Fall 2025: The President of Sciences Po Welcomes the New Bachelor's Students

Dear students,

Dear Jeanne, thank you very much. Jeanne has not introduced herself, but she is the Dean of the Undergraduate College – that is, of the first three years at Sciences Po, the years in which you will be immersed over the months and years to come.

My name is Luis Vassy, and I am the President of Sciences Po. First of all, I would like, of course, to welcome you to this institution, to this very distinctive university, and to say a few words to you as you take your first steps into this place you are now discovering.

At Sciences Po you are joining a community – a community composed of students from extremely diverse backgrounds, of teachers who are among the very best in the world in their respective fields, some drawn from academia, others from the professional world, but all united by their commitment to transmitting to you the knowledge and the skills that will be of use to you in your professional life and in your adult life.

I should also like to mention the nearly 1,000 staff members who likewise dedicate themselves to ensuring that your experience at Sciences Po is the very best it can be. I cannot cite them all, but I wish to highlight today three in particular who will play a special role for you: first, Anne-Solenne de Roux, who is with us and who serves as Vice President for academic affairs, overseeing the entire range of Sciences Po’s Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes; Jeanne Lazarus, whom I have just introduced, who is accompanied by her Deputy, Marie Rassat; and finally Kate Vivian and her team, who are responsible in particular for student life.

Behind them stand highly motivated and dedicated teams, all intent on making your Sciences Po experience the best possible. I also wish to salute our regional campuses. Let me begin by addressing them directly, as they are listening to us now: you are as much a part of Sciences Po as the students in Paris. I shall be with you very shortly – as soon as next week in Menton, and soon afterwards on our other campuses as well – to meet you in person. Let me therefore also acknowledge the campus teams, the directors of each of the programmes in Paris as well as those on our regional campuses, who, being closest to you, the students, are deeply committed to ensuring that your time at Sciences Po unfolds under the best possible conditions.

Today, I am certain that many of you are feeling a sense of emotion, and perhaps even apprehension, in these first minutes, these first hours at Sciences Po.

Let me assure you that these feelings are entirely natural. You are entering a new environment, discovering new ways of doing things, and in some cases embarking on a new life altogether. For some of you, arriving from a region far from the campus where you are now, it may also mean being away from your family for the first time. This apprehension is nothing new: all those who came before you felt it too. I certainly did, in 1997, when, after finishing school, I myself entered the first year of a Sciences Po that was in many respects very different from the one you are now discovering.

What I wish to say to you is this: your time at Sciences Po should be a positive experience – one of emancipation, of personal development, of benevolence. And so, if at any moment you feel difficulties or wish to share something with us, I truly urge you not to keep it to yourselves: speak to the administration. Once again, you have staff alongside you who are wholly dedicated to ensuring that your experience here is a happy one.

I should also like, having said this, to tell you a little about what Sciences Po is, and about what you will do and discover here – not to go into the detail of the programmes, but to give you a sense of the spirit of this institution. And in doing so, I would like to deconstruct, as one says, a certain number of ideas about this institution which you may have heard.

First, there is a legend which circulates, which suggests that each time one arrives at Sciences Po one is told that one belongs to the elite. For my part, I have never once heard such a phrase pronounced in any speech by any President of Sciences Po, and I have frequented this institution for quite some time. But since these matters ought to be said plainly, let me assure you that Sciences Po is not a school of the elite.

Sciences Po is a school of merit. And first of all, if you are here, it is because you have earned your place. Let me say a brief word about the admissions statistics, which you may have seen and which we have published, to remind you that we recruit at Sciences Po among the very best students in France, and that we take great pride in this. We value strong students. You are such students, and that is a good thing.

Now, with regard to the notion of merit, there are two pitfalls, it seems to me.

The first pitfall, of a negative kind, consists in denying the very existence of the notion – in claiming that the mechanisms of social reproduction are so powerful that the very idea of merit is meaningless. I invite you to turn away from such an approach, for it is one that does harm above all to those for whom merit represents the sole pathway of social mobility – and I am thinking in particular of those of you who come from less privileged backgrounds. To disparage merit is, paradoxically, to elevate other forms of selection, based on other criteria than academic achievement – inheritance, or social capital – and therefore, I believe, we must insist on celebrating the notion of merit, even if we remain lucid as to the injustices that persist, the statistical correlations, the reality that it is indeed easier to come from a privileged background than from a disadvantaged one.

The other pitfall, by contrast, is to imagine that merit is the end of the story: that once one is here, one has ‘deserved’ it, one is in one’s rightful place, and therefore one possesses essentially only rights. I believe that this perspective produces deeply deleterious social and collective effects, for it nourishes and sustains the idea that a class of individuals, simply because at the age of seventeen or eighteen they achieved better results than others, is thereby destined to occupy higher positions in society.

I believe that being here is, of course, something deserved – but it is also a place that must continually be deserved anew. The corollary of the privilege of being here – a privilege earned, for you have overcome particularly rigorous and selective hurdles – is also to cultivate a sense of exemplarity. For indeed, many, many other students, other pupils, would have wished to be in your place.

I say this as someone who has personally reviewed over 200 applications, and conducted a number of oral examinations – seven in total – and I know that two of those whom I examined are in this room, or in another one in the regions. But we turned away many extremely talented candidates. Yes, you earned your place; but others, equally talented, might also have been here. They were not admitted, and it is always a wrench to recognise that one cannot accommodate all the talent that seeks to come to Sciences Po. So keep in mind this truth: yes, you deserve your place here – and yes, you must continue to deserve it.

Sciences Po is therefore not a school of the elite. But it will nonetheless enable you to realise a certain number of dreams and aspirations that you may already have formed.

These may, at this stage of your life, be more or less precise. If I may offer you one piece of advice at this relatively early stage of your journey: do not seek to develop overly precise ideas of what you wish to do; remain open to discovery – discovery of new fields of enquiry, of new experiences, of new possibilities.

The second preconceived idea about Sciences Po is that it is a school of power. Of course, it is a place where power is studied, where political life is studied, and you will have excellent courses on these matters from your very first year. Of course, it is an institution that trains leaders, and we are proud of the international rankings which place Sciences Po among the very few French institutions that have produced significant numbers of international leaders.

But it is not a school of power in the sense of learning to exercise power over others. It is a school conceived to provide, notably for France, leaders in public administration, in the economy, in all sectors of social life. Some of you will work in diplomacy, as I myself had the privilege of doing for twenty years. Others may serve in intelligence, or as police officers, or as magistrates. But these are not roles in which power is exercised; they are roles in which one places oneself at the service of others. And I believe there is great nobility in that vocation. Others of you will become lawyers, entrepreneurs, business leaders – some may even found their own enterprises.

We have a remarkably dynamic incubator, and their successes will also be shared successes. For Émile Boutmy, the founder of this institution 152 years ago, what was needed was a specific place to train those who would assume responsibilities. That, I believe, is the term that unites us. He famously observed, with reference to Sadowa – in the war between Prussia and Austria – that it was the University of Berlin which had prevailed; and with that remark he sought to impress upon us that the training of leaders has a decisive effect on the condition of a country. General de Gaulle, in Vers l’armée de métier, said much the same when he wrote that ‘behind the victories of Alexander, one always found Aristotle.’

This brings me to the nature of what is done at Sciences Po. If Sciences Po is not a school of power in the hierarchical sense, it is a school of power in the sense given by the verb: to be able. Power as the capacity to accomplish things, the capacity to exert a positive impact upon the course of events. That is the outward vocation of power.

But also the capacity to accomplish things for oneself: to be in a position to act. And what is that, if not to be free?

This is the third point I wish to emphasise. Sciences Po, before it was Sciences Po, was the Free School of Political Science. It is a school of liberty, in both senses of the term: liberty as a political regime.

Sciences Po is a school of democracy. That is why there is such a vibrant associative life. That is why there are 2,000 events each year at Sciences Po. That is why freedom of expression and academic freedom are guaranteed to all.

Liberty is also a responsibility: it is respect for minority opinions, the absolute rejection of violence and intimidation. It is a spirit of benevolence, to be applied by all, towards all, at all times. It is manifested in online groups – in the refusal of herd-like behaviour, in the refusal of ostracism, of insults, of disparagement. This is all the more essential in a university, which must remain a benevolent, open and tolerant place. For here we sustain what is, in truth, one of the critical infrastructures of democracy – and that is why we must preserve this framework, this setting, within which liberty can flourish.

Some will tell you that the framework itself must be attacked. But there will always be a framework. Those who would destroy ours wish to replace it with another, less free. And so, I believe, we must collectively cherish these institutions, at a time when democracy is in retreat across the globe.

Liberty is also exercised at the individual level, and you will hear much here about critical thinking – rightly so, for it is one of the key skills we cultivate. But let me say this: there is a difference between critical thinking and a spirit of criticism. A spirit of criticism, which consists of criticising everything, all the time, and seeking to pull everything down, is a distortion of true critical thinking.

True critical thinking – and if I may offer another piece of advice, this time from an older man – is exercised first and foremost towards oneself. Isaiah Berlin, in reflecting on psychology and behaviour, distinguished between two types of character. He spoke of this in an essay entitled The Hedgehog and the Fox.

Here, you will learn to be more fox than hedgehog. In the fable of The Hedgehog and the Fox, the hedgehog knows one great thing; the fox knows many things across a wide range of domains. We must respect the hedgehog – they too are necessary, and indeed we have many here who pursue specialised fields of study in depth over many years. But above all, especially in your undergraduate years, you will be exposed to a vast range of subjects. And this, let me tell you, is a powerful tool for the development of your liberty.

This summer, I read – forgive me for sharing my summer reading – an article by Philip Tetlock, who some years ago analysed 27,451 predictions made by think-tankers, academics and policymakers between 1988 and 2003. He tracked 284 experts to see whether their predictions came true, and sought to identify the psychological trait that most reliably led to accurate judgement.

And what he found was this: the single most important trait was the capacity to criticise oneself – to question one’s own certainties constantly, in light of the evidence and perspectives one receives from outside. This is the very opposite of what Camus denounced – that we suffocate amidst those who are absolutely certain they are right.

So what you will also learn here is to think objectively, including by challenging your own opinions – as Thucydides did in The Peloponnesian War, where he set Spartans and Athenians on an equal footing, despite being himself an Athenian; or as Herodotus did in The Histories, where he set Greeks and Persians on an equal footing in the service of truth, despite being himself a Greek.

My message is this: where there are absolute certainties rather than demonstrated truths, there is a retreat of liberty. Certainty leads to violence; truth calls upon reason. And so what you will also learn here is a method – the scientific method of the social sciences, which is particularly demanding, since it concerns itself with the behaviour of human beings.

To summarise, then, what you will find at Sciences Po: liberty, which is the opposite of certainty, for where there is certainty, there is no choice, and thus no liberty. Beware of dogma; think for yourselves; think even against yourselves. You will discover the freedom of choice – the most demanding of all freedoms – the freedom that requires you to challenge yourselves, to engage with differing opinions, to make effort, to strive for excellence, above all so as to make good decisions.

And liberty is also a lived experience. I urge you to take part in associative life, in campus life, to be present in this community that is Sciences Po; to forge new friendships; to confront new ideas; and to do what Stefan Zweig advised in The World of Yesterday: “Admire one another.” Here, you will encounter extraordinary people, lifelong friends, from the very first days of your presence here. This is the great good fortune of being at Sciences Po.

This past weekend I was at my parents’ home in Val-de-Fontenay – the place where I was raised – in a working-class housing estate in the Val-de-Marne. Returning by the RER A, I felt as though I had passed from one world to another. Keep in mind that you will be both envied and observed. I do not say this negatively. To be envied is the mark of success; to be observed is, on the other hand, entirely legitimate. It is legitimate because you are in a very particular place, one that holds the attention of the French. And so, quite naturally, our fellow citizens watch closely how future leaders are formed. You possess this good fortune. They know that you possess it, and so you bear, in turn, the responsibility of exemplarity.

So: be free, be benevolent, be proud of what you have already accomplished and of what you will yet achieve. Be ambitious, be exemplary – among yourselves, and in your relations with all those who will work tirelessly to ensure that your experience at Sciences Po is a success.

You have chosen a remarkable place, a place where you will be free, where you will learn to exercise your freedom. Sciences Po will become your home – not for five years, but for your whole life. And I can tell you that whenever I encounter alumni, whether from the Class of 1955 or the Class of 2025, there is one phrase I hear 97% of the time: “I spent the happiest years of my life there.”

One might think this is simply because seventeen is the finest of ages – but it is more than that. Even those who have attended several institutions, as some have, recognise that it was here that they lived the best years of their lives. Be confident that the same will be true for you. We are here to ensure it.

We shall accompany you in the success of your studies and throughout your time here. You will form strong bonds, deep friendships – cherish them, for they will be among the most important things you create. This is a home that loves you, and it is, I believe, a home that you will learn to love. I therefore once again wish you a very warm welcome among us.

Thank you.