HAS at a time when the positioning of the Grandes Ecoles in relation to the general interest and the environmental emergency is questioned, the partnership project between the Ecole Polytechnique and LVMH appears to be totally unsuited to the objectives and values claimed by the management. from school.
In January, the Ecole Polytechnique announced with great fanfare the release of its climate plan. A few weeks later, after more than two years of historic student mobilization, TotalEnergies abandoned its project for a research center at the heart of the campus.
At the end of June 2022, on the occasion of our graduation ceremonies, our three promotions called for better integration of social and environmental issues into the teachings of the School and into our professional lives.
Fake respectability
It is in this context that LVMH announced, on the sly during the summer, theestablishment of a huge research center devoted to “sustainable and digital luxury” on the Ecole Polytechnique campus. The timetable seems rushed: the project must be the subject of deliberation by an exceptional Board of Directors of the School at the end of October 2022.
Three hundred LVMH researchers should work there on technical problems far removed from the School’s research themes: replacement of plastics by more ecological alternatives in perfume packaging, development of more efficient recommendation algorithms to increase the quantity products sold, etc. Or how to change everything so as not to change anything in a group that prefers to set up marginal developments rather than thoroughly rethinking its development model.
The main beneficiary of this operation to set up in Saclay (Essonne) would therefore undoubtedly be LVMH, which could cement a fake respectability on the environmental issue and secure privileged access to students on campus, while the fallout on the side of the School would be extremely lean, both financially and scientifically.
In a France and a Europe in crisis, threatened by energy shortages and inflation, the oxymoronic challenges of “sustainable luxury” put forward by Bernard Arnault’s group appear quite derisory, even indecent, in the face of the immediate necessities of the vast majority of the population.
A bond of trust already damaged
We understand the desire of the Ecole Polytechnique to create links with French companies, and we will support it as long as this process is carried out transparently and for the benefit of the general interest. But the establishment of LVMH at the heart of the campus, without any tangible counterpart for the School, appears to us to be incompatible with the ambition of a responsible establishment, in tune with the challenges of its time.
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