsens when outbreaks of violence occur in city suburbs that have a high concentration of colored communities...

...It called for a “Sarko-free day” on November 30, the first anniversary of his announcement that he would be running for the country’s top office, to “denounce a dictatorship of the media...

...Sarkozy doesn’t seem to recognize that the biggest problem he needs to confront at the moment—with patience, determination and humility—is just a few unglamorous metro stations away from the Élysée...

...Born of Moroccan parents, he told journalists that he was questioned by examiners about corruption in the Moroccan police, was asked if his wife wore a veil, and whether he observed Ramadan...

...it cannot address deep-seated ills that include unemployment, inferior education, a sense of displacement, and divided loyalties...

...For decades they were denied decent housing, jobs and adequate schooling for their children...

...some 18,000 had been expelled by the end of October...

...Former Socialist President François Mitterrand was almost paranoid about protecting his private life (and illegitimate daughter), to the extent of having the telephones of several thousand journalists, writers and other citizens tapped...

...Students and teachers joined forces on many campuses to ask for the law to be repealed...

...Most prominent among these, currently, is 42year-old Justice Minister Rachida Dati...

...The 2007 Nobel Prize for physics was awarded jointly to Albert Fert, a scientific director of the CNRS, and Peter Grünberg of Germany...

...After holidaying with Sarkozy and his wife in the U.S...

...In the case of France’s legacy in Algeria, Sarkozy advocated reconciliation, both during a three-day state visit beginning December 3 and upon his return, when he addressed representatives of the French pieds-noirs (former inhabitants of pre-independence Algeria) and of the harki community: “The colonial system was unjust...

...They argued that genetics could not determine family ties and rejected the measure as harshly discriminatory...

...They find when they come to study in mainland France, or when their parents move here, that they are liable to have their identities checked more frequently than average by police or to be asked to produce a residence permit when applying for a job...

...Sending in more police may quiet things down superficially...

...If his women ministers find it hard to work for him, the same is true for quite a few of his male ministers...

...Applying Sarkozy’s written instructions, Higher Education and Research Minister Valérie Pécresse defended a series of measures that were voted by Parliament during the summer...

...Scientists were already dissatisfied with Sarkozy on ethical grounds when, in September, a law targeting families from African countries was introduced that would require genetic testing for immigrants...

...She is dubbed la favorite in Parisian circles...

...He himself has described his prime minister as a “councilor among others...

...What worries human rights associations such as Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples) or La Ligue des droits de l’Homme (The Human Rights League) is that insidious or even overt racism percolates into school playgrounds, where quarrels and bullying take place along ethnic lines...

...This followed his promise when he was still interior minister to achieve “zero tolerance” for illegal immigration...

...It was an unjust system, but that system was made up of a lot of decent people...

...Bitoun’s Sarko-free campaign met with little success...

...Politicians across the spectrum agreed that the instigators of such rioting need to be found and judged...

...Being young and black or brown in France can be tough...

...The CNRS is sixth in the 2007 Webometrics World Ranking of Research and Development Centers and first for Europe...

...Protests revealed a fracture between faculty and university presidents...

...Sarkozy’s Commitment to control illegal immigration may be pragmatic as well as sound and it is shared by politicians in the Socialist opposition against more extreme measures like DNA testing...

...He thus increased the sense of “them-versus-us” that risks pushing youngsters living in these districts to identify with a lawless minority and makes them feel he is not their President...

...Fert declared to the press that his work in the field of nanosciences owed a lot to the favorable environment the CNRS offers...

...But when I signaled the driver stopped...

...Assimilation is something the harkis feel has always eluded them too...

...On appointment, ministers received from the President detailed instructions about the reforms they were expected to implement, with little room left for maneuvering...

...Despite its being government-funded the CNRS’ organization, system of peer assessment and joint research projects (with universities, other research groups and industry) aim to guarantee financial and political independence: Some 26,000 tenured researchers, engineers and support staff work in 1,260 research units, covering fields ranging from mathematics and astronomy to sustainable development and humanities...

...Public funding does not rule out profit-making projects...

...Ironically, on October 9—the day he was informed that he had been awarded the prize—the CNRS’ scientific board on which Fert sits, learned that the government was contemplating dismantling the institute, and more particularly the joint research units...

...I experienced one in Paris recently, while sightseeing with a black teenager...

...His tough line is welcomed by people close to the far Right National Front...

...The same is true for those from Guadeloupe or French Guyana, even though their families have been French for generations...

...Most worryingly, the gangs of youths that attacked the police—ostensibly for the teenagers’ deaths—were heavily armed and acted more like urban guerrilla fighters than spontaneous rebels...

...Although 57 per cent believe he “knows where he is going and is implementing long-term policies,” 33 per cent feel he “improvises from day to day, and does not know where he is going...

...Healing wounds is never easy...

...Sarkozy criticized ex-President Jacques Chirac’s public apology—repentance— to the Jewish community for the French administration’s collusion with the Nazi occupier that made it possible to round up and deport thousands of Jews...

...Irritating to some, admirable to others, he is unpredictable to everyone...

...On November 20, an eight-yearold girl died in a village in southwest France after an epileptic attack...

...it requires a sense of national confidence, a personal capacity for empathy and subtlety...

...In contrast, Sarkozy, at 52, gives the impression of loving nothing so much as to be seen and photographed escorting beautiful women—his wife Cécilia, until their divorce in October, and some of his female ministers who give the unfortunate and no doubt unfair impression of having been chosen for their looks rather than their competence...

...Equal rights organizations report daily incidents of petty racism...

...Junior Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara grew up in a poor suburb...

...Six months after his election, Nicolas Sarkozy remains popular with a majority of the French and a source of irritation for a substantial minority...

...walking slightly ahead of me, he tried to flag down an approaching cab and the driver ignored him...

...Whether one voted for or against Sarkozy in the presidential election last May, one’s reflex in the morning is to switch on the radio wondering what he came up with overnight...

...on the other, the fear is that the survival or continuity of research projects would depend on their economic impact or on the president’s interest in the field...

...Teenagers and young adults whose parents or grandparents immigrated from those countries are viewed with suspicion...

...ONE SUCH REFORM concerns higher education and research...

...On December 6, for example, he issued a television appeal to Manuel Marulanda, leader of Colombian rebels, urging him to release FrancoColombian Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped in February 2002...

...The former fear a cutback in public financing and a concentration of powers in the hands of the latter...

...An opinion poll for the Paris weekly Journal du Dimanche, released on December 2, rated his popularity at 51 per cent (he gained two points in a month), while 44 per cent of those polled disapproved of the way he governs...

...Their protests came on the heels of the unease that had greeted Sarkozy’s decision to create a Ministry for Immigration and National Identity headed by Brice Hortefeux, with whom he is personally close...

...We wanted to take a taxi...

...The size of university governing boards is to be reduced and presidents will have a direct say in faculty appointments, whereas the present system seeks to maintain a balance between assessments at the national level and peer recruiting by local boards...

...Her diary, exchanges with a doctor, and letters she sent to a member of the hospital staff and the police showed that she had been repeatedly bullied by some schoolboys, a few of whom seem to have tried to strangle her, calling her “a dirty Black...

...He has called for 25,000 illegal immigrants to be expelled from France by the end of 2007...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes regularly for the NL on French and Spanish affairs...

...Rarely does a day go by without his being featured on newspaper front pages or prominently in the television news bulletins: jogging, swapping insults with fishermen, kissing German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the cheek, receiving a standing ovation from the United States Congress, flying to Chad to obtain the release of French jour nalists, leaping to his feet and cheering when France scores a hit in a World Cup rugby match...

...Not only does Sarkozy steal the political headlines, he regularly appears on the covers of what is here called la presse people, the glossy magazines featuring celebrities...

...According to the Journal du Dimanche opinion poll, 46 per cent disapprove of this continuous presence in the media, but 48 per cent approve...

...this summer, she accompanied him on state visits to Morocco, America and China in the fall...

...But Sarkozy, instead of trying to calm everyone, spoke harshly against the reign of thuggery—“voyoucratie...