ABOVE: WIKIMEDIA, CELETTE
For three years now, French social scientists tasked with making hiring recommendations within their field at the French National Center for Scientific Research have qualified Akim Oualhaci as eligible and highly competitive for one of a handful of available research positions there. But on June 6, Oualhaci, a postdoc in sociology for the past eight years, learned that the final selection committee had declined his job application for a third time.
The refusal to accept him has evoked suspicion about discrimination during the hiring process. Two hundred scientists, foreign and French, signed an open letter published in the newspaper Le Monde last month that raised the issue. “There is a civil crisis in the social sciences,” says electrochemist François Ozanam, a researcher at CNRS since 1988.
The reasons for the admission jury’s decision are confidential, however. “We don’t know what the problem is,” says Philippe Hapiot, director ...
