At the head of Sciences Po, Luis Vassy, ​​a “cold-blooded” diplomat to “reduce the pressure”

To better slip into his new skin as director of Sciences Po, Luis Vassy, ​​44, went back to his roots. What could be better than a biography of Emile Boutmy, builder of the Free School of Political Sciences in 1871? At the mention of the physique of the founding father, described as “frail”, “with a slight strabismus”, by François and Renaud Leblond, authors ofEmile Boutmy, the father of Sciences Po (Anne Carrière, 2013), he couldn’t help but make the connection with his own appearance. “Everyone will deduce what they want from it! »he quips, glasses on his nose.

Mardi 1^is October, the former director of the cabinet of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné moved into his new office, rue Saint-Guillaume, in Paris. Dubbed on September 19 and 20 by a majority of the members of the council of the Institute of Political Studies and the council of the National Foundation of Political Sciences, he takes the reins of a school of 15,000 students, with a budget of 250 million euros, which he himself attended at the end of the 1990s, simultaneously with the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan and before going through the ENA – Sédar Senghor promotion , the same as Emmanuel Macron.

The resignation of his predecessor, Mathias Vicherat, in March, referred to justice with his ex-partner for acts of domestic violence, then the student mobilization triggered by the war led by Israel in Gaza following the attack Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023 marked the establishment, which would like to open a new page. The former ambassador to The Hague between 2019 and 2022 is precisely l’“appeasement” his mantra. His projects are numerous, including the“adaptation of procedures” recruitment, the creation of a “school of climate governance and policies”training bachelor students in research methods in the human sciences.

Repression

When he lived, as a child, in an HLM in Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne), Luis Vassy saw himself as an architect, constantly drawing house plans. He then became passionate about IT, before realizing that the opening to the world offered by diplomatic careers corresponded to what he was looking for.

The Vasilskis’ family history is made up of breakups, forced departures, violence. “A political refugee in France in 1974, my father Frenchified our name of Polish Jewish origin”he relates. In 1930, his grandfather Abraham, then a teenager, fled the authoritarian regime in power in Poland. He embarks for Montevideo, in Uruguay, where his own father already lives.

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