Academics stand up for national recruitment process

Senior figures in French higher education have defended the role of the CNU—the government’s national council of universities—in deciding which academics are eligible for tenured positions.

The CNU’s role was called into question after the CPU, France’s association of university presidents, said in a statement on 21 May that it wanted all universities to be given the power to recruit staff as they see fit.

But Olivier Oudar, vice-president of Paris 13 University, was among senior figures in higher education who rejected the CPU’s call. “To remove qualification [by the CNU] is to open the door to clientelism, endogamy, and local baronies. The CNU does not totally prevent these phenomena, but it limits them,” Oudar told the newspaper Le Monde in an article published on 3 June.