Podcast_Marcin Wodziński_Jewish studies after the epidemic_GEOP

[00:00:02] Welcome to what's new, what's next podcast series. My name is my Marcin Wodziński. I work at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław in Poland. I will be speaking today about what's new, what's next, namely, I will ask about the state academic Jewish in Poland as they are today, and we'll try to guess of the developments of the field after the pandemics. I won't to focus so much on the methodological innovations and digital humanities, which I hope to talk on another occasion, but rather, I would like to focus on the most general factors that inform the field and the developments as visible in academic analysis, as well as some phenomena that are hinting to where the field is developing in the future. So where are we today? There are hundreds of books on Jewish topics. If you're in Poland every year, several hundred articles. We have also three universities with high quality B.A. programs with Jewish studies and two others with Hebrew studies. Several dozen doctoral dissertations on Jewish topics dozens are defended every year at Polish universities, we have six academic journals specializing in Jewish studies. There is also a significant and growing presence of Jewish topics in the mainstream publishing houses and every other class. Does it mean that we are in the golden period of Jewish studies in Poland? Is it all we could achieve? Can we hope for better or maybe we are on the decline already? Let me respond to those questions in three stages.

[00:01:40] I would like to start first with with a question about interest and motivations of undergraduate students who choose to do their major in Jewish studies. In Jewish history and culture in Poland this year, because this is a good indicator of what brings people to the field and what we can expect in the field in the coming future. And then second, what are the dominant research interests among Polish scholars in Jewish studies? And finally, what is the future of Jewish studies? So students interested. As noted by a number of scholars, the status of Jewish studies in Poland is strongly correlated with a powerful, mnemonic awakening as a response to Jewish absence in Poland. As Geneviève Zubrzycki has demonstrated in her research. All of this is a part of a much broader sociopolitical project aiming at transforming the Polish national identity from nationalistic into more liberal and progressive. So the question about the motivations and interests of those choosing to do a major injustice is not only about studies, but it's about much larger ideological and also identity issues. So what are the factors at stake? For nearly two decades already, I ask freshman students of our B.A. program about their personal reasons that led them to come to us to the studies program at the Wrocław University. Major groups are the same as they were 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, and I have discussed them elsewhere.

[00:03:16] So I won't to go into this discussion today. But they're also very interesting new trends, which I think are indicative of what is happening in contemporary field. What is changing where it is. One is an increasing presence of pragmatic motivations. Many indicated the field offers them a distinct and competitive edge in the job market in, say, the mentioned, for example, diplomacy, international relations, translating or interpreting. Maybe the most picturesque was the case of a student who said he would like to engage in arms trade with Israel. But I would say it is not typical, more typically, Typically, students know they check the number of certified certified translators of Hebrew in Poland or they choose the number of job offers in Hebrew as a requirement. Another interesting change has happened among religiously motivated students. This is still quite a visible group of adults who declare what bring them to Jewish studies. But interestingly enough, particular religious background of those who choose Jewish studies is not the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago, with not so many Roman Catholics declaring religion and bringing them to do studies, an increasing number of people from a variety of religious minorities, including also members of judaising religious movements. The numbers are the numbers are obviously too small to be statistically representative, but the tendency is quite visible and I would say striking.

[00:04:54] Another interesting factor in students motivations is the deteriorating status of the humanities and number of students that they had originally chosen, economics or banking or computer science, simply out of desire not to be losers, not to be students and then graduates of the humanities, when called, is the outcome of the humanities smear campaign. However, those reasonable, as they say, choices sometimes on quite a few times leads to frustration of those students and consequently a swing in the opposite direction toward a practical field. And here you might say Jewish studies is the embodiment of everything impractical. So this is a kind of paradoxical interrelation between increasing and pragmatical choices and the growth of pragmatical choices among those who are effectively disappointed with them in other fields of philosophical studies. And finally, there is an interesting phenomenon of the transformative influence of parents on the choice of studies by some of our students. And this this is interesting because. I think it points to the second iteration of American culture. Parents grew up in late communist or early post-communist Poland and have successfully transferred their children their dreams of more open and more tolerant Poland. And it leads to some of those students to engage professionally, engage with Jewish studies in order to transform Polish national identity into Polish culture even further.

[00:06:44] So this is about students let's let let's let's get to what are the interests of researchers, what are the main features of this study? And for this, I conducted a bibliometrical analysis of two major, major datasets. One is all the articles of all six Jewish studies journals published in Poland during the last 10 years. It's altogether nine hundred and seven articles this week as number one and second data says it is all the research grants that were awarded by trying to run the institutions that were responsible for funding of the vast majority of research in humanities in Poland. That is the Ministerial National Program for the Development of the Humanities and the National Science Center. To be sure, those two data sets provide a picture that is far from complete for all of Jewish studies in Poland, but still, I think they give fairly accurate indication of the dominant trends among Polish scholars. So let me point to three most significant factors that I see. Possibly the most striking tendency is remarkable centrism. The field is heavily Polish in two sences, first, the vast majority between sixty five and eighty seven percent of those Judaic journal in Poland or asking for grants are affiliated with Polish universities.

[00:08:13] Nearly all the journals are dominated by contributions from the faculty of the host institutions. So it's not only of Polish, but is actually much more locally focused. And the same patterns appear in the list of reviewers in those journals, as well as in many other fields. As we know, for example, in the doctoral and promotion committees, a variety of Polish universities. And second, and equally significant indicator of the etnocentric tendency is that more than 70 percent of all the articles and grounds on which topics in our data sets are on Poland, on Polish Jews. Less than 10 percent of the articles in the grants are conducted with Israel and the Middle East and all other areas, and the regions are negligible beyond about two percent. This confirms the notion that Jewish studies in Poland is predominantly a matter of Polish identity quest, directly linked to the national debate about Poland, and an obvious advantage of such a state of being is that those articles, grants and research is strongly relevant for the Polish public opinion and tnings that developing in Poland also beyond outside of academia. But the danger is that the strong focus on Poland might distance Polish Jewish studies from mainstream interests and developments in the broader field of Jewish studies, where Poland obviously is not a central area of academic interest. And I think this is what we are actually experiencing in Jewish studies like today. Another interesting characteristic of the studies in Poland is the distribution of research topics. Every third publication and research topic deals with the Holocaust, another 12 percent discuss Jewish relations or other areas are marginal. Some of them, such as are modern history disappearing at a rapid speed. If I read this data properly, some of the ones establish areas that, until quite recently experienced their heydays, are now 20 years later, nearly on the verge of extinction.

[00:10:25] Let me say it clearly. The problem is not the development of the study of the Holocaust or anti-Semitism or Jewish and Jewish relations, but rather decline of some other more traditional areas of research. The question is, does how to support this blending development in the research of Holocaust or Jewish relations and not to allow for declining other more traditional areas.

[00:10:55] Third interesting characteristic after etnocetrism and the focus on the Holocaust is a rapid shift of research interest to our contemporary issues. With evil in early modern topics are barely visible. Every tenth article and research grant deals with the 19th century and bit more with the inter-war, in sharp contrast to those numbers. Every second Grundt, an article deals with either the Second World War or the Ofwat periods. This is a very significant change relative to the state of affairs 20 years ago, when the very concept of the Polish-Jewish history in Europe was highly controversial and actually only beginning to develop today, studies on the Holocaust and on its aftermath dominated the field. It's seen this reflects a global turn from history to memory studies and cultural studies. But it is also increasing focus on the 20th century and on historical approaches. And this is not a place to discuss the long lasting consequences of this move away from historical thinking.

[00:11:57] But it's worth noting that this tendency is especially alarming in Poland, and especially when you consider that this is much with near obsessive focus on Poland and not looking at history beyond the boundaries of Poland and with the interference of the state and state institutions with its historical policy to promote topics on the Second World War and the postwar history. So this is the three main topics as for research. Where is it heading? What is the future? What are the possible developments of Jewish studie this is my final question. And instead of playing a fortuneteller, let me suggest that the best way to determine where the figure is likely to be in 20 years from now is to look at the doctoral dissertations that are developing today. By this, we can see what piece of research among doctoral dissertations are more popular. Which areas are under research and what we can expect to develop in the future. The most convenient venue for this kind of check is the doctoral seminar run at the POLIN museum for the last five years. This is a monthly seminar for doctoral students from all Polish universities who write their dissertations on masters of Polish-Jewish history and culture. So far there were more than one hundred forty applicants, which certainly sufficient, sufficient the growth and sample to say something about where the majority of the doctoral dissertation on Jewish topics in Poland head to.

[00:13:40] So the great variety of topics, methodologies in the process of extending a clear thematic temporal pattern is very similar to what we've seen with the articles that the first of all was strikingly not. One single doctoral thesis is dealing with Jewish history, only three percent for visitations with the early modern periods. And as I would say, this is not this is most troubling, especially if we consider that the most important methodological innovation in the field of historiography over the last two decades happened exactly in medieval and in early modern history. And these developments might cut us off from those methodological developments. And also, despite its once prominent position in Polish-Jewish history and its towering figures who developed contemporary state of Polish Jewish history where we are now, and despite continuous effort at raising interest in early modern history, the number of students interested in this period is very low and seems to be decreasing. This seems to be reaching proportions that actually endangered the generation generally then their generational chain of scholarly transition, indicating a loss of specific technical skills cultivated through generations. And this is the biggest threat in development. I would say. The 19th century is in somehow better situation as it makes 11 percent of those the situation.

[00:15:15] So there's no reason to complain. And the interwar period is as many as 22 percent of the dessertations. The preference for the interwar over the 19th century is not only an expression of the longer trustor of historical interest into the more contemporary times, but also the more prosaic expression of language preferences because of the partitions and the nonexistence of the Polish state in the 19th century, much of the argument materials on the 19th century Jewish history is not in Polish, but in Russian or German. And in contrast, in the vast majority of archival materials on the interwar Second Polish Republic is in Polish. And so it's obviously much easier to study interwar period, especially for studying Polish-Jewish history you need at least two Jewish languages to begin with? So adding two more languages of Russian and German for the archival materials it might create a real obstacle. As for the periods, all the previous periods that I mentioned from medieval up to the interwar are still minority because by far the largest group of students decided to spend several years of daylight studying either the Holocaust or the post-Holocaust period. This more than 60 percent of all the thesis.

[00:16:36] And the distribution here is quite indicative and very close to what we've seen with the articles and the research grants before. Mainly, 30 percent on the Shoah and thirty four percent on the post-Holocaust period. The numbers confirm the centrality of the focus as a research topic, but for a sizable cohort of the young scholars is not the Holocaust itself that captures their attention. But rather post-Holocaust memory, commemoration the use of the Holocaust related themes feature of popular culture. And this seems to indicate a shift to the study of contemporary topics even more contemporary than the Holocaust. And. So what about conclusion. Instead of conclusion, I would like to say that all the previous observations that I made so far remained more or less relevant, only on the condition that the political structures will not interfere or at least will not interfere too heavily in a destructive way

[00:17:37] in what is happening today. Many people in the academia are actually afraid of such developments, possibly the best known expression of such a policy that endangers, the state of Jewish studies in Poland and especially in some areas, was the 2008 Holocaust law that sought to penalize anyone making assertions that Poland or Poles had any sort of complicity in the crimes of the time of the Holocaust. Under the pressure of the United States, Israel and the European Union, the law was soon to revolt. But it doesn't mean that the Polish authorities change their opinion on the matter and they became much more benevolent to develop this kind of research.

[00:18:17] And actually government the government officials in a number of occasions continue to express their dissatisfaction with academic research on sensitive issues such as the Polish involvement in Holocaust-related crimes or Polish anti-Semitism. It's sometimes it took very well-known forms of of harassing individuals or institutions or actions against is using such individuals like Tomasz Gaos, the best known case of a political interference into academic matter was the involvement of minister of culture into the nomination, of Dariusz Stola, of non-nomination of that is to the position of the director of the POLIN museum, which actually violated agreement with the other stakeholders. the decision of the search committee and his own promises. Does it mean that we should be afraid the Polish regime will destroy the Jewish studies as they are today? I believe it is. There is such a possibility, but I'm still I'm still remaining kind of optimistic. And I beat my reserved optimism on two premises. The first is that this government is fortunately highly ineffective. And a spectacular failure of the Holocaust law demonstrates its limited ability to implement the long lasting and effective strategic plan of action. This doesn't mean, of course, that the government cannot attempt to micromanage individual cases, but it's rather difficult to say whether this implies a high degree risk with a significant effect on future research. And second, the Polish academic community maintains a third level of autonomy, which is best represented by the biggest project field of Jewish studies of the last decade, including such monumental publications as the completed of thirty five volumes of the Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes Archives and the four volume series of books on pogroms in modern Poland.

[00:20:27] In a word, Jewish studies in Poland are pretty well, despite the precise climate of discourse and the topics covered, certainly do not follow the expectations of the regime. What really bothers me is not the individual actions of this government, however annoying or difficult they might be for individual people or institutions, but rather how far the broader attitudes of public opinion, which is long-asting effects on the trends in scholarly interest, choice of studies by young people, choice of dissertations by doctoral students and choice of areas of research, as I said, in the short run. Polarization of the Polish society and the major public debates about anti-Semitism from quite a number of individual to choose Jewish studies as a response to anti-Semitism, the encounter as. So in this sence Jewish studies, is the paradoxical beneficiary of the rising wave of xenophobia in Poland. But in the longer run, we cannot be certain this will remain so together with global factors such as the declining position of the humanities and the general challenges of the Polish academic system. This might negatively reflect on the position of Jewish studies among prospective students, doctoral students and researchers that it might harm the field and its international academics then. 

[00:21:53] Thank you for listening to what's new. What's Next. Jewish studies in the time of Pandemic. Check out POLIN Museum's website for new podcasts in the series. For regular updates email GEOP at POLIN dot p l. That's GEOP GEOP at POLIN dot p l. This podcast series is a part of the Global Education Outreach Program supported by Taube Philanthropies, the William K.Bowes Jr. Foundation and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.