Page 56 - EW April 2021

International News

initiative as being “part of China’s broader strategy to en-
hance its global competitiveness through research and the
rise of science, along with other efforts including bringing
back top Chinese graduates who have worked in major uni-
versities globally”.
Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at Ox-
ford University, agrees. “China uses foreign engagement
not to borrow ideas from elsewhere, but to build its own
capacity in basic sciences,” he says. “China’s basic science
is now very strong in the physical sciences and is improving
in biological and biomedical sciences, but there is always
the hope… that more can be achieved at the highest level.”
Among the most prominent examples of laureate labs is
the Shenzhen Geim Graphene Center, founded in 2017 at
the Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School and Sciences Po, Paris: “culture of silence”
named after Sir Andre Geim, who shared the 2010 physics
Nobel for his work on graphene. The lab has more than 200 But critics say the grandes ecoles’ extreme elitism and
researchers, including Masters and Ph D students. dominance of top jobs in politics and business — which is so
Wider debates within academic science question wheth- notorious that it prompted president Emmanuel Macron in
er the Nobels reflect scientific excellence fairly, and high- 2019 to promise to shut down one school in response to the
light that a laureate’s best work is often several decades “yellow vest” protests — plus their obsession with reputa-
behind them by the time they are honoured. tion and, in some cases, private legal status, has made the
problem worse. “It’s a huge wave that’s coming,” says Rais.
FRANCE “I think in France, it’s worse than in other countries because
Sexual assaults indictment of the culture of silence.”
Quantifying the scale of sexual violence on French cam-
IN DECEMBER 2019, THE FRENCH investigative puses is hard, but the numbers that do exist are troubling,
journalist Iban Rais was in the student bar of ES- to say the least. After Rais published an exposé in January
SEC Business School, consistently ranked as one of 2020 alleging sexual violence and homophobia at three of
the leading institutions of its kind in the world, when he saw the country’s top business schools — HEC Paris, ESSEC
something that shocked him. Looking down over the bar and EDHEC Business School — more than 500 students
was a stuffed deer’s head, a hunting trophy nicknamed Big and graduates signed a petition saying they had suffered
Buck. Except it was almost impossible to see Big Buck, be- under the culture he described. For his upcoming book, he
cause the deer was covered in female students’ underwear. spoke to about 20 victims of sexual assault or rape from
“You could not even see the nose or the head,” he recalls. these three schools.
Several students told Rais, who is soon to publish a book A more comprehensive overview comes from the Student
about sexual assault in elite French universities, that dur- Observatory for Sexual Violence in Higher Education, set
ing raucous parties, bartenders would stop the music and up two years ago by Iris Marechal, a Masters student at
halt serving drinks until female students had thrown their HEC, after she sensed an “omnipresence of sexual violence”
underwear over Big Buck. at the business school, with “sexism in classes” and “sexual
In the past month, a dam has broken in France, with assault during parties”.
hundreds of students coming forward on social media to One in 20 students has been raped, and one in ten have
share stories of sexual harassment, assault and rape on been victims of “sexual violence”, which ranges from verbal
campus, particularly at Sciences Po in Paris, the grande harassment to groping, according to an online survey that
ecole that is a training ground for the country’s political drew more than 10,000 responses countrywide. Two out of
elite, and a separate network of institutes of the same name three perpetrators were male, a proportion that rises when
spread across the rest of the country. alcohol is involved. An online survey is not representative,
France is obviously not unique in facing a reckoning over but Ms Marechal says the figures tally with surveys con-
sexism and sexual violence on campus, nor is the problem ducted by the government.
confined to its most prestigious institutions. In the US, for Critics say elite universities have simply failed to take the
example, the 2015 film The Hunting Ground traced the problem seriously, fearful of reputational damage. “They
story of rape victims – and their struggle to be taken seri- are obsessed with rankings,” says Rais. “It would destroy
ously by university officials – on campuses there. French the beautiful image that they try to build.”
elite universities, meanwhile, do not deny a problem exists, (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and
but insist that they have been working to tackle it for years. ƒe Economist)

58 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2021