French President Pays Homage to Prominent Scholar French President Nicolas Sarkozy has paid homage to a prominent scholar and the director of one of the country's top colleges, who was found dead in a New York hotel room. Sarkozy called the 53-year-old Richard Descoings a pioneer in education who made the school "world renowned." Descoings served as the director of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, better known in France as Sciences Po. His naked body was found in a hotel room in New York on Tuesday afternoon where he had traveled for a meeting. Sarkozy said Descoings gave underprivileged students the chance to study at the prestigious school, marking "a historic turning point in awareness of scandalous social elitism in France."