Thank you for the question.
My job as a professor involves three main things. First, I teach. People know that because their kids go to university. Professors spend about 40% of their time teaching. Second, I do research. That's another 40% of my job. Third, I provide services to the community, which can be interpreted broadly.
The research part often goes unnoticed, but it's crucial to how universities operate. Support for francophone post-secondary institutions must take that aspect of university work into account. I mean not just research, but research in French, and not just research in French about francophone communities, but research in every other field, such as biology or psychology.
Continuing to conduct research in French is a political choice. That's true in Canada, and it's true in francophone institutions around the world. More and more science is being done in English, and it's been that way for 50 years now. If I'm not mistaken, the Commissioner of Official Languages made that observation in 1973. It is now 2024, and nothing has changed. It certainly continues to be a challenge.
Canada has a French-speaking research ecosystem, especially in the social sciences. I'm kind of lucky that way, compared to my colleagues in the pure sciences. When you work in anglophone or bilingual institutions, as I do, it's very hard to justify publishing in French if you want to rise in the university ranks. The audience is smaller, francophone journals are less prestigious, and the good old impact factor is lower, yet people keep choosing to publish in French. We can be strategic and choose to publish some things in French and others in English, depending on the audience we want to convey our messages to. However, the fact remains that this has consequences for our personal and professional future.