An educational institution must provide all its members — especially students — with a safe and serene learning environment, in accordance with the republican principles of liberty, equality, fraternity/sorority, and secularism.
Discrimination, regardless of its causes, forms, or modalities, not only constitutes an intolerable injustice and a violation of the law, but also weakens the victims, affecting their self-esteem and self-image.
It undermines their confidence in themselves, their future, their individual abilities, as well as in the institution itself and society as a whole in its collective capacity to provide support and solidarity to individuals without distinction. The effects of discrimination can be even more profound and devastating when its causes are unknown or repressed, due to malice, ignorance, or a defensive instinct.
Learning to identify and recognize an act of discrimination, to legally qualify it; learning to react to this discrimination — as a victim, witness, or even a potential perpetrator by understanding the limits of what is acceptable or unacceptable —, knowing the different forms of recourse, prevention, and/or remediation mechanisms: all this constitutes a condition of mutual trust, which is at the root of the act of transmission.
In the context of the repoliticization of gender-based violence and sexual harassment (GBVSH) — the #metoo movement — the revelation of particularly serious situations, long concealed, in the world of culture (cinema, theater…) and in certain higher education institutions under the Ministry of Culture (art, design, architecture schools), has highlighted a structural problem, which the system implemented at ENSAD Dijon aims to address.
