The current academic semester at French universities, including the Université de Provence, has been disrupted by a faculty strike over issues of academic freedom. While strikes are commonplace at French universities, this strike is unusual in its length and because the strikers are faculty rather than students. At this point in the semester, with no resolution in sight, we are faced with the unusual prospect of the cancellation of the academic semester at the Université de Provence.

The consortium partner institutions (Indiana University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin) in the Academic Program in Aix-en-Provence (APA) remain committed to providing participants with a full semester of academic credit regardless of the outcome of the strike at the Université de Provence. Toward that end, the APA program has created an array of courses for program participants taught by local French faculty to replace the courses at the Université de Provence. The APA courses will run from now until late June and will allow students to earn a full semester of academic credit. Due to the uncertainty of the strike situation, the APA consortium has concluded that students must enroll in APA courses to assure full academic credit for the semester whether or not the strike is resolved. Continuing in Université de Provence courses in hopes that they might be reinstated in the future would be assuming too much risk. 

Students taking courses at the Institut d'Études Politiques are not affected by the strike and will continue to take their regularly scheduled courses at the IEP.

Our on-site APA Resident Director, Professor Kelley Conway, has carried out a complete analysis of student enrollment or anticipated enrollment at the Université de Provence to determine which subjects should be offered as APA courses. The following APA courses have been designed to replace student enrollment at the Université de Provence. Several additional courses will be added to this list next week:

• Introduction à la géopolitique
• La France et l’Europe de la Révolution au XXe siècle
• Histoire de l’art français du 20e siècle
• Histoire de la religion en France
• Littérature et philosophie françaises au 18e siècle
• La Provence et la littérature au XIXe et XXe siècle
• Psychologie sociale
• Littérature et art de l’Amérique latine
• Idéologies politiques contemporaines

We are grateful that Professor Conway and the on-site staff in Aix-en-Provence have been able to assemble a palette of courses that effectively replaces those courses students had chosen at the Université de Provence. Professor Conway will continue to work to ensure that the academic needs of each participant in APA will be met and that all students will receive full and appropriate academic credit for the semester.

Office of Overseas Study
Indiana University

Office of International Programs
University of Michigan

International Academic Programs
University of Wisconsin-Madison