March 17, 2026
I have now spent enough time across three academic cultures—France, then the UK, the US, and back to France—to notice not only differences in research style, but also differences in what people consider acceptable in everyday professional life.
One thing that struck me very clearly in the UK, and even more in the US, was that institutions actually trained people on discrimination: racism, sexism, homophobia, harassment, bias, professional conduct. Not perfectly, of course. But the idea that these topics required collective attention was already there, and it was taken seriously. In France, at the time I left, that culture was far less present.
Things are changing a little. There is more awareness than before, more formal language, more institutional communication, more committees, more procedures. But coming back from New York, France still often feels painfully behind. There is still a widespread tendency to treat these issues as imported exaggerations, or signs of moral weakness, rather than as basic questions of respect and professional responsibility.
What makes this even more frustrating is that many French takes on the US are almost cartoonish. America is supposedly the backward country; America is supposedly crude, racist, reactionary, obsessed with identity. There is truth in some criticisms, obviously. But these caricatures conveniently forget that New York was also one of the great historical centres of anti-racism, feminism, and minority rights.
The first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. New York State granted women the right to vote in 1917, before this became law nationwide. The NAACP was founded in 1909 and quickly became one of the most important organisations in the struggle against racial discrimination. Stonewall, in New York City, marked a historic turning point for LGBTQ+ rights in 1969.
The reason I am writing this is not abstract. A permanent researcher at my institution apparently imitated a Chinese accent at lunch in a stereotypical manner. I was not there myself, but I heard about it afterwards from people who were present. Some were offended. None said anything in the moment.
I understand why. It is easy to say, in theory, that people should speak up. In practice, calling someone out is uncomfortable. It is even harder when the person is older, established, secure, and institutionally protected. Hierarchy matters. Social comfort matters. Fear of being labelled difficult matters. Still, collective silence is part of how this kind of behaviour continues. I often think of that very simple message one sees in New York: see it, say it. Collectively, we cannot keep letting these things slide as if they were harmless background noise.
So I brought it up with him on Monday.
His response was depressingly predictable. He said there was nothing racist about it. He said I was “too American.” Then he pushed further and argued, in substance, that this kind of surface-level anti-racism is actually what creates fertile ground for racism, and that I was basically the problem here.
That move is so common that it barely deserves to be called an argument anymore. First, do the thing. Then deny the thing. Then accuse the person objecting of being the real problem. It is a very convenient moral inversion.
At some point he also said that he makes homophobic jokes even though his son is gay. I immediately told him that I would not let that pass in front of me, and that he had better not do it around me. Having a gay son does not give anyone a licence to make homophobic jokes, just as having foreign colleagues does not give someone a pass to reproduce racist stereotypes.
What bothered me most, beyond the incident itself, was the arrogance behind it. Who exactly does he think he is to decide what is acceptable? It is not for him, nor for me, to declare from above that this kind of caricature is harmless. On these questions, the relevant perspective is that of the people who actually live with the stereotypes, the mockery, the exclusions, and the accumulated humiliations.
There is something deeply revealing about a privileged senior white man from a comfortable Parisian background explaining, with total confidence, where racism begins and ends. That confidence is part of the problem. It is the confidence of people who have almost never had to wonder whether a room was safe for them.
And then came the final move: “Bring the offended people here, and we can discuss it. I can explain my point of view. It is probably a generation thing.”
This, to me, captures the whole problem.
In many Anglo-American settings, one basic principle has at least become widely understood: you do not demand that the more vulnerable person come and defend their discomfort in front of the person who made them uncomfortable, especially when there is a hierarchy involved. You do not ask students, junior colleagues, or more precarious people to enter into a live debate with someone senior and socially protected so that he can “explain his point of view.” That is not dialogue. That is pressure disguised as reasonableness.
And invoking generation changes nothing. Being older is not a moral theory. It is not an exemption. It is not a defence.
I find this country exhausting on these issues. Not because France is uniquely bad, but because it remains trapped in a particularly smug form of backwardness: the insistence that it is more universal, more rational, more above identity than everyone else, while tolerating behaviours that elsewhere would already be recognised as unacceptable in a professional environment.
The problem is not only individual prejudice. It is the culture around it: the laughter, the minimization, the discomfort with naming things, the reflex to protect the senior person, the suspicion directed at anyone who objects, and the expectation that those offended should either stay quiet or expose themselves further in order to be heard.
I do not think progress comes from moral grandstanding. I do not think every awkward remark requires a tribunal. But I do think that institutions change when enough people stop pretending that these things are trivial.
Maybe this is one of the things my years in the UK and the US changed in me. Fine. Then I am happy to be “too American” on this point. I would much rather err on the side of refusing racist and homophobic bullshit than on the side of protecting the comfort of people who produce it.
At some point, “that’s just how he is” stops being an explanation and starts being a collective failure.