In spring 2009, the Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division on Languages, Civilizations and Literatures (DLCL) delivered the first part of its multi-year research and public policy program on Contemporary History and the Future of Memory.  The program explored how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.

Despite vast geographical, cultural and situational differences, the search for post-conflict justice and reconciliation has become a global phenomenon, resulting in many institutional and expressive responses. Some of these are literary and aesthetic explorations about guilt, commemoration and memorialization deployed for reconciliation and reinvention.  Others, especially in communities where victims and perpetrators live in close proximity, have led to trials, truth commissions, lustration, and institutional reform. This series illuminates these various approaches, seeking to foster new thinking and new strategies for communities seeking to move beyond atrocity.

Part 1: Contemporary History and the Future of Memory

In 2008-2009, this multi-year project on “History and Memory” at FCE and DLCL was launched with two high profile conference and speaker series: “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” and “Austria and Central Europe Since 1989.”  For the first series on Contemporary History, the Forum, along with four co-sponsors (the Division of Literatures, Civilizations, and Languages, principal co-sponsor; the department of English; The Center for African Studies; Modern Thought and Literature; the Stanford Humanities Center), hosted internationally distinguished senior scholars to deliver lectures, student workshops, and the final symposium with Stanford faculty respondents.

Part 2: History, Memory and Reconciliation

In 2009-2010, we launch part 2 of this project by adding “Reconciliation” to our mission.  We are pleased to welcome the Human Rights Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as co-sponsor of this series.  This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause.   The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic.  Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States.  While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing.  The FCE series “History, Memory, and Reconciliation” will explore these issues.

The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.  Publications, speaker details, and pod and video casts will be accessible via the new FSI/FCE, DLCL, and Human Rights Program websites.

Series coordinators:

• Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi
• Helen Stacy
• Saikat Majumdar
• Roland Hsu

Mankind has regularly witnessed the immense destruction wrought by natural disasters. Similarly destructive to human life are man-made atrocities, like war and genocide. Those who are lucky enough to have survived either type of cataclysmic event must then begin the process of confronting and reconciling the memories of the catastrophe that befell them.  Public commemorations of these events have run the gamut from poetry and works of art to government sponsored “truth commissions” and institutional reform.

The ways in which people chose to memorialize hardship, whether organized by a group or expressed by an individual, offer illuminating insights into the human psyche and post-conflict justice and also provide valuable information about a society, government or culture.

Several Stanford groups are sponsoring a series of events and research projects designed to explore the many facets of the human phenomena called ‘memory’. Scholars participating in the endeavor, entitled “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory,” represent a broad spectrum of disciplines, but share a common objective: to analyze the range of ways that people have coped with adversity in the past so that future communities may benefit their experience. Attention to the role that memory plays in helping people move beyond tragedy is especially pertinent now as citizens of Chile and Haiti transition from survival to recovery after the devastating earthquakes that took place in each country.

“Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” began in the spring of 2008 with the launch of a multi-year research and public policy program sponsored by Stanford’s Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division of Literature, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL.) The aim of that program, as described on the DLCL website, is to investigate “how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.”

In the fall of 2009 the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law joined the initiative, bringing with them expertise in reconciliation, a fundamental phase in the cycle of memory.  The series title was amended to “History, Memory & Reconciliation” in recognition of their contribution. This year’s events featured a visit by Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, the internationally renowned scholar of comparative literature from Columbia University, who addressed the subject of cultural and linguistic memory. During the spring quarter human rights and memory will be addressed in separate events by two guest scholars. Cambridge Anthropologist Harri Englund gave a talk on April 6th and University of Chile Law professor José Zalaquett will take part in several events on April 22nd and 23rd, including a lecture on Post-Conflict International Human Rights: Bright Spots, Shadows, Dilemmas.

Four Stanford scholars co-chair “History, Memory & Reconciliation.” They are French Professor Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Assistant Professor of English Saikat Majumdar, Law School lecturer and FSI fellow Helen Stacy, and Roland Hsu, Assistant Director of FSI’s Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Professors Majumdar and Boyi answered a few questions about the value of delving into memory and how humanities research informs the broader dialogue. Read the full interview here.

Twenty years have passed since the Berlin Wall fell and Angela Merkel – then a budding politician who grew up in communist East Germany – first saw the potential and promise of a free world.

Now the chancellor of Germany, Merkel says freedom can only flourish with international cooperation aimed at making the world safer, cleaner and more economically stable.

"Freedom and solidarity and partnership belong together," Merkel told a capacity crowd at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Thursday after being introduced by President Emeritus Gerhard Casper. "They must be indivisible for us to be able to master the challenges ahead."

But Merkel's speech – the only one she delivered during a four-day trip to the United States – showed that those alliances often come at a cost. Speaking hours after four German troops were killed in fighting in Afghanistan, Merkel expressed her condolences while calling the war a "mission that guarantees our freedom and security."

"It is a sad experience for us in Germany," she said. "It is an experience we share with you in the United States."

With polls showing the war becoming increasingly unpopular in Germany, Merkel said she accepts and respects "doubts" about whether the conflict is necessary or right. But her commitment to fighting the war is unwavering.

She told the audience at Dinkelspiel that the fallout of the international financial crisis "will be with us for a long time to come." But strengthening global trade agreements, steering away from protectionism and bolstering innovation will put financial markets back on the right course, she said.

European financial woes are a volatile topic in Germany right now. The country has offered to pitch in about $11 billion for a Greek economic rescue package, a move that has sparked criticism of Merkel's government.
The bailout poses a serious political risk, as Merkel’s political party faces regional elections in Germany's biggest state on May 9. The party of Christian Democrats must win in order to maintain its majority in the Bundesrat, parliament's upper house.

Merkel did not directly address the Greek economic situation during her speech, but she did stress the need for countries to work together and share responsibility for strengthening the world's financial future.
"We need a new global financial architecture," she said. "We need rules that prevent a whole community of nations from being damaged because individuals have made mistakes."

She said the players behind the world's largest markets have to take an interest in emerging economies and "sit down and reflect together with them" how to establish a strong and prosperous global economy.

A scientist by training, Merkel earned a doctorate in physics and worked as a chemist at a scientific academy in East Berlin. While she was a student, Stanford "was just a far, far-away scientific paradise unreachable from behind the Iron Curtain." And when the Berlin Wall came down, she found herself pulled to a life of politics.

But first, she and her husband celebrated their newfound freedom by doing what they had long dreamed of. They visited California. The chancellor reminisced about the trip as she concluded her speech at Dinkelspiel, standing in front of a backdrop displaying Stanford's German motto: Die Luft der Freiheit weht.

The wind of freedom blows.

Jonathan Rabinovitz contributed to this report.