Threat to social sciences and humanities in France: CNRS permanently withdraws its supervision of CEPEL
Press release from CEPEL members, Montpellier, October 6, 2025
On September 22, 2025, CEPEL management learned that CNRS-SHS would withdraw its supervision of CEPEL at the end of 2026. This announcement puts an end to ten months of procrastination regarding the CNRS's forty-year investment in our UMR. In November 2024, the abruptness of the initial announcement of withdrawal had given rise to such a mobilization that the CNRS-SHS proposed alternative solutions: merger proposals that ultimately proved impractical and then, with the agreement of the University, a Joint Research Team (EMR) project concentrating CNRS resources on a reduced portion of the workforce within a university unit hosting the rest of the team, which tested the cohesion of the collective. With the support of a CNRS research director willing to take responsibility for it, the EMR project was developed, underwent an initial discussion on technical aspects, and was then positively evaluated in terms of its scientific interest.
However, the management of CNRS-SHS, represented by its director and deputy scientific director (section 43 of the national committee), informed the University and CEPEL of its refusal to support this project. It cited a lack of "presumed attractiveness" as the reason for this, even though support from a CNRS research department had been secured, which opened up new prospects. Thus, the CNRS led CEPEL to work on the evolution hypothesis it proposed, without providing any support in this regard, without taking into account the psychosocial turmoil caused by the uncertainty of the situation for the staff concerned, and without even considering how much the expected attractiveness could itself be undermined by the announcement of withdrawal: as the saying goes, if you want to drown your dog, you accuse it of having rabies.
Neither the argument of the University's support for this project, on a site of excellence where the CNRS partner is concerned about the weakness of the social sciences, which has been denounced many times; nor the unfailing support of scientific authorities and learned societies; nor the disastrous concentration of researchers in Paris (in political science, nearly three-quarters of CRs and DRs are based there); nor the gamble of allowing a team that had been offered the opportunity to prove itself in terms of thematic and organizational innovation – have therefore failed to change a decision that was probably taken long ago by the aforementioned CNRS governance.
CEPEL members deplore both this decision and the CNRS's actions, which have led to the closure of one of the few joint research units specializing in political science in the south of France.
The members of CEPEL
