My intervention bears on the following question: can we speak of a collective identity specific to a teaching body? Would something be missing if we did not recognize such an identity? I will argue that the authors of the decree did not foresee the reactions they were going to provoke because they do not realize that professors insist on forming what is called a teaching body.
Recall of facts: the French university and the Shanghai ranking
I will begin with a brief evaluation of our conjuncture. As we know, a conflict broke out between the government (which was trying to implement a decree aimed to modify the status of “teaching-researchers,” also called the “Pécresse decree”) and the immense majority of persons concerned by what was announced as a reform of their statuses: both university professors and researchers in the major research institutes.
