Sunday, October 22, 2017

Bridges to nowhere

When I looked at the website of the project Knowledge Bridges Between Poland, Britain and Europe, which ran during the academic year 2016-17 at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford European Studies Centre, I found nothing that I could identify as significant from my perspective. This is a program aimed at preservation of an essentially Communist/Russian narrative. Important questions are not asked.

The opening sentence of introduction to that program reads

"Nearly 30 years after its democratic breakthrough, Poland poses a puzzling and fascinating case for scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists."

This sentence is indicative of a very deep, fundamental failure in the study of this region of Europe. Unfortunately U of Oxford is not alone in this failure.