By Charles Cutlery
The university institution is in crisis. The causes of this crisis are undoubtedly distant. It may be useful to insist on the seriousness of the crisis that this institution is going through[1]. This is particularly the case for the French university whose fundamental missions seem to be unknown, even forgotten, at the highest level of the State. This crisis is obscured by an unconsidered use of the term innovation. This term, which appears in the very name of the ministry responsible for higher education, actually amounts to delivering French public university research to the sole requirements of the economy and industry, themselves never really defined. This process risks getting even worse with the multi-year research programming law (LPPR). With disconcerting aplomb, Antoine Petit, in charge of the CNRS, in Les Échos, on November 26, 2019, did not hesitate to present this law, we quote, as "ambitious, unequal - yes, unequal, a virtuous and Darwinian law, which encourages the most successful scientists, teams, laboratories, establishments on an international scale", everything is said. But how did we get to this point; how could a model of Darwinian competition have been favored instead of an enriching emulation between researchers, laboratories and research programs?
We would like to answer this question with a working hypothesis. This ideological blindness could be explained by a double ignorance of the fundamental missions of the university institution but also of the republican theory of the university. To this, of course, is added the infiltration of predatory capitalism which only thinks in terms of immediate profitability.[2]. To get out of this confusion, we would like to address three points: first, recall the fundamental missions of the university, then recall the republican theory of the university as formulated by the Third Republic, wishing to retain the lessons of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Finally, returning to our initial questions, we will answer the following question: what can be done to promote and reinstate the republican university?
The fundamental missions of the university
Since its medieval foundation, the university has been based on an assertion: the knowledge taught benefits from staying as close as possible to the very production of this knowledge.
This statement is confirmed in the expression ofteacher-researcher which characterizes the holders of the institution. Immediate consequence: a university establishment must be directed by an academic and recruitments are made between peers, in collegiality and justice[3]. But we sense the fragility of this construction, because it is assumed that the missions of the institution will be known, but also defended, by elected officials. It is essential that a Minister of Higher Education works with the Minister of National Education, but also with the Conference of University Presidents, all continuing to teach and research. This political condition is coupled with a philosophical and ethical condition: respecting all the missions of the university. However, if budgets were to decrease, management teams would quickly be forced to sacrifice this or that mission, or even freeze recruitment and reduce research budgets.[4].
Let us recall these fundamental missions: the Education Code in its third part, articles 123-1 to 9; this is, first of all: "initial and continuing training, scientific and technological research, the dissemination and promotion of its results, professional orientation and integration, the dissemination of culture and scientific and technical information, participation in the construction of the European area of higher education and research, international cooperation". Article 123-4 adds "the training of trainers". Hence the monopoly on the conferral of degrees and the awarding of diplomas.
But the juxtaposition of its missions could make us forget the primary purpose of the university: to make possible in the same gesture the production of knowledge and its transmission.
The Revolution of 1789 was wary of the university because of its medieval and clerical origins, and it multiplied the specialized Grandes Écoles supérieures. This distrust extended to the Academies. This past partly explains why the university does not always have the means, particularly financial, to achieve all of its objectives that, however, the public authorities assign to it. The autonomy of public universities does not always go hand in hand with their real independence, particularly for the creation of teaching and other staff positions or budgetary allocations. There is a great temptation to seek to privilege one mission to the detriment of others or to impose a disciplinary field as a model to the detriment of others.
However, the simple juxtaposition of the missions of the university institution risks overlooking the importance of what could be called the paradox of fundamental research. This paradox can be stated as follows: very often it is the most fundamental and disinterested research that, in the long term, could have positive effects on economic or technological performance.[5]. However, the current incantatory use of the word innovation has the effect of obscuring the emancipatory power of this paradox of research, especially since, due to the Bologna process, it is coupled with a whole confused vocabulary organized around the notion of project. However, the notion of research project is opposed to the concept of research program, which, itself, presupposes non-precarious teacher-researchers, recognized for their scientific skills and not for their rhetorical ability to land lucrative contracts. The rhetoric of the project is opposed term by term to the argumentation rationally and collegially justifying a research program.[6]. It is the whole unity of humanist culture that is threatened when the unity of the missions of the university is ignored. However, it is this unity that the republican theory of the university defends, itself profoundly ignored by the current liberal and managerial ideology. It is therefore imperative that humanist republicans defend the republican theory of the university.
The Republican Theory of the University
The Third Republic forged a republican theory of the university that accompanied and illuminated the secular foundation of public education. The lack of knowledge of this philosophy explains why some secular republicans currently defend the positions of their ultraliberal adversaries, supporters of a privatization of the university, in particular around an excessive and short-term professionalization, too often sacrificing general humanist culture. This theory was developed by Louis Liard in his work Higher Education in France, written at the time of the consolidation of the principle of Separation presented by the law of 1905, of the secularization of teaching staff, for the Metropolis, and of the unification of Public Education. Louis Liard wrote his work at about the same time as Ferdinand Buisson published the second edition of his Dictionary. Louis Liard asks the Republic to overcome its prejudice against the university institution, by recognizing that the specialized Grandes Écoles could not exist without the inestimable contribution of general, humanist and universalist culture which is at the heart of the university tradition, notably in the classical German tradition. Louis Liard specifies: "that it is a question of giving to all the scientific clarity without which the profession chosen by each of them would be obscure and empirical" (op. cit). Through general culture, the university opens the professions to the coherence of their own rationality; it is a question of being wary of "the raw fact, without the reason for the fact[7] "(op. cit).
The republican university therefore realizes that it is appropriate to train for a profession, but without forgetting to prepare oneself, through the love of knowledge and the learning of free debate, for the exercise of the profession of enlightened citizen and the task of being a free man. This general philosophy is the basis of republican elitism. The lack of knowledge of this republican philosophy of the university partly explains the open crisis of the university which doubts its missions and itself. The theoretical gesture of Louis Liard, reconciling general culture and professional training, must be repeated today if we want to go beyond the ideology of innovation. But one condition is required: to preserve the intellectual independence of academics and academic freedom by ceasing to destabilize statuses and make careers precarious. It is the entire unity of the school of the Republic which must be reaffirmed. We can measure the effects of this double lack of knowledge of the missions of the university and of republican philosophy. This is why study and analysis must be supported by mobilization and the desire to reinstate the university today in order to rediscover the emancipatory power of knowledge transmitted when it is illuminated by scientific research.
The necessary reinstitution of the French university
Let us say again that academic knowledge, as close as possible to its scientifically controlled production, has an emancipatory power in the service of a humanist and republican universalism. This thesis confirms the convergence between the defense of the Republic, knowledge and fundamental research. This republican theory seems to be unknown at the highest level of the State. This is why the current dominant discourse, favoring research projects inspired by ideological fashions and linguistic postures, cannot really innovate, while wanting to be modern manufacturing processes in words, as seen in research on gender, intersectionality or even in so-called decolonial research. In this research, too often the hypotheses inspired by the sociological vulgate are based on assertions or data not subject to criticism and the process of "falsification" in the sense of Karl Popper. In Karl Popper's critical rationalism, reality is asked to prove the hypotheses proposed wrong and not to confirm them. beforehand. He will talk more about problems that of facts.
It is still necessary that, in the scientific evaluation bodies, obscurantist vulgates are not at work.[8]. However, the constitutive paradox of research presupposes tenured teachers and researchers, serene, appeased and working within programs decided collegially and not according to the whims and assertions of the elected officials of the moment. Any precariousness of researchers, funding and teams is opposed to these necessary academic freedoms.
To this first mobilization, defending the emancipatory power of knowledge and fundamental and applied research, humanists will be keen to add a mobilization against the entryism of obscurantist groups within certain universities (particularly in the human and social sciences); associations, particularly student associations, which present themselves as cultural are in fact seeking to develop religious practices. We have lost count of the number of classes disrupted by direct calls to prayer on students' cell phones, or the refusal by students to use the word creator for an author because this word would be reserved for... "God". We are thinking here of the affair of the IUT of Saint-Denis (see the website of the Comité Laïcité République). These well-known groups are inspired by sociological vulgates identifying individuals with their community or their original beliefs.[9]The situation is even more serious within certain National Higher Institutes of Teaching and Education (INSPE) where, during intercultural modules, an openly anti-republican and anti-secular discourse is disseminated. We believe that these excesses can and must not only be denounced but fought; it is up to humanists and republicans to call on the relevant ministries and scientific bodies within each university establishment.
Regaining the strength of the university institution
The current ideological situation of the university institution is very serious because everything happens as if a tacit alliance had been concluded between the official liberal and managerial ideology and the so-called cultural student associations.[10], too often in fact religious. Too few officials and elected officials care about the precise use of subsidies granted to student associations. It is up to the friends of the republican university, particularly within secular associations (Comité Laïcité République, Vigilance Universités, Association for the Quality of French Science) to denounce this ideological arc linking managerial liberalism and obscurantist and anti-secular associations. To do this, together, let us set ourselves the objective of re-establishing the republican university within the Republic.
Let us remember the warning of Condorcet who wrote, in 1792, in his Report on public education : "No power should have the authority or even the credit to prevent the development of new truths, teaching contrary to its particular policy or its momentary interests."
