Le Figaro Magazine: "Pierre-Henri d'Argenson: "Sciences Po must not become an airport terminal"".

Pierre-Henri d'Argenson. Jean-Luc Bertini for Le Figaro Magazine

Pierre-Henri D'ARGENSON. - The most publicized manifestations of the crisis at Sciences Po, such as the pro-Palestinian blockades and the Wokist polemics, are only the tip of the iceberg. What is at stake is the choice of whether or not to pursue the dynamic begun in 2000, which consisted in transforming Sciences Po from a historical crucible for training French elites into an international university specializing in the humanities and social sciences, on the model of Columbia or the London School of Economics. This transformation has had its successes, but the ideological cycle behind it is reaching exhaustion, due to its excesses: excesses of the " denationalization" of Sciences Po, excesses of alignment with international ranking criteria to the detriment of its mission to train French decision-makers, excesses of militancy. It has thus led to the same shortcomings as those affecting Anglo-Saxon universities. Above all, it has lacked discernment, to the point of creating a profound crisis of confidence: we no longer know where Sciences Po is heading. What Sciences Po needs is a change of direction, not just a change of director.

Richard Descoings modernized Sciences Po, but at the cost of adopting an Anglo-Saxon, post-national university model that has distorted the institution and is no longer adapted to the challenges of the world. The " Descoings model " is outdated because it corresponds to a bygone era, that of the happy globalization of the 2000s. Twenty-five years on, the West is being challenged everywhere, war zones are multiplying and global military spending is exploding. The European Union has been overtaken in many areas, and France's decline has been sufficiently objectivized to be consensual. For us, the world has gone from the dividends of soft trade to out-and-out economic warfare, from the illusion of a Europe without factories to deindustrialization, from being tied to American growth to stalling. The world has become brutalized, Europe has declined and France has become impoverished. Sciences Po must reflect on its future in the light of this lucid observation, without declinism, because that is its vocation. This is far more important than the question of wokism.

In its presentation, Sciences Po makes no reference to France, the general interest or the notion of service. It does speak of the " common good ", but without linking it to any political space. Sciences Po has largely evacuated from its communications its vocation as a school leading to public service, renamed " public affairs ", the language of lobbying. This is a mistake, because when there's nothing left to serve, all that's left is a career. Sciences Po has made much of the opportunities it offers in the private sector, but the reality is that almost 40% of the class of 2020 is now working in the public sector. In addition, Sciences Po has increased the number of sociological methodology courses and ultra-specialized geographical themes in the first two years, reducing the amount of time devoted to fundamental knowledge about France and its geopolitical environment.

Not knowing enough about France is an anomaly for a school whose vocation is to train national decision-makers. Every student at Sciences Po should have a clear idea of our defense capabilities and the threats and interference our country faces. We must put an end to the naivety in which entire generations of students have been raised. The cultural disconnect between the French elite and the military is significant, and Sciences Po has a role to play in reducing it, by integrating this dimension into its core curriculum and expanding its partnerships with the armed forces, and possibly with other government services.

The decision to abolish the written entrance exams for the first year, starting in 2021, was justified by the desire to reduce the supposed discrimination against students who don't have the same cultural background as the more privileged social classes, and the desire to give more weight to " commitments " and personality. But this pushes a very young public, whose judgment is still being formed, to put activism on an equal footing with knowledge. Anne Muxel's 2022 study reveals that political violence is considered legitimate to defend causes by 28% of Sciences Po students, which is worrying for a school of the Republic.

Associative commitments are rarely politically neutral, and their recognition can only give rise to a suspicion of ideological favoritism, even if unconscious, depending on the sensitivity of the juries. This is not meritocracy, all the more so since taking " commitments " into account can lead, contrary to the objective of democratization, to favoring students from families with a good command of the recruitment process, to the detriment of those whose only background is academic excellence. Sciences Po must be careful to avoid any bias that might favor one political orientation or another, and the only way to avoid this is through the written, anonymous entrance exam.

Sciences Po's aim in recent years has been to become an " international research university " in the humanities and social sciences. To achieve this, Sciences Po has given increasing weight to the permanent faculty, i.e. the university's teaching and research staff, and to the research budget. The latter represents almost a third of Sciences Po's budget for less than 3% of its workforce, i.e. some 340 doctoral students out of 15,000 students, which has certainly strengthened the influence of militant research, particularly in the field of American-style " studies ".

Sciences Po's vocation is to train decision-makers, not to fund research to such an extent. SHS should be a component of political science, not the other way around. Its raison d'être is not to become a humanities and social sciences department - there are excellent universities for that. It is eminently desirable for Sciences Po students to benefit from university methods. But universities have their own vocation and model, which are not those of Sciences Po. The two institutions must remain complementary and not merge.

Of course Sciences Po needs to attract foreign students, but it's all a question of measurement. With 50% foreign students, Sciences Po is well ahead of most American universities, and this poses several problems. The first is the economic model of dependence on foreign tuition fees. The Haut Conseil de l'évaluation de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur, in a report dated December 7, 2018, had already questioned Sciences Po's relentless internationalization, on which no study has been conducted to measure its contributions. It is also being questioned in the UK, as Charley Robinson, international officer at Universities UK, which represents British universities, testifies: "There is an urgent need for a national debate on university funding, particularly the balance between fees paid by British students, public funds, and international students"(Le Monde, January 18, 2024).

What's more, in 2009, Sciences Po admitted almost 800 Bachelor students under the French procedure, i.e., excluding priority education agreements, almost as many as in 2023, when the number of admissions rose from 1,224 to 1,946. The social and, above all, international opening up of Sciences Po, however beneficial it may be in principle, has in part been to the detriment of the " middle class " of French students, those who can apply neither via the CEP route nor via the international route or that of double foreign diplomas. They have suffered a form of confiscation. Within this population, those who do not come from a privileged background but are not eligible for a scholarship have been particularly penalized, and have therefore suffered from the increase in tuition fees, as have those who do not benefit from associative opportunities or the means to pay coaches to help them prepare their applications. At a time when public money is abundantly financing Sciences Po via an endowment of 75 million euros out of a budget of 218 million euros, it is unjustifiable that access to Sciences Po, a public institution, should not be more open to students in the general stream. Such a high volume of foreign students also runs the risk of diluting their necessary acculturation. Sciences Po must not become an airport terminal.

There's more to Sciences Po than the blockades by a pro-Palestinian activist minority. But these blockades have highlighted a reality that Sciences Po must face up to: the rise of an atmospheric anti-Semitism thinly veiled under the guise of anti-Zionism. France discovered on this occasion that students of the Jewish faith could feel ostracized within Sciences Po. This is intolerable. In this context, the fact of having opened a debate on May 2, 2024 with blockers without a warrant and associated with acts of intimidation aroused incomprehension. You can talk to demonstrators to obtain the release of premises by peaceful means, but you can't negotiate on an equal footing, outside representative bodies, with a radicalized group waving red hands.

Sciences Po is first and foremost an institution that serves the French people. It's essential that the school attracts international students, forges partnerships of excellence with foreign universities, and works to bring itself up to the level of world-renowned institutions. But these objectives must not be pursued to the detriment of the training of French decision-makers, and must not lead to aligning Sciences Po, which is resolutely a major school for training decision-makers, with the university, which has its own virtues and raison d'être. The École Polytechnique's motto, unchanged since 1804, is "Pour la Patrie, les Sciences et la Gloire" ("For the Fatherland, Science and Glory"), and this does not prevent it from attracting brilliant foreign students, without the slightest parochialism. In a more dangerous world, in a challenged Europe, in a doubtful France, Sciences Po students must know their place, and the French must be able to count on Sciences Po to teach them. The world has changed, and a turning point must be reached.

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By Alexandre Devecchio

Published November 21, 2024