First Harvard Sciences Po Student Summit Takes Place in Paris

By Anna Hazolyshyn, Staff Writer

Not long ago, “visit Paris” appeared on my 2023 “grand to-do list,” and what better reason for a trip than the Harvard Sciences Po Student Summit? Two days before the conference, I was finally able to dig out the ticket from my spam box, book a hostel and hop on the overnight train that took me to Paris in no time (short 13 hours).

The Harvard Sciences Po Student Summit marks a first-of-its-kind collaboration between two student organizations — the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative (HUFPI) and the Sciences Po Policy Project (SP3) Network. As Cameron Sterling, a conference delegate from the Menton campus puts it: “Every university has those networks for people that are interested in different things, and SP3 is that for Sciences Po students (interested in diplomacy). The point (of the conference) was to connect young people with professionals to understand better different career paths and practical issues one might face in the field.”

The summit took place over two days and mainly consisted of panel discussions ranging from energy and climate change to defense and security. Sterling shed light on the organization of the panel discussions: “I was working with a student from Harvard, and we moderated the combined (due to last-minute cancellations) Trade and Security panel. We also came up with developing those based on the demographic of the panel, too, since you had younger people, older people, people from civil society, etc...” A brilliant example of the versatility of speakers would be

Sterling herself noted: “It was really engaging, particularly because it was amazing to observe older individuals remain so active and so hopeful about the climate effort, and see them speak alongside someone like France’s youth delegate for climate.” a variety of career and general issue-based questions that would be of interest to the audience. It was interesting the panel on climate change, which many students singled out as one of the most insightful and entertaining ones.

Each panel ended with a question and answer session. A Reims student felt that “even though they did open the floor for the questions, sometimes you wanted to participate in the conversation more actively and interject when an interesting point was raised. Often you felt more like a bystander.” His remark makes sense considering that “there weren’t that many people in the audience.” The consensus is that the experience could have been elevated had the format been adjusted to encourage more direct interaction.

One of our students confessed that “the conference did not live up to my expectations, [since] the big personalities we were promised did not come,” but was quick to add that “there were nonetheless nice and interesting speakers.” Another participant countered this by claiming that she “expected a high level of speakers, which we got.” She further pointed out that “it was interesting to see the differences in their approaches: while French were highly methodological, Anglo-Saxon speakers were more eloquent and linked one topic to another in surprising ways.” Nevertheless, they were all, as a student from Reims put it, “all in the same sort of liberal orthodoxy range.”

Without a doubt, the students’ favorites from the summit were Nizar Yaiche, former Minister of Finance of Tunisia, and Brian Wong, a geopolitical analyst and current Ph.D. at Oxford University. Funnily enough, the two whether you are looking for advice, an internship or a job.” Her hypothesis was supported by responses from a few of the participants I spoke to, who admitted that “the LinkedIn potential was valuable” to them or that they “wanted to find an organization to do the civic engagement this summer with.” Many others, however, came for the content and “critical analysis” and were disappointed to find that, mostly, “it was all very general and surface-level” and strengthen their security engagements or whether the U.S. can do more to support France in managing the energy crisis caused by the war were adored for vastly different reasons. The charismatic Yaiche moved everyone with his transparency, practical advice and personal anecdotes that were precious and encouraging for the aspiring leaders in attendance. In the case of Wong, it was amusing to observe how people were sitting with their jaws agape, impressed with how well organized and delivered the lecture was. Wong’s impeccable debate-like style of framing the presentation, which discussed the link between media, technology and geopolitics, did not go unnoticed. A Menton student asserted that Wong’s speech was “very interesting and surprisingly easy to follow. How refreshing!”

When asked, “What do you think attracts people to summits like this?” Sterling supposed that it is “the chance to make career connections, that they “didn’t learn anything new.” However, as one of the members of our Menton community suggested, “maybe that wasn’t the point of this conference; you don’t always need to learn more intellectual stuff; we do enough of that already as university students.” This brings me to everyone’s favorite: the Policy Symposium, the crème de la crème of the Harvard Sciences Po Summit.

This conclusive part of the conference created a unique in Ukraine? “It was very cool to come up with a policy recommendation and have a professor respond to us and critique it,” Sterling shared before continuing: “Having had a little bit of work experience, giving a brief or being able to cut things down to issue-solutions proved to be very important.” It was an excellent opportunity to reflect and engage more closely with the material and receive valuable feedback from the professionals, and to work with a group of people who share the same passion for policymaking. “This was concrete and practical,” one student says. “I (liked) the symposium the most, which was the only workshop we had, as we finally had the chance to speak and to express ourselves. Plus, I got to work with people I did not know before, those from Sciences Po and Harvard.” For many, it was the “Harvard” aspect of the conference that they were drawn to, be it because setting to synthesize all the ideas heard over the two days to produce a unique and effective policy in response to the posed issues like how the U.S. and France could they were “considering going to Harvard later on and so wanted to discover more about it from its students” or simply because they wanted to “meet new people, Harvard

[people] specifically.” A few times I have heard people say that “it is a shame that we did not have that many opportunities to interact with the students on the other side [Harvard],” due to it being an intense two-day summit. In the future, however, it would be advisable to incorporate more social or break time into a day to give the students opportunities to interact with their peers more and build closer ties between the two communities. Though we did not get to speak to the brain behind the conference — Sciences Po Menton’s own Louai Allani-Guellouz — during the conference’s closing remarks, we were promised this is not the last time Sciences Po students are collaborating with Harvard peers. We look forward to seeing what more the two student bodies have in store for us.

If I were to choose the single most important thing I took away from this conference, it would be a reminder to hold on to your values, which nearly every lecturer mentioned almost religiously (so it must be important, right?). While emphasizing the importance of mentorship, the speakers were the embodiment of that ideal, dedicating their time and sharing what cannot be described as anything other than precious advice and insights into the work in the world of policymaking and international affairs.

“To visit Paris” turned out to be a great success!