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Is Political Science Producing Technically Competent Barbarians?

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Is Political Science Producing Technically Competent Barbarians? is political science producing technically competent barbarians? bo rothstein August Ro¨has chair in Political Science, Go¨teborg University, Box 711, SE 405 30 Go¨teborg, Sweden E-mail: [email protected] doi:10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210002 Abstract In a speech to the German Bundestag in 1998, the well-known Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer stressed the role of intellectual elites and especially university professors in making the Holocaust possible. To this, he added the question: ‘If we have indeed learnt anything, it is whether we do not still keep producing technically competent barbarians in our universities’. This article is a reflection on the implications of this question for present- day teaching and research in political science. Keywords holocaust; academics; political science; rational choice ACADEMICS AS on the Holocaust organised by the Swed- PERPETRATORS? ish government in Stockholm in January 2000. In his talk, Bauer tries to summar- ometimes when I read things, I ise the ‘state-of-the-art’ when it comes to come across an argument that explaining the Holocaust. S strikes me directly.1 It is the kind Yehuda Bauer is one of the most of formulation that instantly makes one established and respected researchers in think in a completely new and different this particular field. He has been the way. This time, it was something that Director of the Yad Vashem Research made me rethink what I do in my day-to- Institute, devoted to the Holocaust, in day work as a teacher of political science. Israel, and he has published some of the The argument is taken from the last most well-known books and articles in chapter of a truly magnificent book writ- this field (Bauer, 1996a,b; Bauer and ten by Professor Yehuda Bauer (2001), Keren, 2001). As a scholar, he has been entitled Rethinking the Holocaust, which at the centre of the remarkable resur- contains a lecture that Bauer gave to the gence of Holocaust research that has German Bundestag on 27 January 1998. taken place since the mid-1980s, not The same lecture was, I believe, also least as an editor of the journal, Holo- delivered later to the special conference caust and Genocide Studies. european political science: 4 2005 3 (3–13) & 2005 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/05 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps In the aforementioned chapter, Bauer middle class. This created a demand for tries to summarise what he has learnt scapegoats, one that the Nazis were from a lifetime devoted to the study of happy and eager to meet (Weiss, 1996; this huge and difficult topic. The starting Friedla¨nder, 1997). Still others, such as point is that there is no final explanation Daniel Goldhagen (1996), have pointed for the final solution, and there probably to the existence already during the nine- never will be. On the contrary, there is still teenth century of an eliminatory anti- a fierce debate over how the Holocaust semitism in German culture and ideology. should be explained, assuming it is pos- Here, individuals are merely ornamental, sible to explain it at all. Bauer, for his part, or, as Goldhagen put it when interviewed argues that, as with all other historical by Ron Rosenbaum: ‘If not Hitler, some- events, the Holocaust is, in principle, one elsey’ This implies that the German amenable to explanation (Bauer, 2001). culture of eliminationist anti-semitism An excellent overview of the many would have produced someone like Hitler, different explanations that have been had he not existed (if, for example, he had put forward is given by Ron Rosenbaum been killed in the trenches during the First (1998) in his fascinating book, Explaining World War). Finally, the Nestor among Hitler, in which Bauer is interviewed Holocaust scholars, Raul Hilberg, has together with many other well-known pointed to the importance of the German scholars in this field. Just to name a few: state’s bureaucratic machinery, even if psychologists have focused on Hitler ‘the Hilberg has always been careful to avoid person’ and have tried to find explana- explaining why the German bureaucratic tions in his psyche, pointing to the im- machinery, rather than its equivalents in portance of the mentality of this single other even more anti-semitic countries individual, or, as another well-known such as France, Poland and Russia, car- scholar in this field, Milton Himmelfarb, ried out the Holocaust (Hilberg, 1985). At has put it, ‘No Hitler – no Holocaust’. a conference, a couple of years ago where Political scientists and others have em- Goldhagen’s book was discussed, one of phasised the weakness of the Weimar his critics said that if someone in, say, constitution, which made it impossible to 1910, had had the possibility of predicting form stable majorities that could protect that the Holocaust would take place in the Weimar Republic. Sociologists and Europe, most historians would have said cultural theorists such as Zygmunt Bau- something like: ‘Well, there seems to be man have singled out modernity and the no limit to the horrors the French can tradition of the Enlightenment (in my bring about’. view one of the most bizarre explana- There is thus no end to the number of tions, in close competition with some of explanations given. At times, it seems as the psychological ones). Yet others, for if every discipline in the social sciences example historians such as John Weiss and humanities is mustering its own and Saul Friedla¨nder, have stressed the favourite theory as ‘the cause’. In fact, importance of the traumatic political ex- there seems to be no end to the number periences that Germany suffered after of causes that have been suggested in 1918, beginning with the military defeat attempts to explain this defining event of (which seems to have come as a great the twentieth century. However, as Hil- surprise to most Germans, thus giving berg (1996) writes, in his very sad book substance to the ‘stab-in-the-back’ about his life as a Holocaust scholar, he myth), the harsh terms of the Versailles was ignored for almost twenty-five years. treaty, and the subsequent deep econom- Hilberg published his masterpiece, The ic crisis that ruined large segments of the Destruction of the European Jews – a 4 european political science: 4 2005 technically competent barbarians book that is now in its fifth edition and ‘Political scientists and that no serious scholar in this field can neglect – in 1961. It is difficult to under- others have emphasised stand today, but there was simply no the weakness of the interest in Holocaust research until the Weimar constitutiony’ mid-1980s. It is telling that Hilberg could not find a university press that wanted to publish his book back in the 1960s. As ideology, which means that even if struc- Judith Sklar put it, The Destruction of the tural factors are important for explaining European Jews was simply published too the Holocaust (for example, the economic early (Hilberg, 1996: 134). However, crisis, the obedient and technically so- when Hilberg’s book was finally translated phisticated bureaucratic machinery and into German in the 1980s, he was invited so forth), these factors existed elsewhere to Germany again and again to give but did not produce anything similar to lectures and interviews. A new generation the Holocaust. But what struck me so of Germans had become deeply inter- forcefully is how Bauer (2001: 268) de- ested in one specific question. As Hilberg scribes what made these structural and writes, on the last page of his book, one ideological factors translate into murder- young German asked him after one of his ous action on such a massive and unique lectures, ‘But, why did we do it?’ scale: I am not a Holocaust researcher and I never will be. I am part of the reading The determining factor was that the public, the interested consumer of this layer of intellectuals – the academi- research and memorial industry. How- cians, the teachers, the students, the ever, I can personally testify to the lack bureaucrats, the doctors, the lawyers, of interest in this topic that once existed – the churchmen, the engineers – joined even among those whose families had the Nazi party because it promised been murdered in this tremendous cata- them a future and a status. Through strophe. the fast growing identification of the What Yehuda Bauer does in Rethinking intellectual layers with the regime, it the Holocaust is to give a fascinating became possible to have the genocide overview of this theoretical question: easily presented as an unavoidable step How can the Holocaust be explained? Or towards the achievement of a utopian more precisely, he tries to answer the future. When Herr Doctor, Herr Profes- following question: How was it possible sor, Herr Director, Herr Priest or Pastor, for people of a culture that lived in the Herr Engineer became collaborators midst of Europe, and that had developed with genocide, when a consensus one of the greatest civilisations ever, to evolved, led by the semi-mythological subscribe to such an ideology, to instigate figure of the dictator, it became easy to a war of annihilation because of it and to convince the masses and to recruit stick to it until the bitter end? He goes on them to carry out the murders. to analyse the complicated theoretical (y) and methodological questions in a mas- The major role in this was played by the terful way, also showing his immense universities, the academics. I keep empirical knowledge of this field. returning to the question of whether At this point, I have to deliver some bad we have indeed learnt anything, news.
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