It seems like perhaps it is possible that Jan has not quite addressed Dominik's point: I did not read him as rejecting the use of French, only the condition that fluency is a requirement for application.

For instance, although one might expect a Spanish or Italian speaker to be able to ramp up to working fluency in two years, this seems to be ruled out. NB: As far as I know, the requirement for fluency in German in German and Austrian universities, and in Dutch here in the Netherlands, is normally specified as "within two years," and at least it used to be the case that the university provided support for language training.

Jan, himself Dutch, is surely aware that most people in the world were not able to benefit from the excellent gymnasium training he received in which language acquisition was strongly present (and a further note: this is increasingly not the case even in the top gynmasia here, where so-called beta tracks [natural sciences] have largely taken over, for completely understandable reasons.)

So what we seem to come down to is an implicit interest in preventing non-French scholars from even applying...(which Dominik was of course too polite to say in so many words)

Jonathan

On Fri, Feb 19, 2021 at 9:54 AM jmdelire <jmdelire@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

Having myself French as mother language, I always had the feeling that
the education system in France is not particularly open to non French
students or teachers. Of course, it is different in the world of
research.
Just an example : we have in Belgium thousands of French students in our
Universities or Hautes Ecoles, because our education system is quite
open, while it is particularly difficult for a Belgian to study in
France.

Jean Michel

Le 18.02.2021 23:53, Jan E.M. Houben a écrit :
> sans accepter la diversité régionale, culturelle et linguistique, la
> science et l'érudition perdraient pourtant une grande partie de la
> richesse qui leur appartenait traditionnellement ...
>
> (= without accepting regional, cultural and linguistic diversity,
> science and scholarship would nevertheless lose much of the richness
> which has been traditionally theirs ...)
>
> On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 17:54, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 04:49, Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear All,
>>> The professor-researcher recruitment campaign 2021 at the École
>>> Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) is open.
>>> This time, none of the open positions are directly "indological"
>>> but some of the positions in Sciences historiques et
>>> philologiques or Sciences religieuses *could* in theory
>>> accommodate indological (indological-linguistic) or buddhological
>>> applications.
>>> Please explore at
>>>
>>
> https://www.ephe.psl.eu/actualites/recrutement-des-seignants-chercheurs-2021
>>> [1]
>>>
>>> A good active mastery of French is of course a prerequisite.
>>
>> "of course"? No, this is not obvious or normal. Many countries
>> hire professors on the understanding that if they don't know the
>> indigenous language they will commit to learning it within the first
>> two years of tenure. As far as I am aware, that is normal
>> international practice.
>>
>> Best,
>> Dominik
>
> --
>
> JAN E.M. HOUBEN
>
> Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology
>
> _Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite_
>
> École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, Paris Sciences et Lettres)
>
> _SCIENCES HISTORIQUES ET PHILOLOGIQUES _
>
> Groupe de recherches en études indiennes (EA 2120)
>
> _johannes.houben [at] ephe.psl.eu_
>
> _https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben [2]_
>
> _https://www.classicalindia.info_ [3]
>
> LabEx Hastec OS 2021 -- _L'Inde Classique_ augmentée: construction,
> transmission
>
> et transformations d'un savoir scientifique
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1]
> https://www.ephe.psl.eu/actualites/recrutement-des-seignants-chercheurs-2021
> [2] https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
> [3] https://www.classicalindia.info
>
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