Only three candidates left in the leadership race

Three candidates remain in the running for the direction of Sciences Po. Two already belong to the community: Arancha Gonzalez Laya, the dean of the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, and Rostane Mehdi, director of the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). The third, Luis Vassy, ​​who is a former student of the establishment, is a diplomat and chief of staff of the resigning Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné.

Over two days, September 5 and 6, a twelve-member recruitment committee, including four from outside the school, interviewed seven candidates for an hour and fifteen minutes each.

Luis Vassy, ​​44, called for a redesign of the establishment’s project to be able to feed a “internal appeasement” and to “to restore its image in the media and public opinion, as well as among academic, institutional and financial partners”. For this graduate of the ENA (Senghor promotion, the same as Emmanuel Macron), the ENS Cachan and Sciences Po, the “ruptures of the present time” – conflicts abroad, the environment, digital technology and the European question – must guide the teaching and research of this “university of contemporaneity”.

At the master’s level, the former French ambassador to the Netherlands proposes the creation of“a school of climate governance and policies” and the development of links with the “European studies”. Partnerships must be more open to “Democratic Global South”embodied in particular by India, Latin America and South-East Asia. Objective: to break with the image of a “Harvard, French style” And to bring “another perspective and other practices than Western ones”In the bachelor’s degree, he advocates a strengthening of the common core and the introduction of a more robust methodological culture to meet the challenges posed by artificial intelligence.

Identifying “exceptional profiles”

The candidate mentions a possible “adaptation of procedures” recruitment on Parcoursup, some “exceptional profiles, either academically or because of their qualities of commitment, perseverance, intellectual curiosity, courage” not currently being spotted, according to him.

On the financial side, he recommends the establishment of an endowment fund and hopes to see continuing education increase. “top management of private companies”A “considerable market”.

Arancha Gonzalez Laya, 55, takes note of the “repeated internal crises for ten years”And proposes to the institution to take a “new beginning”The former Spanish foreign minister wants to imagine “new forms of hybridization of social sciences and original scientific programs”, such as computational social sciences and war ecology.

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