The French Academy will elect its new permanent secretary on September 28, to succeed Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, we learned Thursday from a member of its administrative commission. She, elected to this position in October 1999, held this position for nearly 24 years, before passing away in August at the age of 94.
“The administrative commission met and decided on the modalities. The election will take place on September 28, during the Academy’s back-to-school session,” one of its members told AFP, on condition of anonymity. The session is not open to the public or the press.
Three rules were retained for the ballot, which is not precisely governed by the statutes of the French Academy. Applications will close “Monday evening September 25 at midnight”. The election will be “by an absolute majority of votes”. Finally, “the votes cast on academicians who have not submitted an application will be considered null and void”, in order to more easily achieve this absolute majority, explained the academician contacted by AFP. He added that as of Thursday, only one candidacy had been submitted, that of the Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf.
The modalities are different from those, opaque and contested, which allowed the election of Hélène Carrère d’Encausse. Some academicians judged at the time that they had been designed to achieve this result. The permanent secretary of the French Academy is the member who directs this institution responsible for defending and promoting the French language. There have only been 32 people to hold this position since 1634.
The September 28 session should also make it possible to establish the first selection for the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française, awarded this year on October 26.
