EXTENDED PROFILE--The Life and Career of Professor István Deák

This is the first in a series of extended profiles on the lives and careers of scholars who work on East-Central Europe. It features six interviews with István Deák (b. 1926), Seth Low Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. 

Deák is the author of several books, including: 

Weimar Germany's Left-wing Intellectuals (1968)
The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849 (1979)
Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-  1918 (1990)
Essays on Hitler's Europe (2001)

He also co-edited, together with Jan Gross and Tony Judt, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (2000), and is currently completing a book manuscript, Europe on Trial: Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution during and after World War II, forthcoming with Westview Press.

The interviews were conducted at Prof. Deák's home in New York on December 5, 2009,  April 18, 2010 and October 6, 2013. Special thanks go to Ph.D. candidate in History at Cornell University, Máté Rigó, for serving as co-interviewer and for his assistance in recording and cataloging the interviews. 

Interview Themes
FIRST INTERVIEW SERIES
Part 1 - December 5, 2009

(0:45) Family
(1:37) Jewish ancestors, Moravia, 18th century, Székesfehérvár free royal city, Jews with an “exemption” who were allowed to reside within city limits
(3:00-4:55) Great-grandfather, Emmanuel
(4:56) Maternal side, Jewish family (the Zipsers), one rabbi ancestor, listed in Révai nagy lexicona [entry at right]
(6:20) Maajer Zipser, reformed rabbi
of Székesfehérvár, maternal great-grandfather of Deák; preached in Hungarian in the mid-19th century
(7:00) For his pro-Hungarian attitudes this rabbi ancestor entered into conflict with more conservative Jews and had to move to Rohonc, Hungary
Deák's paternal grand-
father, Dávid Deák
(1852-1940)
(7:46) Jewish laws, 1930s, social gap between priviliged and poor Jews in Horthy’s Hungary and during the Holocaust; 1938 Jewish Laws in Hungary favored Jews with long-standing origins in Hungary
(9:08) Chances of survival of his family during the Holocaust
(9:45) Original family  name "Deutsch"
(11:00) No knowledge of Yiddish among his ancestors; Grandfather spoke high German; Some of his grandfather’s siblings lived in Germany
(12:00) Textile merchant grandfather with a store on the main square of Székesfehérvár, highly respected patrician of the city who went to his store in a carriage in 1930s
(13:00) Large textile store
(15:27) Grandfather born in 1852
(16:00) WWI
(16:08) His father [István] attended Cistercian Gymnasium in Székesfehérvár; Half the class was Jewish, including Deák’s father
(17:07) No discrimination against Deák’s father and grandfather; His father never complained of anti-Semitism until WWII
(17:50) Deák’s father’s patriotic attitude towards Hungarian army till 1941
Deák's father, István Deák, Sr. (1892-1980) in
his Habsburg officer's uniform (~1916). At the
time he was lieutenant. In 1917 he became 
first lieutenant.
(18:20) Father attended Polytechnic University; Drafted into k.u.k. (Habsburg) army in 1914, fortress artillery
(19:00) Deák’s father’s experience on the Russian front, WWI; no tales of miseries, amusing anecdotes only
(19:51) General spotted and scolded Deák’s father because he did not have a mustache
(22:17) Deák’s father sent to Montenegro; the only military victory of his unit
(23:00) Brusilov offensive
(23:40) Cossacks
(23:52) Deák’s father transferred to Vienna in 1916, then charged with managing an ammunition depot at the end of the war in northern Italy
(26:00) Bad situation of POWs during WWI due to malnutrition, about a third of them died
(27:24) Deák’s father blew up the ammunition depot when Austria-Hungary surrendered
(28:00) Ethnic composition of Deák’s father’s unit; All reserve officers were Budapest engineers
(29:00) Reunion of Deák’s father’s WWI unit commanders in 1970s in Budapest
(29:30) Journey back from the front
(31:00) Deák’s father stayed in the army after 1918 to support himself
(31:40) Deák’s father became a Red Army soldier then a White Army soldier
(32:40) 1920 - Demobilized; Well-to-do family members helped Deák’s father transition to civilian life
Wedding photo of István and Anna
(Deák's parents) 
from 1920.
(34:00) 1920 - marriage of Deák’s parents; 1922 - Deák’s sister Éva is born; Deák’s father becomes a partner in a company
(35:00) 1926 - Family moved to Budapest; First apartment in Naphegy neighborhood in Buda; House overlooking the Danube
(36:00) Father’s brothers are wealthy merchants, with a car and trip to the Berlin Olympics
(36:30) Great Depression, collapse of Deák’s father’s company; Partner absconded to USA
(37:21) Deák’s grandfather and siblings pledge half a million pengő to save Deák’s father
(38:40) Father’s new job as chief engineer of BART bus company of Budapest
(39:00) Deák’s free entry to Palatinus bath on Margaret Island
(40:06) Father became chief secretary of the Association of Industrial Applied Arts in mid-1930s; He also rented and managed a garage for automobiles
Deák's mother, Anna Timár (1898-1961)
around 1920.
(41:36) Italian balilla visited Budapest and parked their motorcycles in Deák’s father’s garage
(42:00) Why Fascism was attractive to young people
(43:09) Hitlerjugend
(44:00) Nazism as experience of modernity and
(45:00) egalitarianism
(45:40) German attack on Yugoslavia through Hungary; egalitarianism
(47:21) Deák’s father in the USA to oversee the closing of the Hungarian pavilion; Went back in 1940 with steamship Rex
(48:30) Family relations
(50:17) Jewish-Gentile family relations
(51:00) Deák’s mother, education, fluent in German
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34132

Part 2 - December 5, 2009

(00:00)  Deák’s mother [Anna Timár], homemaker
(00:49) A housewife’s daily routine
Young István as a Hungarian boy scout at 
about age 7, on Pasaréti út in Budapest, at 
his godfather’s villa (~1933).
(3:45) Summer vacations every year in Austria in the 1930s; His father’s mother tongue was German
(5:00) Parents spoke German and French
(7:08) Assimilation in Deák’s family; Conversion of Deák’s father
(7:50) István Deák born a Catholic
(8:15) Revelation of Jewish origins at the age of 12; Experience of being Jewish in the 1930s
(9:50) Strategies of his family in the face of rising anti-Semitism in the 1920s and 1930s
(11:30) Deák's parents as practicing Catholics in the 1920s
(12:15) Catholic friends, the Hardis
(13:20) Experience of anti-Semitism as a teenager
(13:31) Application to high school, discrimination because of Jewish origins, rejection from the Piarist school; Accepted to Cistercian school as his father attended a Cistercian school
(15:40) Experience of discrimination in the scout movement
(17:00) Accepted to boy scout group due to his father’s bravery in WWI
(18:00) Anti-Semitic insult in the scout movement
(20:20) “Aryan” social world in Budapest, late 1930s, dilemmas
István Deák with his class at the Városmájor elementary school in Budapest, 1936. 
The 10-year-old István is seated in the second row, third from the right (in white).

(23:10) Anti-Jewish law was not applied rigorously
(24:00) Hungarian economy functioned because of Jewish participation till 1944, Jews in Hungary under Jewish laws
(25:00) Deák’s father (who spent several months in the US during 1939-1940) compared the situation of Jews in Hungary to that of blacks in America in the early 1940s
(29:00) Desire for a society without minorities in Hungary
(30:00) Changes of family names during WWII
(32:00) Anti-Swabian sentiment during WWII in Hungary
(34:00) Jewish origins of communist leaders during the Rákosi period
(34:30) [Meta-discussion about which parts of Deák’s life are worth discussing in the interview and why]
(37:00) The politics of Deák’s family members
(40:00) Trip to Northern Transylvania in 1941
(41:00) Apprenticeship at ceramic works in Korond, Northern Transylvania
(48:00) Hungarian army in Northern Transylvania
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34132

Part 3 - December 5, 2009


(00:00) Political views, progressive Catholicism in 1930s, KALOT, trade unions, strikes, Arrow Cross men, Jesuits
Deák's mother (of Jewish origin) in 1944 with a partly
forged ID card: the name is correct, but her maiden
name and other details were copied from their kindly
maid’s birth certificate. His mother's real maiden name
was not Keresztes, but Timár and she was born at
Székesfehérvár on February 25, 1898.
(6:00) Political orientation, 1943-1944
(9:11) Labor service, Father in Kistarcsa internment camp
(13:00) Hatvan, Zöldy, deportations, Jászberény
(19:40) Railway line construction, Northern Transylvania
(23:00) Miklós Horthy’s October 15, 1944 speech
(24:00) Béla Stollár helps Deák to hide
(25:00) Fake uniform during Arrow Cross rule
(26:00) Searching for grandmother in a death march, “the worst part of my life”
(27:00) Fate of his Jewish grandmother during the Holocaust
(30:00) Arrested by SS men in January 1945
(30:40) Set free by a Hungarian-German SS soldier
(32:00) Soviet liberation/occupation
(33:10) First contacts with communism
(36:00) Escape from Soviet detention
(37:40) Post-1945 political parties, communists, Social Democratic Party
(40:00) Károly Peyer, Béla Zsolt, Imre Kovács
(41:00) One reason for leaving Hungary
(42:00) 1947 elections, father disqualified, fake ballots
(44:30)  Passport, adventure of leaving Hungary, French visa
(46:50) Paris, trip to France from Hungary, experience of the West
(49:10) Zürich
(50:00) “Rue Budapest” in Paris
(52:00) Life in Paris, second half of 1940s, bureaucratic issues, France as a haven of stateless persons at the time, work experience in Paris
(1:00:00) Education in France
(1:01:20) London, England, Downing Street experience
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34132

SECOND INTERVIEW SERIES
Part 1 - April 18, 2010
Deák in Paris around 1950 (age 24) with his
then fiancé, Nancy.
(00:31) London
(3:00) Harvesting camp in England as university a student
(9:00) 11 Downing street, meeting the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps
(16:00) Paris
(21:00) University life in France, prospects in France, work at Combat
(26:00) Political situation in France, 1940s, 1950s
(30:00) Algeria, split in French society
(43:00) Work at Camus’s paper, Combat
(48:00) Arletty, Maurice Chevalier - post-WWII lustration in France
(50:00) Social life, networks in France
(52:00) Views on religion
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34132

Part 2 - April 18, 2010

(00:00) Moving to Germany, the early 1950s
(02:40) Work at Radio Free Europe (RFE), 1951-1955, reviewed Hungarian newspapers, “mixed experience,” expulsion of parents from Budapest as a result
(05:00) privileges in Germany as RFE employee, life in Germany
(10:00) Politics at RFE, hiring part of the extreme right emigration by RFE
(11:12) Julián Borsányi, László Béry - participation in the Holocaust; Nazis into liberals
(16:00) 1955-1956, American propaganda towards East-Central Europe
(19:00) Role of RFE in 1956
(26:00) Studies in Germany
(28:00) Expulsion of parents from Mese utca, Budapest to Kőrösnagyharsány
(33:12) 1956 - Expulsion ends
(34:00) Almost daily correspondence with parents during communist era
(43:11) German friends, Germany in the 1950s, 1970/-71
(49:00) September 1956, Arrival to USA, graduate life at Columbia University
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34132

THIRD INTERVIEW SERIES
Part 1 - October 6, 2013

(00:12) First visit to US, 1955, settled in 1956 in New York, before the Hungarian Revolution
(02:15) First job at a publishing house in New York; worked for an academic book donation program, for Eastern European Countries; student at Columbia University
(08:15) The experience of the 1956 Revolution in New York
(10:15) Imre Kovács, Hungarian Peasant Party; bought air ticket for Budapest for November 4, 1956
(12:15) Discussion of Budapest family about emigration
(15:15) Family politics after 1945; victims of communism, expelled from Budapest in 1955; Deák’s sister wants to stay after 1956
(17:15) Fluid administrative practices in Hungary, 1956
(24:15) Arrival of 56ers to New York; carrier between 1956-1962
(26:15) Different groups of post-1944 emigrants from Hungary; identified himself with 1948er group; Ferenc Nagy
(29:15) CIA sponsored the minority democratic fraction of Hungarian émigrés; lack of mass support for democratic leaders of Hungarian emigres among Hungarians in US
(31:15) Tibor Eckhart
Deák running the New York City
Marathon in  1977
(35:15) Overrepresentation of emigres among academics; East-Central European Institute at Columbia University; Henry Roberts; started out as a West-Europeanist
(39:15) Sputnik crisis provided funding for the study of East-Central European history
(40:15) Job offer at Columbia; Hungarian studies at Columbia; Halasi Kun, János Lotz; funding for building an extensive Hungarian library collection
(43:15) Received tenure in 1967; “Sputnik money” – temporary funding for East-Central European studies
(46:15) Establishment of institutes of study of East-Central European studies in US; setting up centers
(47:45) Academic job crisis in 1970s
(50:15) 1980s and resurgence of East-Central European studies
(53:15) Global history
(55:15) Significance of Sputnik crisis
(58:15) European vs. East-Central European history; book project on European history of collaboration
(59:15) Involved in taking the Crown of Saint Stephen back to Hungary; recollections on the trip with the Crown to Budapest
(1:05:15) Scandal around return of the Crown; rightist Hungarian-American demonstrated; member of the delegation that took back the Crown
(1:15:15) Celebrations in Budapest
(1:17:15)  Relationship to Hungary
(1:22:15) Vision of a democratic Hungary, 1945; Hungarian politics, 1945-2013
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34132

[See also the interview with Prof. Deák conducted on April 29, 2009 in Ithaca, NY, as part of the regular blog series.]

Interview with John Ackerman--July 31, 2013

John Ackerman's office in the Cornell University Press
building (Sage House), featuring covers of books
by some of his authors.
Interview with John Ackerman, Director of Cornell University Press and the Europe and Russia/USSR acquisitions editor there. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on July 31, 2013. 

Ackerman studied Russian/Soviet history at Stanford and has acquired, edited and published some of the seminal works in the fields of East-Central European and Russian/Soviet history and literature, including Ivo Banac's The National Question in Yugoslavia and With Stalin against Tito, Wendy Bracewell's The Uskoks of Senj, Roman Koropeckyj's Adam Mickiewicz, Mark Thompson's book on Danilo Kiš, Birth Certificate, Yuri Slezkine's Arctic Mirrors, Laura Engelstein's The Keys to Happiness, Lewis Siegelbaum's Cars for Comrades, and Valerie Kivelson's Cartographies of Tsardom. He has also published works by some of the younger scholars featured on this blog, including James Ward's biography of Jozef Tiso, Priest, Politician, Collaborator, and Claudia Verhoeven's The Odd Man Karakazov


Interview Themes

Ackerman's early attraction to and training in Russian and Soviet history (1:37)
The atmosphere and cohort at Stanford when Ackerman did his graduate work there (4:45)
Why did people with an interest in contemporary politics in the 1950s and 1960s turn to 19th century Russian literature as their way in to the field? (7:56)
On how others who studied the region came to the field; a common path? (11:55)
Ackerman's first (and last) visit to the USSR in 1970 (13:23)
On the importance of Ackerman's training in Russian/Soviet history for his work as an editor (18:45)
Books Ackerman has edited to which he is especially attached (23:41)
On how changes in the way university presses operate have affected what they publish and what those changes will mean for the future of the field (31:04)
Was there ever a heyday for university presses and when did it end? (35:33)
On how important it is for a field to have acquisitions editors with knowledge and expertise in that field (46:11)
How presses have created and/or sustained fields otherwise perceived as marginal (49:44)
On what kinds of niches presses develop to sustain their publishing lists (51:52)
How the field of East-Central Europe/Russia/USSR compares to areas like France in terms of scholarly publishing (56:00)
Ackerman's views on scholarly trends (borderlands, environmental history, etc.) and their impact on the field as a whole (59:20)
On books in our field with staying power (1:03:15)
Ackerman on what makes a good editor (1:08:35)
On the invisibility of the editor and what is rewarding about the profession (1:18:59)
Ackerman on what makes good writing (1:24:00)
Books that have had a particularly strong impact on Ackerman (1:31:11)
How Ackerman goes about the process of editing (1:35:49) -- See the "Artifacts" page for a photo and description of Ackerman's editing pencil
Ackerman's views on open access and its likely impact on academic publishing (1:42:19)
How Ackerman envisions an ideal future for academic publishing (1:54:29)
Ackerman's sense of how readers and readerships have changed over the past few decades (2:04:48)
What Ackerman wants for the books he publishes (2:10:23)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33737

HIGHLIGHTS - Spring and Summer 2013

Among my favorite moments from the interviews recorded this spring and summer were Kim Scheppele's remarks during a roundtable on "Scholars as Public Intellectuals Weighing in on History and Politics in East-Central Europe" on how scholars can fill the gap created by the decline of journalism (min. 17:15), as well as Timothy Snyder's observations from the same roundtable on "being able to say 'no' in an interesting way" (min. 30:10). Other insights include Val Bunce's lament that eccentricity is no longer considered a virtue in the hiring process (min. 1:13:08), and Matt Evangelista's explanation (for the uninitiated historian) of "process tracing" and its limits (min. 1:13:44). On the lighter side, David Ost describes being a rock star for one night in Moscow during the 1970s (Part I, min. 28:19). Finally, Norman Naimark's thoughts on mentorship (min. 53:51) are simply unforgettable. 

Interview with Norman Naimark--July 26, 2013

Interview with Norman NaimarkRobert and Florence McDonnell Professor in East European Studies at Stanford University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on July 26, 2013.

Naimark is the author of several books including two on the nineteenth-century Russian and Polish revolutionary movements, a seminal work on The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (1997), another on ethnic cleansing, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (2002), and most recently a book on Stalin's Genocides (2011). He is also editor and co-editor of a number of volumes, such as The Establishment of Communist Regims in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 (1998) and Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s (2003).

Interview Themes

The path Naimark followed to becoming a historian of East-Central Europe (1:17)
On Naimark's first visit to the region (Yugoslavia 1964/5 and Poland 68/9) (7:41)
How how Naimark came to write his dissertation on the 19th-century party, Wielki Proletariat [Great Proletariat] (11:35)
The origins of Naimark's first two books: The History of the "Proletariat": The Emergence of Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 1870-1887 (1979) and Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (1983) (13:28)
On asking "big questions" (26:25)
On writing history with the contemporary political situation in mind (34:22)
Area studies and inter-disicplinarity: parallel decline? (40:34)
How Naimark defines the region he studies (44:29)
Books that have had an intellectual influence on Naimark (48:29)
Naimark on mentorship and his own mentor, Wayne Vucinich (53:51) -- see also Naimark's essay on this topic "How Historians Repeat Themselves"
Commonalities between Naimark's students' work (1:05:10)
What remains to be done in the field of East-Central European history (1:11:22)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33685

Interview with David Ost--July 24 and 25, 2013

Interview with David Ost, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY in two parts, on July 24 and 25, 2013. 

Ost specializes in political economy, democratization, capitalism, and labor and is the author of one of the seminal works on Polish Solidarity titled Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics (1990). He also wrote another prize-winning book, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Society (2005).

Interview Themes
Part I - July 24, 2013
How Ost went from studying History and Russian to Political Science (0:43)
On the interest of members of Ost's generation in the East Bloc (15:28)
Interactions with young people in the USSR in the 1970s (20:51)
Ost's first visit to Poland in 1976 (29:18)
On whether Ost has a secret police file on him (33:20)
How Ost came to translate Adam Michnik's The Church and the Left (34:11)
Ost on Michnik (41:55)
How Ost's two books came into being and how they're related (49:24)
Part II - July 25, 2013
How Ost came to be interested in labor history and how he sees class operating in the political realm (0:08)
Were there classes in Poland under communism? (6:33)
How uniquely Polish is the nature of class in Poland? (10:55)
What were the backgrounds of people in Poland who came to belong to different classes after the collapse of communism? (14:15)
Why the younger generation is interested in thinking about class again (20:09)
Ost's experiences teaching at the Central European University in Budapest and in Wrocław at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities there (24:47)
On students in Poland writing up their family member's experiences of work under communism and after (33:08)
Ost's activity as a public intellectual, writing for venues like The Nation, Newsweek Polskathe Chicago Tribune and other venues (35:23)
Transformations in area studies for the field and Ost's views on them (49:21)
Ost's current intellectual interests and directions (56:25)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33683

Interview with Matthew Evangelista--July 22, 2013

Interview with Matthew Evangelista, President White Professor of History and Political Science in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on July 22, 2013. 

Evangelista specializes in international and comparative politics and is the author of several books on a wide range of topics. These include—to name just a few—Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies published in 1989 by Cornell University Press, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (also by Cornell in 1999), a book on Chechnya titled The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (published in 2004), and most recently Gender, Nationalism, and War: Conflict on the Movie Screen published in 2011 with Cambridge.

Interview Themes

Evangelista's undergraduate training in Russian/Soviet history and literature and interest in politics (1:30)
Professors and others at Harvard who had an impact on Evangelista's intellectual trajectory (3:20)
The connection between Evangelista's interest in languages and literature and his current intellectual interests (6:15)
Evangelista's first visit to the USSR in 1979 (7:40)
On terminological slippages (between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, or foreign policy intentions versus foreign policy capacity) that inform attitudes and policy decisions (12:47)
On studying the Soviet Union as offering a way of seeing how power works in international relations (16:30)
The importance of the immediate post-WWII period and the 1980s in Evangelista's work (22:20)
The origins and nature of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell and changes in the Cornell Department of Government since Evangelista was a grad student the 1980s (27:27)
How we are still living with the legacy of the Cold War (34:00)
Evangelista's thoughts at the time on the Soviet Union's disarmament (38:48)
Gorbachev and the road to Putin (43:13)
To what extent should we try to move beyond the Cold War? (48:17)
On nationalism as an ideological alternative emerging out of the Cold War? (52:43)
The importance of ideology vs. institutions to Evangelista's understanding of Soviet military policy or Gorbachev's reforms (55:36)
Moments or events Evangelista has lived through that have proved significant for him intellectually (1:00:28)
Why Cold War studies is preoccupied with the matter of timing (1:03:18)
Are there different reasons why historians vs. political scientists look to history? And an explanation of "process tracing" (1:09:20)
How Evangelista's intellectual trajectory was influenced by area studies and what he thinks should be retained about area studies (1:18:52)
In training graduate students, what is it they most need? (1:22:23)
The origins of Evangelista's book on Gender, Nationalism, and War (1:24:04)
Evangelista's work on Chechnya and his sense of the scholar's role in weighing in on matters of contemporary political significance (1:28:18)
Should we only ever ask questions about where real power is because nothing else matters? (1:33:20)
Evangelista's current intellectual interests on bombing, among other things (1:37:30)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33684

Interview with Chip Gagnon--July 11, 2013

Interview with Chip Gagnon, professor of Political Science and currently the chair of the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on July 11, 2013.

Gagnon is the author of the book The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (published by Cornell University Press in 2006), which won the 2005 American Political Science Association's Prize for the Best Book on European Politics and Society and was Co-Winner of the 2006 Council for European Studies Best First Book Award.


Interview Themes

Gagnon's academic background and how he came to the field (1:00)
How Gagnon's study of languages affected the way he does political science (4:00)
Gagnon's view of the advantages and disadvantages of area studies for our field (6:45)
On how Gagnon's dissertation on Soviet-Yugoslav relations in the 1960s came into being (12:00)
Responses of people at the time to Gagnon's dissertation (15:50)
Gorbachev and Yugoslavia (18:04)
How Gagnon came to write The Myth of Ethnic War (20:42)
On whether the Yugoslav federal system was sustainable (23:04)
How Gagnon's came to "demobilization" as a way of explaining what happened in Yugoslavia in the 1990s (24:48)
Importance of the structure of the communist party in Yugoslavia for post-communist developments there (28:27)
Was nationalism built into the communist system in Yugoslavia? (32:15)
How important is history to what happened in Yugoslavia? (34:35)
Gagnon's views on what constitutes a responsible use of history (38:30)
To what extent should we attempt to think outside of constructed identities and pasts? (40:36)
How much of what happened in Yugoslavia in the 1990s was the result of internal versus external events/interventions? (43:09)
Comparison of the collapse of the USSR vs. Yugoslavia (47:15)
Gagnon's views on Slobodan Milošević (49:00)
On "going astray" and Gagnon's approach to political science and attraction to ethnography and anthropology (51:12)
How important are "the people" vs. elites and individual agency when thinking about Yugoslav history? (54:55)
On courses Gagnon teaches on "Whiteness and Multiculturalism" and "Pirates, Mercenaries and Missionaries" and how they relate to Yugoslavia and his current project on democracy promotion (1:01:03)
Where are the common problems and preoccupations with scholars who work on other parts of the world? (1:03:35)
On what Western Europe could learn from Eastern Europe (1:06:48)
How unusual is Ithaca in terms of the scholarly environment? (1:08:24)
Gagnon's current work and interests (1:10:22)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33682

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: Scholars as Public Intellectuals Weighing in on History and Politics in East Central Europe (ASN Roundtable)

This is a recording of a roundtable discussion from the ASN (Association for the Study of Nationalities) 2013 annual convention at Columbia University on the theme of "Scholars as Public Intellectuals Weighing in on History and Politics in East Central Europe." It was recorded on April 19, 2013. 

The roundtable participants included Katherine Fleming (History, NYU), Florian Bieber (Political Science, University of Graz, Austria), Timothy Snyder (History, Yale), Kim Scheppele (International Affairs, Princeton), and István Deák (History-Emeritus, Columbia), with myself (Holly Case) as organizer and chair.




Roundtable Themes

Introduction of panelists (0:55)
How do you understand your own role as a public intellectual and which context do you see yourself as operating in primarily? (8:00) Fleming (8:55), Bieber (10:07), Snyder (12:40), Scheppele (17:06), Deák (18:37)
Who sets the agenda for public debate? How have events in East-Central Europe affected your career trajectory as public intellectuals? (21:52) Fleming (23:22), Bieber (24:55), Snyder (28:05), Scheppele (32:00), Deák (35:00)
What is your relationship to the country/countries that are the focus of your interventions as a public intellectual? (38:15) Fleming (39:08), Bieber (41:59), Snyder (45:23), Scheppele (49:55), Deák (54:22)
Why is it that women remain underrepresented among public intellectuals? (58:52) Fleming (59:54), Bieber (1:01:00), Snyder (1:01:38), Scheppele (1:03:17)
Audience questions: Do public intellectuals who do not speak up when people are spreading lies about history in effect legitimize those lies? (1:05:38) How has the social demand for public intellectuals evolved as a result of digital technologies? (1:08:44) How effective are the interventions of public intellectuals in influencing public attitudes/debate? (1:09:55) How do you represent your own country/culture to people from outside? (1:10:34) Deák (1:11:35), Scheppele (1:15:50), Snyder (1:19:34), Bieber (1:24:44), Fleming (1:29:13)
Audience questions: On the role of the post-communist transition in pushing women into the background (1:35:44) Why have most East-Central European economies struggled since the collapse of communism? (1:37:54) How much does engagement in public history influence academic writing? (1:39:35) Fleming (1:40:35), Bieber (1:42:17), Snyder (1:44:52), Scheppele (1:50:25), Deák (1:55:37)
To access roundtable discussion, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33424