Between the two rounds of the 2024 legislative elections, a platform entitled "Reviews in struggle: the social sciences against the extreme right" was made public. [1] and signed by 86 journals in the social sciences Postgraduate Course , but also history and the history of science. A tiny part of the academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, and not always the best known, certainly, but their number attracts attention. Not content with calling for mobilization against the RN as many other platforms have done, the signatories this time also had another prescriptive message: " We call for unity around the program of the New Popular Front, which carries values of intellectual and scientific freedom in which we firmly believe. ». You read correctly.
Let's be clear. That citizens, who also happen to be academics, are alarmed by the prospect of a party like the RN coming to power – whose proximity to Putin's regime, for example, is proven and indeed worrying – is understandable, although one can question the one-sided nature of their vigilance which prevents them from also seeing the danger that would be represented by the taking of power by a political party like LFI, which, in addition to its systematic support for dictatorships (including Putin's), has sufficiently shown that it could go far in the apology of terrorism and anti-Semitism. But we have long been accustomed to this astonishing privilege of the extreme left. However, the central question is not there.
It is understandable that academics decide to sign columns in the hope – somewhat presumptuously – that their academic status will give their opinion significant weight in the public debate. What becomes much more questionable is when editorial boards of scientific journals expressly align themselves behind the banner of the program of a specific political party. Here, a step has undeniably been taken, because it is no longer a question of standing out, but of joining. Two questions then come to mind. First, what made such a situation possible? Second, what does such a commitment mean and will mean for scientific life?
Three things have made such a situation possible. First, an ideology so sure of itself that it removes in advance any place for other opinions. Embodying the supreme Good, the position defended refers any other option to Evil. Perched on this moral certainty, activist academics – and this is the second point – seem to suggest that their political position (often to the left of the left, if not to the far left) is also the logical consequence of their scientific expertise. To the ethical foundation of the vicar of Good would therefore be added the scientific rigor of the scientist. The activist academic is the custodian of science, from then on his political position would be the only possible one. We know Simone de Beauvoir's phrase: " The truth is one, only the mistake is multiple. This is notis It is no coincidence that the right professes pluralism. », pronounced in the Stalinist era when Marxism was considered « scientific ». Are there real logical implications between the scientific work carried out by these militant academics and the political positions they display? Not always, and fortunately, because, when such implications exist, they rather work in reverse: it is science that is altered in its foundations by ideological considerations (some of the signatory journals already subscribe, alas, to this perspective, but not all).
But the third element, the most decisive one without doubt, for an academic activist to convince himself of the absolute validity of his position is the phenomenon of the closed vessel. He never leaves his circle and imagines that all academics share his positions. It must be said that university departments, even entire establishments, operate in this way in a closed vessel. The unanimity that is loudly displayed through intimidation prohibits, in any case, any divergence from being expressed, which further reinforces this feeling of evidence, of speech that nothing can counter. Thus carried by their conviction of a moral, theoretical and numerical superiority, the signatories of this disconcerting platform live in this closed world of unique certainty. How else can we explain that an editorial board of a scientific journal can thus become partisan to the point of asking to adhere to the program of a specific political party, whatever it may be?
So much for the context and the causes. Let us now come to the consequences of such a platform. Let us imagine a researcher who does not recognize himself in the program of the New Popular Front – let us not even take here the example of a researcher close to the RN (I recall however that one of the founders of the history of science, Pierre Duhem, did not distinguish himself by “progressive” positions to speak with understatement…), but the example of a man of the left rejecting the NFP, of a centrist or of a man of the liberal or conservative right. On what criteria will his article be judged, since the journal presents itself as the “central organ” of a political alliance, like the relationship maintained between the newspaper Humanity and the Communist Party? On what criteria will the renewal of the members of the editorial boards and scientific committees of these journals be carried out? On purely scientific criteria or political allegiances? And then, what will be the attitude of these signatories driven by such conviction in the selection committees that recruit future teacher-researchers? It is not a question of making judgments on their intentions, but of understanding where their logic of subjugating science to politics would lead.
We cannot claim to defend the principles of democracy and humanist values by adopting a resolutely totalitarian approach: the regimentation of science to serve the agenda of a specific political party. Abuses of this kind must be denounced without ambiguity, because they expose the scientific world to widespread suspicion and could call into question the relevance of its funding. It should be remembered that many journals are subsidized by public funds to advance science, and not to advance the political agenda of a political party, whatever it may be. This kind of abuse is also chilling, because it gives a glimpse of what the scientific activity envisaged would be from the perspective of these signatory journals. The saddest thing is that among the members of these editorial boards, there are colleagues of high scientific value: how could they have allowed themselves to be drawn into such a choice, which is the very negation of what they say they believe in? We are in the midst of an intellectual quagmire. The signatories write: "We reject the prospect of our research being brought into line," but their platform suggests that they would happily bring research in general into line with their own.
The university and research do not belong to any political party. To deviate from this obvious fact is to betray research. The call of these journals in favor of adhesion to the program of a political party is likely to harm the image and credibility of research in France.
