“A day of celebration at PSL”
“July 6 was a day of celebration at PSL. The university was not only toasting the victory of Les Bleus in the quarter final of the FIFA World Cup, but also another glorious success by the PSL 2017 PhDs at a new ceremony held in their honor.
Text by Marc Mezard, Director of the Ecole normale supérieure.
We needed an event that would rally the entire PSL community around the new situation while also congratulating our highest level of graduates for their hard work and academic achievements.
July 6 was a day of celebration at PSL. The university was not only toasting the victory of Les Bleus in the quarter final of the FIFA World Cup, but also another glorious success by the PSL 2017 PhDs at a new ceremony held in their honor.
The symbol is important. Since 2015, all dissertations prepared within our schools and institutes have culminated in a PhD conferred by Université PSL. To formalize this major element of our construction, however, we still needed an event that would rally the entire PSL community around the new organization while also congratulating our highest level of graduates for their hard work and academic achievements. Bringing everyone together at Dauphine, which hosted the event magnificently, heads of institutions, new PhDs from every discipline led in by artists from the SACRe doctoral program, with all the speeches and ceremony, was what truly brought PSL to life, serving as a physical representation of our joint organization. The class of 2017 was sponsored by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1997 and first president of PSL, naturally added to our pride, but above all it served as a reminder, if any was needed, of the central role research plays at our University.
The ceremony was especially important because the PhD still receives too little recognition in France outside the academic world--even though it is the highest-level diploma that is internationally recognized, both for launching an academic career and for entering other private and public sectors. Change is underway for us: PhDs are even beginning to find a place, tentatively, in high-ranking public offices! But we need to go even further. We need to listen to the company leaders who, like a recent head of the Ariane program with whom I spoke not long ago, are telling us how much they need PhDs: people who can bring in original ideas, shifts to the usual approach, and disruptive strategies.
The years spent preparing a PhD are both a journey to the heart of knowledge and a journey to the furthest limits of oneself. It is a trial in and of itself.
Beyond the knowledge acquired, reason may be sought and found in the dissertation process. The years spent preparing a PhD are both a journey to the heart of knowledge and a journey to the furthest limits of oneself. It is a trial in and of itself that draws out every facet of the student: perseverance, discipline, the pleasure of exploring unknown paths, doubt, the fear of making a mistake or not being good enough, sheer vertigo at the immense range of possibility, the exhilaration of discovery, the fever of writing, the solitude of reflection, and also the joy of working in a team and publicly presenting your work and research results. Anyone who has walked the path of a dissertation and arrived at the end has gained solid professional skills.
Whether or not our PhDs ultimately decide to enter a career in research, their diploma attests to a mind that has adopted the values of research: critical thinking, intellectual independence, openness to the world, depth of knowledge, a love of discovery, and collaboration between individuals, to name a few. These are essential values to affirm today, at a time when the old demons of history are awakening once again, and positions are developing that reject scientific truths.
In any event, PSL’s PhDs are ready to defend science and to meet the many challenges that await us in their fields of expertise, which are just as diverse as the sectors of knowledge represented at PSL University: from the life, earth, and space sciences, to economics and social sciences, humanities, and the arts. We should be delighted with this wealth, and with the role our 404 PSL PhDs will play in building our common future in the coming years. Indeed, that is exactly what society should expect of a university with global ambitions, like ours.
Marc Mezard, Director of Ecole normale supérieure
