It wasn’t the mere “presence” of a veiled student on the HEC Montréal campus that Jean-François Lisée denounced in a tweet circulated by the media, but the fact that the institution chosen to take and publish this photo in order to recruit female candidates in Algeria.
In response to Lisée, a La Presse columnist challenges the young woman in the photo and gives her the floor, making her the arbiter of a debate unrelated to her personally choosing a religious dress code. In no way is the name of this young woman featured in the promotional photo revealed, nor even her status on HEC Montréal’s website. When a university asks a person to appear on their website for recruitment purposes, it is their image that interests them, not their person or their ideas. So she goes to the trouble of anonymizing it. It’s not about judging a particular person’s appearance, much less about making them the spokesman of the institution.
Why does a columnist allow herself to throw an extra into the fray? And what about the ethics of the HEC, who presumably gave the student’s coordinates to the media?
The way the institution responded to the controversy is eloquent. HEC, through its media relations manager, argued that its website reflects the student population and that its home page is not an advertisement as it changes every two weeks (see Rima Elkouri, La Presse, August 10). However, the photograph in question accompanies an advertisement for the recruitment of female students from Algeria, which is institutional advertising known to have its exposure time. why deny In an email to a journalist from Le Devoir [10 août]the HEC representative also mentioned the possibility for all members of her student community to be “promoted” on her platforms.
Reflect, improve its student population? Would it not have been wiser – and less tendentious – to recruit in Algeria, a country where the hijab has been forcefully imposed on women and where many young women still suffer the pressure of wearing two figures in the publicity photo to record, a veiled person trying to join those who wear it voluntarily or not and those who refuse to wear it? Why does HEC emphasize the choice of some at the expense of the choice of others? And by additionally favoring the only choice that has become “internationally” (as it is advertised) an instrument of discrimination and marginalization of a majority of women? Do we realize that in the eyes of Algerian women or Muslim candidates, it will not be overlooked that, far from opening itself to diversity and justice, the HEC has in fact made its choice?