Dean’s Welcome Address - Mérite, vérité, liberté

Dear students,

Tonight is a very special moment for you. It is also a special moment for us. You are beginning a new chapter at Sciences Po, and I would like to take a few minutes to welcome you and share a few thoughts about what we hope you will find here, and what we will expect from you.

Let me begin with something that strikes me whenever I look at a new class: your diversity. You have been selected very carefully, through a highly competitive process. You have worked hard to be here, and many others would have been very happy to be sitting where you are tonight. But what makes this class remarkable is not simply the individual quality of its students. It is the variety of experiences, perspectives and ambitions that you bring with you. That diversity will be one of your greatest assets during your time here and, I hope, long afterwards.

It is reflected in the extraordinary range of subjects you will study: finance, strategy, communication, human resources, cultural and creative industries, and many others. It is reflected in the people who will teach you: academics alongside practitioners, researchers alongside business leaders. And it is reflected in the staff who will accompany you throughout your studies.

Beyond the School itself, you are also joining an increasingly strong and structured alumni community. Together, our students, faculty, staff, professionals and alumni form an ecosystem. I encourage you to explore it fully. Meet people outside your programme. Attend events that have nothing to do with your immediate field of study. Talk to people whose experiences and views are different from your own.

I would like to organise the rest of my remarks around three words that our Director, Luis Vassy, has used to describe Sciences Po. They are words that I particularly appreciate: Mérite. Vérité. Liberté. I would like to interpret each of them through the lens of our School.

Mérite

The first is mérite, merit.

Merit is something all of you already have in common. You have worked hard to get here. Admission was highly selective, and your presence here reflects what you have already achieved. But arriving at Sciences Po is not the end of that process. It is the beginning of another one. We will expect excellence from you. And, equally importantly, you should expect excellence from us.

There was a time when excellence and democratisation were sometimes presented as opposing objectives. I believe the opposite. Excellence is not the enemy of democratisation. Properly understood, excellence is its common denominator. Whatever your background and whatever path brought you here, the intellectual standards should be equally demanding.

That means you will have to work. Some courses will give you the fundamental knowledge you simply need to master. Others will require you to question assumptions, combine disciplines or approach unfamiliar problems in new ways. Both matter.

But merit is not only about individual performance. For me, it is also inseparable from respect: respect for yourself, because you should demand the best education you can receive; respect for your teachers and colleagues; and respect for those around you, whose experiences may be very different from your own.

Vérité

The second word is vérité, truth. I would like to interpret this in two ways. The first is perhaps the most obvious. You are entering professional life at a moment when information is everywhere, but reliable information is sometimes remarkably difficult to identify. You will encounter an enormous quantity of content, opinion and assertion. Artificial intelligence will make the production of information easier still, and the distinction between what is true, plausible, manipulated or simply false more difficult. One of our responsibilities is therefore to give you the intellectual tools to discriminate between them: to test evidence, interrogate sources, challenge assumptions and form your own judgement.

But there is another dimension of vérité that matters to me. It is about understanding the world as it is, rather than as we have become accustomed to imagining it.

I say this partly as an economist. I am the Dean of your School, but economics is my training and my profession. For much of the past thirty years, economists operated in a world in which certain things seemed almost permanent. Globalisation would deepen. Global value chains would expand. International trade would continue to grow. Peace in Europe was largely taken for granted. Capital, too, was abundant and cheap.

Your world is different. Globalisation is being reorganised. Geopolitics has returned to the centre of economic decision-making. Security and defence have become economic questions as much as political ones. Supply chains are being reconsidered. And after a very long period in which money seemed almost infinitely available, capital is becoming scarcer and more expensive.

These are not marginal changes. They alter the environment in which companies invest, governments act, technologies develop and careers are built. They also alter what it means to study management. The knowledge you acquire here cannot be separated from the world in which you will apply it. Our task is therefore not simply to teach you established answers. It is to help you understand when the assumptions behind those answers have changed.

Liberté

And finally, liberté, freedom. Perhaps this is the most important of the three. The education you receive here will give you knowledge, methods and professional skills. These will matter when you apply for internships, when you enter the labour market and throughout your careers. But they will not be enough. What will increasingly distinguish you is your ability to think for yourself. In a world in which information and technical capabilities are becoming more widely available, creativity becomes more valuable, not less. Your capacity to formulate a question differently, to challenge a conventional answer, to connect ideas from different fields and to imagine something that does not yet exist will matter enormously.

Freedom therefore also means intellectual freedom. It means resisting clichés. It means questioning received wisdom. It means not allowing an algorithm, a fashionable opinion, a piece of fake news, or simply the pressure of the group, to do your thinking for you. And it means having the confidence to change your mind when the evidence requires it. That combination of intellectual freedom and creativity is, I believe, one of the most valuable things you can take away from your time here.

So, as you begin this new chapter, I would encourage you to remember these three words: Mérite, because excellence requires effort, ambition and respect. Vérité, because understanding the world requires evidence, judgement and the willingness to confront reality as it changes. Liberté, because ultimately the purpose of education is not to tell you what to think, but to give you the knowledge and confidence to think for yourselves.

Use the diversity around you. Be demanding of yourselves, and of us. Stay curious. Question assumptions. And preserve the freedom to create.

Welcome to Sciences Po. And I wish you a wonderful year ahead.