Po itself) was heated and largely criticized. The press talked about a "bad soap" filled with "low blows", and alumni and academics talked about a "grotesque" "parody of democracy" According to Challenges, people close to Duhamel who are still members of the board of the National Foundation and who will be leaving are creating ad hoc committees, outside of the status of the Foundation, to process to votes in which they have a preponderant voice to choose in advance who can be candidate to become the head and the new members of the board, who will select afterwards the director of Sciences Po itself. After several votes which have been criticized for their lack of due process, Laurence Bertrand has been pre-selected to become the new head of the Foundation. Another candidate judged the legitimity of the process "hardly credible". A third candidate published an op-ed in Le Monde exposing the details of what he called a "tragicomedy". In the end, Mathias Vicherat, former CEO of Danone, was chosen. This appointment has been criticized, because Vicherat does not have an academic background. He would have been chosen as a friend and former classmate of Emmanuel Macron. A lecturer at the Institute said: "The whole procedure was shamelessly rigged so that in the end, only the candidacy of Mathias Vicherat, the President's friend, with no academic experience, remained. They methodically discarded all serious candidates." Duhamel scandal Camille Kouchner, daughter of Bernard Kouchner, published a book in which she wrote that her step-father Olivier Duhamel, at that time president of the Foundation of Sciences Po which was the "heart of [his] power" for 30 years, sexually abused his step-son for two years during his childhood. She denounced the "microcosm of powerful people, [at] Saint-Germain-des-Prés" (headquarters of Sciences Po) who "knew" according to her, but acted "like nothing happened". Newspapers further unearthed a series of controversial attitudes toward the sexuality of minors. It led to a series of investigations on the environment of Duhamel at Sciences Po and on the way they dealt with these abuses. The scandal "shook" Sciences Po (Le Monde) and put it into turmoil (France Culture). The scandal was compared to a "bomb" launched on Sciences Po (Le Figaro), to an "unpinned grenade throwned on Sciences Po" (Le Temps and Courrier International) and to a "shockwave" on Sciences Po (The Times, La Croix etc.). Frederic Mion had been alerted,