Subject: URGENT REQUEST FOR AN IMMEDIATE
LETTER CAMPAIGN TO UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT PATRICK CHEZAUD, ET AL., DEFENDING
OUR RIGHT TO EXIST WITHIN STENDHAL UNIVERSITY.
18 June 2004
Grenoble,
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
I have scheduled a meeting with the new President of Stendhal University, M.
Patrick Chezaud, and the Vice-President of Research,
Michel Lafon. The meeting is scheduled to take place
on the morning of Thursday, 8 July, at which time I will argue that our center,
CEIMSA, should be given one more year to establish a network with other
universities, as the Ministry of Education in Paris had suggested one year ago,
and as I was promised by the former University President, Mme. Lise Dumasy, last year.
It would be of great help if you would send a brief but strongly worded message
to President Chezaud, expressing your support of
CEIMSA and stating why, in your opinion, our research center is engaged in
scientific work and indeed represents a strong and solid asset to the
reputation of Stendhal University-Grenoble3 over these past three years. Please
make mention of the web site, www.u-grenoble3.fr/ciesimsa and its usefulness as a research
tool.
Also, please find below a brief history of the formation of our Research Center, in both
English and in French languages. . . .
Our occasional criticisms of U.S.-Israeli relations is one reason for this assult against our Grenoble Center.
Another reason is the fear that the subject matter is not approached scientifically,
and that it endangers the reputation of the University for this reason. Protecting the reputation of the university is the
justification for liquidating our Center, and until now a conservative
discourse has monopolized this debate in Grenoble.
If you can write a reasoned statement of support for CEIMSA, please send it
to :
and 6 Cc copies should be addressed to :
To University Vice-President of Research = Michel.Lafon@u-grenoble3.fr
To SNEsup Teachers Union President, Marc Troisvallets =
To University Vice-President of Administrative Affairs =
Odile.Lagacherie@u-grenoble3.fr
To University Vice-President of International Relations =
Georges.Tyras@u-grenoble3.fr
To University Vice-President of Pedagogical Affairs =
Francoise.Papa@u-grenoble3.fr
To me, President of CEIMSA = Francis.Feeley@u-grenoble3.fr
Many thanks for your solidarity with our scientific work at CEIMSA.
Francis Feeley
____________________
English Version :
IN DEFENSE OF CEIMSA
Université Stendhal
(17 juin 2004)
In spring 2000 I was certified
by the CNU in Paris to occupy a
post as full professor (college A, Section 11). I had held the position as Maître de Conferences for two years at l’Université Marc Bloch, since September 1998, when I returned with my family to
After receiving this promotion in 2000, I applied for a professorial position
at three universities: l’Université Marc Bloch,
in Strasbourg; l’Université François Rabelais, in Tours; and l’Université Stendhal, in Grenoble. I was invited to be
interviewed by the UFRs d’Anglais at all three universities, and subsequently I learned that I had been ranked as
the number one choice by each of the "Commissions de Spécialistes"
at these three universities.
I had taught at Grenoble as visiting professor between 1994 and 1997. My oldest daughter was born in Grenoble in 1996, and in the year
2000 my colleagues in the UFR d’Anglais were
welcoming me back to join them permanently, as a tenured professor. The offer
at Stendhal University
was all the more attractive in 2000 because I was invited, if I chose to return
to Grenoble,
to create a new research center for the American Studies program at Stendhal
University.
For these reasons, which were both personal and professional, I turned down the
offers at the universities in Strasbourg
and Tours, and accepted the
challenge to teach and to create a new research center in Grenoble. My colleagues in Strasbourg
and Tours expressed great
disappointment, but only Grenoble had offered me the opportunity to build a new research center.
In September 2000, I arrived in Grenoble with my wife and two children. We soon bought an apartment, and I began to
invest much time at the University, preparing new courses in American
civilization, and developing our new research center, CEIMSA, which received
formal recognition as a “new center” by the Conseil Scientifique at Stendhal University: For the first
two years, I was awarded a small subsidy, in the form of a "BQR," by
the University Conseil Scientifique.
After a great deal of effort on my part, and with the help of the Conseil Scientifique (then under
the direction of Professor Pierre Morère) and support
from Professor Lise Dumasy (who was then serving as President of Stendhal University), our new Research
Center organized its first International Conference, in January 2002.
This big project was acknowledged as a great success: the two-day colloquium
attracted more than 1 200 participants from local, national, and
international orgins- to discuss the theme of the
conference, which was: “The Social Impact of American Transnational
Corporations”. More than a dozen scholars from several different
countries came to present their research at this Grenoble conference in January
2002, and their papers were subsequently published in the official
“Publications des Actes”, a book of more
than 500 pages available free of charge on the CEIMSA web site, http://www.u-grenoble3.fr/ciesimsa/ .
The following academic year, 2002-2003, CEIMSA continued to organize small
local conferences (all of which are described on the center’s web site).
At the end of this academic year, our center again organized a large
International Conference, using funds that had been awarded by the CS, in the
form of BQR. It was in May 2003 that Howard Zinn and
John Gerassi came to Grenoble,
joining several French specialists in a two-day “Journée d’Etudes” organized around the theme of
“L’Autre Côté de l’Amérique”, where discussions of
contemporary dissident movements in the US attracted more than 2 000
participants over a two-day period.
Again, the following academic year (2003-2004) CEIMSA held a series of small
local conferences around such topics as the African American writer, Richard
Wright, and the early labor union movement in the
In addition to organizing this large International Conference, CEIMSA took on
the project of directing the French translation of Jim Hightower’s famous
book, “Thieves in High Places”, 460-page book which was published
shortly before the April conference and is now on sale throughout France,
Belgium, and in Canada.
Since the inception of CEIMSA, in 2000, a new vice-president as taken office at
the Conseil Scientifique,
and more recently the former university president has been replaced. Today,
Vice-President Michel Lafon (at the Conseil Scientifique) and
University President Patrick Chezaud have adopted a
strategy that will completely liquidate our research center, CEIMSA, despite
its three-year history of out-standing successes.
Last year, in January 2003, my application for formal recognition by the
Ministry of Education was rejected, on the grounds that CEIMSA had too few
members -1 professor, 3 maitres de conferences, and 1
doctoral student. (I was the only member of this center who was publishing
scientific work on a regular basis.) However, the Ministry, at the same time
that it delivered its “avis defavorable”
took the initiative to suggest to President Dumasy that CEIMSA appeal this decision offering evidence that a permanent network was
being created between CEIMSA and other French universities. Such a network
would serve to assure the Ministry that in the future a larger number of
research activities would result in a larger number of publications by our
center in Grenoble.
However, the time that I was given to make this appeal was very short, and I
was unable to do it before the deadline. As a result, President Dumasy offered me three options: (a)I could dissolve my research center. (b)I could merge with another research
center. Mme. Dumasy suggested the equipe directed by Michel Lafon, Institut des Langues et Cultures de l’Europe (l’I.L.C.E.),
would be the most appropriate affiliation. Or (c)I might continue as an
independent center for two more years (2003-2004 and 2004-2005) and work to
develop a permanent network with other French universities in the region. I
chose to pursue the third option, and have been working to establish such a
network. Two American civilization scholars, Professor Larry Portis (from the University of Montpellier) and Jean-Mari
Ruiz (MC from Chambery) have come to work closely
with CEIMSA, both of whom presented papers at the April Conference this year,
and both Professor Portis’s paper on the priveleged relationship between Israel and the US, and
Professor Ruiz paper on Michael Moore will be published by CEIMSA this summer.
Despite the administrative agreement between President Dumasy and myself in 2003, and despite the fact that CEIMSA has been working in good
faith to establish a regional network that is legitimate and can be presented
to the Ministry in 2005, and despite the series of significant successes which
our unique American Studies Center in Grenoble has
enjoyed over the past three years, the current administration at Stendhal
University has declared its intention to disolve this
center immediately, thereby breaking the promise made by former President Dumasy that CEIMSA could continue to exist independently,
as a local center, until an appeal could be made at the Ministry in 2005, an
appeal based on firm evidence that a permanent network had been created and
that CEIMSA was at the center of this network.
The liquidation of CEIMSA represents a violation of an administrative promise
made in the spring of 2003. It also represents a decision to reduce the
American Studies program at Stendhal University,
at a time when it is growing and attracting more Ph.D. students to complete
their studies in Grenoble,
and, at the same time, developing an international reputation. The most recent
evidence of this is the fact that the University
of Texas in Austin
has specifically requested that Professor Francis Feeley, the Director of
CEIMSA in Grenoble,
teach a course in
In brief, the administrative decision this summer to liquidate CEIMSA comes at
a time of its greatest success, base on three years of intense activities and a
series of conferences from which many scientific publications have appeared.
The University of Stenhdal and the students of
American civilization in Grenoble will be the big loosers if this irresponsible
decision is put into action.
For these reasons, I request that this decision to terminate the research
center, CEIMSA, be rescinded and that CEIMSA be awarded the necessary financial
support to continue its activities, its growth, and its important pedagogical
and scientific functions at the University Grenoble3.
____________________
Version française :
Plaidoyer pour le CEIMSA
Au printemps 2000, j'ai reçu par le CNU à Paris la qualification pour un poste de professeur titulaire (college A, section 11). J'avais précédemment été Maître de conférences pendant deux ans à l'Université Marc Bloch de Strasbourg de septembre 1996 à septembre 1998, à mon retour des Etats-Unis.