Diplomat with ties to Macron selected to lead Sciences Po

Luis Vassy, former ambassador to the Netherlands, set to take over from interim director

A former classmate of French president Emmanuel Macron is set to become director of the Sciences Po grande école after securing the support of both institutional bodies overseeing the appointment.

Luis Vassy was at the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA)—a postgraduate grande école that trained France’s top civil servants—with Macron and Mathias Vicherat, who was director of Sciences Po from November 2021 until his resignation in March this year.

Vassy is expected to take up the role in the coming days, once his nomination has been approved by Macron.

Sciences Po has been led by interim director Jean Bassères since Vicherat’s resignation, which came after the news that Vicherat was due to stand trial in a domestic violence case, which is still outstanding. Vicherat denies the charges brought against him.

The Paris-based institution was in the news during the interim period as the focus for student-led protests against institutional ties with universities in Israel. The protests ultimately sparked a parliamentary inquiry into whether republican values are being upheld within universities and grandes écoles.

Voting

Vassy’s selection was secured after a vote of the boards of the National Foundation for Political Sciences (FNSP), which oversees Sciences Po, and then of the school itself. He was running against two other shortlisted candidates: Arancha González Laya, dean of the institution’s school of international affairs, and Rostane Mehdi, director of the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence.

He secured 19 out of 25 votes from the FNSP board, which includes several representatives from outside the school, among them senior businesspeople. He failed to secure a majority of votes in the first round of voting of the Sciences Po board, which is composed mostly of academics. But following the withdrawal of González Laya, Vassy secured 20 out of 31 votes in the second round, the newspaper Le Monde reported.

Career

Vassy was previously a high-ranking civil servant and diplomat. His most recent appointment was as chief of staff at the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Prior to that, Vassy was French ambassador to the Netherlands—a position he held from 2019 to 2022.

In his proposal to the Sciences Po and FNSP boards, Vassy said he would focus on “improving [Sciences Po’s] image in the media and public opinion, as well as among academic, institutional and financial partners”. He said it should be more in tune with contemporary challenges and should establish more active partnerships with the “democratic global south”, in particular India, Latin America and south-east Asia.

Criticism

His nomination has come in for criticism in the media, largely due to his background as an ENA graduate.

The ENA was abolished at the end of 2021 and replaced by the National Institute of Public Service. By the end of its existence, the ENA had become a focus of popular and press criticism as it was perceived as formatting students from privileged backgrounds into a political elite.

Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, president of the FNSP, responded to the criticism of Vassy, telling Le Monde: “Saying ‘Another ENA graduate!’ is a lazy comment. Not all ENA graduates are the same, and neither are all academics for that matter.”

Bertrand Dorléac said that Vassy’s family background—he was ​​born to a Uruguayan agricultural engineer father and an Argentinian lawyer mother, both political refugees—showed him to be a “model of integration and success”.