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Sarkozy's usefulness obsession
Viewpoint
Wednesday February 25th 2009
In advocating the English publish-or-perish research system, President Sarkozy emphasises how far he lags behind the times. Alexandre Dupeyrix reports
Wednesday February 25th 2009
President Sarkozy rallies the nation. Photograph: Ravagli/Infophoto/LFI
Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech last month on innovation and research, which still rankles with France’s researchers and faculty members, is rooted in an ideology that the present crisis has surely made suspect. Two words encapsulate this mindset: assessment and performance. As the president himself said: "Quite frankly, research without assessment poses a problem. Listen, it is appalling, but this would be the first assessment of its kind... in our universities... the first... in 2009... frankly... for a great, modern country like ours... the first time. Assessment is the reward for performance."
Saying that researchers and academics refuse to be assessed disregards the career and daily life of researchers. But the strategy is simple and always just as crude, picking on alleged cheats and idlers to justify job cuts or changes in the rules of tenure. It is good to seek, but even better to find. This message permeated everything the president said. It is simple, incontrovertible and easy to repeat over a drink with friends. This style of low-brow rhetoric is socially unhealthy, heavy with infectious resentment. Sarkozy is a bit like the Tullius Detritus character in Astérix, La Zizanie: wherever he goes people start scrapping.
To prove his point the president established a convincing syllogism: in France more money is invested in public research and there are more researchers than in Great Britain, yet the British publish 30% to 50% more, leading him to conclude there is no need for proper tenure to do a good job productively and profitably.
Things are not quite so simple. The traditions of research in the two countries are quite simply different. The system of publishing in reviews, which started in the natural sciences, is typical of the English-speaking world. It has gained widespread acceptance in recent years. But English-speaking scientists increasingly fall foul of the system they invented and its limitations. The "publish or perish" catchphrase says it all. Precisely because they enjoy less job security, they are under constant pressure to justify their existence, prompting a flood of publications. No one cares that the articles are more or less identical, good or bad. All that matters is output. In advocating this model Sarkozy merely emphasises how far he lags behind the times.
Moreover, one can only compare what is comparable. It is dishonest to complain that French publications are less visible internationally than the British or American equivalent. We are operating in a context of cultural domination, in which, setting aside the difference in available resources, anything that is said or written in English is systematically overvalued, gaining currency in much of the world. It is exactly the same as criticising French films for not being able to compete with Hollywood. Tom Cruise is not necessarily a better actor than Vincent Cassel or Gérard Lanvin, yet he is an international star.
But the seeds of doubt are sown: French researchers, with their cushy civil-service jobs, are time-servers who work half as much as the others. So why should they retain their present status?
This brings me to what seems an essential point in a speech by a head of state. Why is he so determined to subject the work of researchers to this contemptible do-or-die alternative? Sarkozy let slip an apparently harmless yet terrifying comment, saying: "Moreover, any activity without assessment poses a problem." Here, we really begin to grasp how the president sees the world, touching on a basic issue that reaches far beyond the question of researchers, namely the type of society we want. Sarkozy’s discourse is rooted in the cult of performance, the obsession with competition. Everything must be useful – but who is to judge and who sets the criteria? – and its usefulness must be quantified, tested and validated. He loads the scales so heavily, no intermediate position is tenable. Anyone who fails to perform, or does not even attempt to do so, is an idle parasite.
The present economic crisis seriously undermines the credibility of a model based on a fatal obsession with competition and profit. The overall climate of permanent pressure feeds a dull malaise and social strife. At times like this we might expect insight, inspiration, genuinely positive energy – not aggression. France does not need a vindictive boss at its head, but rather a figure around whom people may rally, who is concerned about peace in society, living together in harmony and the pursuit of happiness, the utopia on which our political modernity is founded. In short, our present predicament demands an ability to take the longer view.
• Alexandre Dupeyrix lectures in German studies and philosophy at the Sorbonne.
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