In the government he has just formed, Prime Minister François Legault has placed Pascale Déry at the head of higher education and entrusted the economy, innovation and energy to Pierre Fitzgibbon. At the start of their mandate, these two ministers should be very seriously concerned about the way in which the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) have been trying for more than a year to bring academics into line, by diverting from their primary function the scholarships intended to master’s and doctoral students.
We know that the FRQ’s primary purpose is “to promote and financially assist the dissemination of knowledge” in all disciplines, according to the Law on the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (III, § 2, 39). But since 2021, on strictly ideological grounds, and without real consultation, they have imposed new criteria in the evaluation of scholarship applications: the SDGs or “sustainable development goals” (defined by the UN) and the EDIs for “equity, diversity and inclusion”.
To begin with, let us recall that the annual amounts of these scholarships, already considered too low by the students, amount for the master’s to $17,500 (i.e. $35,000 over two years) and for the doctorates to $21,000 (i.e. $84,000 $ over four years).
From now on, to have a chance of being funded, an astrophysicist who wonders about the age of the Universe or a historian who works on feudal society must submit to the social and environmental standards dictated by the Guide des FRQ, even if these standards do not in any way correspond to the objectives of their work.
Weaving a link, necessarily artificial, between the study of book of hours of Margaret of Austria and the “17 goals to save the world” that the UN has adopted makes no sense, of course, but the candidates are forced to comply! When they do not manage to comply, which happens frequently, they are nevertheless asked to justify themselves when submitting their file.
Arbitrary criteria
These variable geometry criteria have very little to do with the world of science. If by chance they are suitable for a thesis in applied ecology, the same is not true in the case of a dissertation devoted to the philosophy of René Descartes. They therefore make the assessment of scholarship applications arbitrary. For the candidates, they have even more serious consequences. Over the past year, we will have seen some of them multiply in their files the proof of their civic engagement: claiming to be representatives of sexual diversity, making compost at the bottom of their garden, accompanying aging members of their family in a Residence Sun…
The scholarly community is aware of the inequalities that run through it and of the need to improve the access of certain categories of people to scholarships and positions. But asking students to take charge of correcting these inequalities through research projects now aligned with external requirements linked to the SDGs and EDIs is to miss the target. This is confusing the levels of action and diverting the FRQ from their primary mission without a mandate. Worse still, these criteria tend to aggravate the social divide, as Adeline, a literature student, testifies: “I am too poor to do voluntary work. First I have to work to pay for my studies. »
Above all, these new criteria directly challenge academic freedom, since they immediately subject researchers to an orthodoxy, even to window-dressing militancy.
They combine the principle of scientific excellence, normally defended by the FRQ, and social justice issues that are legitimate in themselves, but resolutely distinct. On April 27, more than 140 academics from all disciplines and persuasions sent a long-argued letter to the FRQ management on this subject. They alerted him to these amalgams, the harmful consequences for the student population, and for the future of basic research in the long term. The FRQ waited until June 30 to respond to them, when the academic year was coming to an end. They opposed them with a plea of inadmissibility, even considering that they were acting as “agents of the State” according to the Law on the Ministry of Higher Education, Research… (II, § 1, 23). Curiously, they forgot to specify that the same article of the law added two lines below that “the funds bind only themselves when they act in their name”.
It is obvious that the ODD and EDI criteria, forcibly introduced by the Quebec Research Funds, come into open contradiction with Law 32 intended to guarantee the exercise of academic freedom outside of any “doctrinal, ideological or moral” (art. 3). This is why we call on all applicants for Masters and PhD scholarships to challenge the outcome of the 2022-2023 competitions. We also call on the colleagues concerned to neutralize these criteria when they sit on the evaluation committees, for example by granting the candidates the maximum points under this heading, so as not to penalize them.
In the words of the chief scientist himself, Rémi Quirion, who chairs the boards of directors of the three funds (Nature and Technology; Health; Society and Culture), Quebec is a learning society. The fact remains that it is not by recruiting young researchers on the basis of their personal moral convictions that knowledge will progress, but rather because of their academic background, their intellectual aptitudes and the originality of their thinking, in short, everything that makes up the intrinsic value of research.
* Co-signatories: Isabelle Arseneau, professor at McGill University; Thierry Nootens, professor at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières