The Diploma in Intelligence and Global Threats (DiReM) course at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye – known as the ‘Malotru Diploma’ or ‘School for Spies’ – sets out to train the next generation of French intelligence agents. It was created in 2019 in collaboration with France’s Intelligence Academy (an interministerial body whose mission is to foster links between the university and the secret services) and aims to educate students in the nature of the security threats facing the country, and existing means of preventing and mitigating those threats. The academy monitors the curriculum to ensure its real-world relevance.

The DiReM is one of a growing number of university courses on intelligence, many run by branches of Sciences Po, whose Paris School of International Affairs has since 2010 offered a course titled ‘Intelligence for democracies, intelligence in a democracy’, led by Philippe Hayez and Jean-Claude Cousseran, former senior officials at France’s Directorate General for External Security (DGSE). In 2021 Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence, in partnership with France’s Air and Space Force Academy, launched a specialist post-master’s programme in intelligence and risk and threat assessment, co-directed by a contemporary history professor, Walter Bruyère-Ostells, and an air force general, Serge Cholley.

Intelligence studies, taught by a mix of academics and intelligence and security practitioners and covering both specialised academic courses and qualifications, and statecraft, is already widespread in the UK. It took off at several British universities in the 1990s, including King’s College London, whose world-renowned Department of War Studies established the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence (KCSI) in 2023. David Omand, former director of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), the UK’s signals intelligence agency, and Madeleine Alessandri, chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which assesses and coordinates (…)

Full article: 1 453 words.

Hager Ben Jaffel

Hager Ben Jaffel is a research associate at the CNRS (French national centre for scientific research) and co-author, with Srdjan Vucetic, of Beyond Five Eyes Intelligence, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, forthcoming autumn 2026.

(2) Gracelin Baskaran, ‘Building critical minerals cooperation between the United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, March 2025.

(4) See Anne-Cécile Robert, ‘Tanzania revives rail’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2019.

(6) See ‘Shafted: the scramble for critical minerals in the DRC’, The Oakland Institute, 21 October 2025, www.oaklandinstitute.org/.