“At the time of the internal clashes around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we experienced a real melting of the snow. Members said to themselves ‘we are going from crisis to crisis, enough is enough!’ and handed in their alumni cards,” says Pascal Perrineau, the president of Sciences Po Alumni, which, between March and April 2024, recorded a 30% drop in membership compared to the previous year. Previously, in 2021, there was the Olivier Duhamel affair, the president of the National Foundation of Political Sciences accused of incest against his stepson. Or, in 2023, the resignation of the former director of the school Mathias Vicherat following an investigation opened for domestic violence. After each scandal, the office receives a considerable number of letters and emails from graduates worried about the school’s image. “Before, I managed to get quite a few back, but that’s less and less the case because worry has given way to anger,” continues the political scientist, who admits to having lost 1,000 contributors in ten years. The association now has 7,000 members… which is small compared to the community of nearly 100,000 alumni established throughout the world.
During this period of nomination procedure for the direction of Sciences Po, Pascal Perrineau explains that he met with the different candidates to make them aware of the fate of the alumni association. But what influence does it really have on the organization of the school? And what is the true vocation of this institution that will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year? Created in 1875, three years after the birth of what was then called the “Free School of Political Sciences”, its mission is to maintain the “Sciences Po network” thanks in particular to its directory established each year and which facilitates networking. Several clubs (dedicated to culture and contemporary art, history, rugby, cinema, etc.) or professional groups (public affairs, communication, defense and geostrategy, education and research, health, finance, etc.) exist within it. Completely independent of the school, the structure, which has ten employees and around twenty volunteers, has its own premises and draws its funding from contributions. These can range from 25 euros for students to 160 euros for those who graduated more than seven years ago. Added to this are the funds raised through the more than 630 events organized each year in France and abroad (conferences, galas, meetings, etc.). This represents a total budget of 1.6 million euros per year.
One of the main missions of Sciences Po Alumni is above all the professional support not only of young graduates but also of alumni. “You shouldn’t think that all ‘Sciences Po’ students don’t experience any problems throughout their careers. Through our career center, we provide them with workshops, webinars, tutorials and we support them in their possible requests for changes of direction”, explains Pascal Perrineau. Xavier Pinon, who chairs the Entreprendre group, mentions the annual organization of “Demoday” whose goal is to connect young entrepreneurs from the school’s incubator and alumni “who are all potential investors.” The managers also highlight their solidarity missions. “During the Covid crisis, we did telephone canvassing to survey those who needed help and we created a solidarity fund”, explains Pascal Perrineau. Alumni are also asked to help students, in need of housing, to find a room or a studio. Lô du Manoir de Juaye, a master’s student in finance who set up his own concierge business, was recently able to benefit from the Sciences Po network during the Olympic Games. “Some people wanted to take advantage of it to rent out their apartments. Going through us was reassuring. As for us, it allowed us to launch our business,” explains the young man.
“The association is not playing its role as a counter-power”
But over the years, young graduates looking for work tend to prefer to turn to specialized social networks. Faster and easier than going through the famous alumni directory. “Most of my classmates who did internships at the National Assembly went directly through LinkedIn or the networks of the MP with whom they were trying to get in touch,” says this student enrolled in a master’s degree in public administration. The Sciences Po Alumni association is not the only one to be affected by these changes in practice. No major school is immune. “Probably because the new generations are claiming less and less this feeling of belonging to a alma mater”. They are in a more consumerist and individualist logic,” explains Pascal Perrineau. “But we are also present on LinkedIn, X (ex-Twitter), Instagram or Facebook that we use massively for our communication and with which we are complementary,” adds Bernard El Ghoul, general delegate of the association. “The advantage of our database: with it, you have the certainty that the person with whom you are in contact is indeed from Sciences Po. Because it happens that some lie about their diplomas,” he specifies.
Sciences Po Alumni also manages the magazine Emilea quarterly publication with a print run of over 10,000 copies and distributed to members and opinion leaders. As well as the newsletter sent to 65,000 subscribers worldwide. Do all these activities give it a certain power of influence? “No, for many, it’s a bit like a festival committee,” says a former graduate for whom its primary vocation should be to ensure that rue Saint-Guillaume remains a “school for training elites in the values of the Republic.” “These fundamental values are no longer upheld by the school, as evidenced by the various crises it has been through. The association should have played a countervailing role by stepping up to the plate, which it never did! In this, it bears an enormous responsibility,” denounces the man who claims to receive multiple testimonies of indignation in this sense through the WhatsApp loops of former students of which he is a member.
Like him, many of them denounce the lack of plurality among students and warn of the growing sense of distrust of companies towards the majority sensitive to the anti-capitalist values conveyed by the far left. During the 2022 presidential election, 55% of them voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. On June 17, during the traditional annual garden party organized by Sciences-Po Alumni on the Saint-Thomas campus, a small group of students claiming to be from the Palestine Committee greeted the guests with cries of “fascists”. Armed with banners and flags, they seized the microphone to express their indignation: “You drink champagne while children die in Gaza”. And leaflets incriminating Coca-Cola, one of the partners of the annual evening, guilty of maintaining commercial ties in Israel, were distributed. “You can imagine the disastrous effect that this has! Many members said they were extremely shocked to see what the school was becoming,” comments Pascal Perrineau, who is campaigning for more weight on the school’s board of directors. “The students have two representatives against one for us. Which is absolutely not normal. In American universities, alumni carry much more weight,” he explains.
Why this lack of representation? “The management has enough complex communities to manage internally, between its own administration, permanent teachers, temporary staff, students and their various sensitivities… So, if we have to add alumni! Especially since these are people who often have weight and responsibilities and whose ‘itching thorn’ effect they fear”, replies the political scientist who does not hide his concern at a time when “having attended Sciences-Po” is no longer necessarily a source of pride. In 2019, the school launched the “Keep your place in Boutmy” operation. The principle? Allowing alumni to put their name on the back of a seat, in the emblematic Boutmy lecture hall which has seen hundreds of classes pass through. The rates vary depending on the location and the number of years they commit to (count 1,500 euros for the “bronze” category and 8,000 euros for the “platinum” for ten years). To date, many places remain vacant.
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