Threat to the Social Sciences and Humanities in France: The CNRS Permanently Withdraws Its Oversight of CEPEL

Statement by CEPEL members, Montpellier, October 6, 2025

On September 22, 2025, CEPEL’s leadership learned that CNRS-SHS would withdraw its oversight of CEPEL at the end of 2026. This announcement brings to an end ten months of indecision regarding the CNRS’s four-decade-long investment in our UMR. In November 2024, the abruptness of the initial withdrawal announcement had sparked such a strong reaction that the CNRS-SHS proposed alternative solutions: merger proposals that ultimately proved unworkable, and then, with the university’s agreement, a Joint Research Team (EMR) project that—though it tested the group’s cohesion—concentrated CNRS resources on a smaller portion of the staff within an overarching university unit housing the rest of the team. With the support of a CNRS research director willing to take on the responsibility, the EMR project was developed, underwent an initial discussion of its technical aspects, and was subsequently evaluated positively in terms of its scientific merit.

The leadership of CNRS-SHS, represented by its director and deputy scientific director (Section 43 of the National Committee), has nevertheless informed the University and CEPEL of its decision not to support this project. It cited as the reason a lack of “presumed appeal,” even though support from a CNRS research directorate had been secured, which held out the prospect of new opportunities. Thus, the CNRS led CEPEL to work on the development scenario it proposed, without providing any support for it, without taking into account the psychosocial distress caused by the uncertainty of the situation for the staff involved, and without even considering how much the expected appeal might itself be undermined by the announcement of withdrawal: as the saying goes, he who wishes to drown his dog accuses it of having rabies.

Neither the argument that the University supports this project—at a center of excellence where the CNRS partner is concerned about the weakness of the social sciences, a problem that has been repeatedly criticized—nor the unwavering support of scientific authorities and learned societies; nor the disastrous concentration of researchers in Paris (in political science, nearly three-quarters of research fellows and associate professors are based there); nor the gamble of allowing a team to which the project had been proposed to prove itself in terms of thematic and organizational innovation—will therefore have altered a decision likely made long ago by the aforementioned CNRS leadership.

CEPEL members deplore this decision just as much as they do the CNRS’s actions, which have led to the closure of one of the few joint research units (UMRs) specializing in political science in the south of France.

CEPEL members