Sciences Po, from the making of elites to the pro-Palestinian conflagration

The news put into perspective every Saturday, thanks to the historian Fabrice d’Almeida.

Sciences Po is the school of the elites, it is often said. With so many former Presidents of the Republic who have passed through there: Mitterrand, Chirac, Sarkozy… François Hollande too, whose classmate was the actor Christian Clavier. Because people from the entertainment industry have also been there, such as Anne Roumanoff.

This establishment owes its birth to the desire to reform France, just after the defeat of 1870-71. It is for this reason that Émile Boutmy founded it in 1872, seeking to rationalize politics, to make it the queen of sciences.

From the end of the 19th century, administrations recruited senior civil servants there. The trend strengthened in the interwar period, and the free school of political science conquered economic circles.

In 1945, it was nationalized with a particular system: the national political science foundation protected the Institute of Political Studies, the teaching structure today called Sciences Po. But the school gained a reputation for ease, reproduction elites. In 1971, a reform was adopted to strengthen the level of knowledge, at the initiative of Paul Delouvrier. At the beginning of the 1990s, we worked hard at the institute and René Rémond, who chaired the FNSP, found that the students no longer had the imagination they should have.

The great reform of Richard Descoings changes the situation. It diversifies audiences and internationalizes student recruitment. Sciences Po is no longer the patriotic school of the French elites, but has become a major international university open to global tensions. This is what is at work today through the blockages and the difficult response from its management.