# Kamissa Camara’s Inaugural Lecture: Thinking Critically in a World of Power and Politics **Date de l'événement :** 02/09/2025 * Publié le 02/09/2025 ### Date 01/09/2025 ### Auteur **[Kamissa Camara](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/structure/kamissa-camara_jBzsFvcON1XjAXyGslOe)** ## Chapô **Former Foreign Minister of Mali and Professor of Diplomacy, Kamissa Camara opened the 2025 academic year with a call to treat Sciences Po as a training ground for critical inquiry. Under the theme “_Thinking critically in a world of power and politics_,” she urged students to read the world, question authority, and approach identities as tools for thought. From Huntington to Nye, Fanon to Bhabha, she mapped the languages of power before sharing leadership lessons forged at the UN and in government: reading the room, holding the line, negotiating words, and history. Her warning lingers as a credo: “_The most dangerous form of power is certainty that goes unquestioned_.”** **Vidéo :** [Vidéo 1](https://youtu.be/GGjdEtoln1U?feature=shared) ## Corps du texte Being a student in such a prestigious institution gives you, in fact, the privilege of a safe bubble where you can ask hard and uncomfortable questions about the world. Here you can imagine what it would take to end the war in Ukraine, to stop the devastation in Gaza, or to bring back democracy in the militarized Sahel region of Africa. Take advantage of what you have now, because once you graduate, the world out there is rough. You will be asked to negotiate with wolves and crocodiles, to work side by side with declared enemies, and to solve issues you had never imagined existed. This is your moment to interrogate everything you know about power, about politics, and about yourselves as future big players in politics, in diplomacy, and probably in public policy as well. Delivering this inaugural address gives me great pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And I would like to congratulate you on the start of a beautiful journey. What I want to share with you today is a meditation on power. Because whether you study Africa, North America, or the sciences of sustainability, what you're really studying is different forms of power. You will need to learn not only to understand it, but also to live with it, and I hope one day to exercise it. Power has also been at the center of my own journey, as I moved between the world of ideas and the world of politics. From being a student like you to serving in the government of Mali, and now teaching diplomacy and researching military coups in Africa. But my own path to these questions did not begin in government. It began exactly where you are now: in the classroom. I was a first-year student in _classe préparatoire hypokhâgne_ when the world suddenly cracked open. The terrorist attacks of September 11th happened less than a week after classes began, and they literally shattered the world around us. They forced us young minds to ask questions about the world, about politics, and about power that no textbook had prepared us for. I did not understand much about geopolitics then, and I did not yet know how the world worked. But I knew something fundamental had shifted. You know, in _hypokhâgne_, when you're a good and dedicated student, you're supposed to dedicate your days and nights to reading Rousseau, Zola, Balzac, and Voltaire. But I found myself consumed by books I was not meant to be reading. I was distracted, but I was also pulled into a direction that would define my professional career for years to come. At the time we didn’t have Facebook or Twitter or any of the social media platforms that you have today. We relied heavily on our professors to make sense of the world around us. It was my philosophy professor, a brilliant mind, who asked us to read Samuel Huntington’s _The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order_. Huntington argues in that book that wars will no longer be fought between countries, but between cultures in the post-Cold War order. Some embraced his thesis, saying that it gave a clear framework to understand the “New World Order.” Others criticized him for oversimplifying very complex processes and realities. By recommending Huntington, my philosophy professor was hinting that maybe, just maybe, 9/11 was a war between cultures and ideologies. I could not buy that at all. I was, after all, an 18-year-old Muslim from Grenoble, and so I could in no way identify with the men who had hijacked those planes. And that is when you realize that identity shapes what you see, what you question, and what you accept. At Sciences Po, your own identities will do the same for you. The way you read an op-ed, the way you challenge a theory, or imagine a solution will be shaped by where you stand in the world. That is not a limitation. I think it is actually an asset if only you remain aware. After Huntington came Joseph Nye and his concept of soft power. I was fascinated by the idea that a country could attract and persuade, not coerce, militarily or economically. Soft power, as defined by Nye, arises from the attractiveness of a country’s diplomacy, culture, and political ideals and values. Nye gave me another lens to understand power. I was 18, and my two professors of power, at least in my reading list, were these two gentlemen, Joseph Nye and Samuel Huntington. Respected scholars, but also older, white, and American. Their worldviews reflected the vantage point of global dominance. So I started to wonder whether my worldview, my background, and my very complex identities were even in the conversation. And that is where curiosity, and probably a little dissatisfaction, kicked in. I wanted to know what the world looked like from the ground up, from the places that were not in the driver’s seat. So I went looking for African, Asian, South American thinkers, people who had lived through military coups, international sanctions, liberation struggles. For them, power was not an abstract theory, but a question of survival, of dignity and identity. Achille Mbembe examined what he calls _la banalité du pouvoir_, where state power revolves around administrative and bureaucratic practices that shape everyday reality. Frantz Fanon, in _The Wretched of the Earth_, discussed the trauma of colonisation and the revolutionary consciousness of the colonised. Power here was the capacity to reclaim agency, dignity, and sovereignty through resistance, often violent. Homi Bhabha, in _The Location of Culture_, explored cultural and discursive power, the ability to reshape meaning, identity, and legitimacy through hybridity. He described power as the capacity to destabilise dominant narratives by occupying “in-between spaces” where cultures meet. Reading them, I realised that Huntington’s clash of civilizations framework felt too rigid, too absolute for the layered identities, mixed histories, and constant negotiations that defined the world I inhabited. For Huntington, when cultures meet, the answer was conflict. For Bhabha, it was creativity, hybridity, and the possibility of reshaping power itself. And for me, a French-Malian woman from the Alps who would one day sit in diplomatic rooms, the truth lay somewhere in between. Much later I realised something else: every author shaping my thinking up to that point was a man. None of them were telling me what power looked like from a woman’s perspective. It was only in my late 30s that I began to read about women and power. I recommend Leïla Slimani’s _Le pays des autres_, a magnificent book in which she explores identity, gender, and influence. She also interviews accomplished women leaders, always beginning with the same question. Their answers are powerful. One day, before I could even process it, power was in my hands. At 35, I was sitting at the same table as heads of state and diplomats twice my age as foreign minister of Mali. I learned quickly that holding power is not about feeling ready. It is about how you think and act in the moment. At my first appearance before the UN Security Council, backdoor negotiations took place before the official session. I was sitting across from 15 ambassadors scrutinising Mali’s progress on security, human rights, and army reintegration. The unspoken question in the room was clear: What is this kid doing here? I treated that exchange like an intellectual match. Every fact, every argument, every ounce of diplomacy had to be precise. By the end, the respect in the room had shifted. That was my rite of passage. But not every moment was triumph. In another negotiation, I faced a statement that would have forced Mali to take sides in a regional conflict. I refused. The French minister across from me threw a fit, but the principle was clear: compromise could not come at the expense of my country’s relationships. That moment taught me that in politics and diplomacy, you are not only negotiating words, you are negotiating histories, egos, and wounds that stretch back decades. In my doctoral research I study militarism and military coups in West Africa. Coups are often described as abrupt ruptures. But in my thesis, I argue they are the product of decades of accumulated tensions. What I realised during my interviews is that the most dangerous thing I have ever encountered is unquestioned certainty, the belief that one group alone knows what is best for everyone else. As one coup leader told me: "_Vous, civils, gouvernez avec vos émotions_. _Nous, militaires, nous gouvernons avec clarté et force_." \[You civilians rule with your emotions. We military personnel rule with clarity and strength\]. Power itself is not always dangerous. But unquestioned power is. Because power in the hands of someone who questions themselves can be cautious, ethical, and humble. Power in the hands of someone who never doubts is blind and blinding. As you embark on this journey at Sciences Po, let me share advice I wish I had received : * Who is sitting next to you matters. Your peers may one day become your co-founder, your minister, your fiercest advocate. Treat them with integrity. * Move with reliability. * Show up when you say you will. * Trust is built in small interactions. * Be generous with your time, your network, your knowledge. * Do not be seduced by prestige. Prestige without purpose is hollow. * Ask yourselves often, what is my purpose? * Protect your curiosity. Let yourselves wander intellectually. Acknowledge your identities, they will accompany you everywhere. Accepting them makes you more ethical and effective leaders. * And remember, your legacy starts now. You are here to practice who you are becoming. May you leave Sciences Po with clarity, with conviction, with community, and with an understanding of power that will make you ethical, smart, and unforgettable leaders. ### Thématique `#Démocratie` `#Géopolitique` **Langue :** `#Anglais` --- ### Navigation pour IA - [Index de tous les contenus](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/llms.txt) - [Plan du site (Sitemap)](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/sitemap.xml) - [Retour à l'accueil](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/)