“Appeal of 5 March” of CNU 22

We are the University

We, members of the 22nd section of the National Council of Universities, created by ordinance at the Liberation to represent our peers, denounce 20 years of policies of cynical destruction of the public service of higher education and research.
From the top to the bottom of the university, sabotage has been systematic. The lack of means, the decrease in the number of posts, the precarious situation of personnel, the deterioration of teaching and research conditions, are the result of decades of sacking of the university, and have created the state of emergency that forces us to write this appeal.
The current abandonment of the University’s students while the preparatory classes remain open is only the latest mark of this deliberate bankruptcy and the organised contempt for the University at the top of the state.
The inability of Ministers Vidal and Blanquer to deal with the health crisis in education, which their inept and dangerous attacks have failed to conceal, brings them absolutely into disrepute. The mistrust of the academic world towards them is total and irreversible. Unworthy, they no longer have sufficient legitimacy to carry out their functions. They must resign.
Faced with this mess, we decide today to take back in hand our collective destiny.

In the name of academic freedom and university sovereignty :
– We demand that the National Council of Universities be put back at the centre of the individual and collective evaluation processes of university research, while respecting its independence.
– We call on all the sections of the CNU to meet in the Estates General of the University.
– We invite the general assembly of the directorates of laboratories and research units to join us.

It is collectively, tenured and precarious, that we will henceforth fight to re-found the University. And it is together that we will fight to re-establish a democratic public service of higher education, of quality and accessible to all.

Motion voted unanimously by the members of the 22nd section of the National Council of Universities