Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies

Antony Polonsky Tribute, June 21st, 2021

Arlene and Antony Polonsky on Zoom during the tribute.

A special tribute to Antony Polonsky took place on June 21st, 2021 via Zoom. Antony made a speech at the tribute. Please see below for his remarks.

Friends, Fellow Scholars and Students,

I am very touched, moved and humbled by this tribute and by the very generous accounts of my work and teaching which have been expressed today. I should like most deeply to thank all those involved in organizing this event, above all my students Monika Rice and Karen Auerbach, of whose work I am very proud and Eugene Sheppard, whom I was at least partially responsible for recruiting to NEJS and who has been a wonderful colleague and a fine scholar, teacher and administrator.

I should like also to express my deep thanks and love to my children, Leah and Jake and their spouses, Adam and Katerina for their constant support and love and also to my wonderful grandchildren, Josh, Ben, Reuben and Ellen. Above all, I should like to express my profound debt to my wife Arlene. Without her constant support, encouragement, constructive criticism and love, I could never have accomplished any part of what I have achieved. I fell in love with her at first sight and still feel the same love I felt in the back of Steve Gallup’s convertible in Oxford more than 58 years ago.

One of the advantages to a historian who has lived as long as I have is that one has seen the world changing in front of you. One has seen history in action. In my professional life and in my political involvements, I have been preoccupied with three transitions, the transition from apartheid to majority rule in South Africa, the transition from communism to a market economy and a plural political system in Poland and the attempt to achieve a compromise between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine. In the first decade of the twentieth century, it seemed that the first two had been successfully achieved and that there was a real hope of making progress even on the third. These hopes have been seriously undermined in the last decade, above all by the rise of an illiberal populism which threatens to undermine pluralistic and open politic systems and rejects democratic values.

The rise of populism has a number of roots. In the first place, it is a reaction against the Reagan and Thatcher era marketization and globalization from the 1970s. In East-central Europe, it is identified by a distaste for those who have profited from the introduction of market reforms after the collapse of communism in the area and with the belief that the former communist rulers of these countries still exert a major influence on political life. It is also linked with a stress on the value of national identity and national values. Everywhere—from Trump’s America to Kaczyński’s Poland and Bolsonaro’s Brazil— it is a reaction against “liberal elites” that are perceived by their critics as lacking in patriotism or any understanding of national values. Linked with this has been the panic fear of immigration and its associated xenophobia. It is also clear that the new legitimacy enjoyed by authoritarian regimes— from Putin’s Russia to Xi’s China—has undermined the attractiveness of the liberal democratic model in much of the developing world.

The rise of populism has been accompanied by an attack on history as a scholarly discipline, which reflects a clash between two views of society. One sees society as made up of different and often competing groups in which understandings of the past may differ and in which a reckoning with the negative aspects of the national history is necessary for building a pluralistic, outward looking and tolerant polity. It sees the nation as something which emerged in particular circumstances and whose identity can change over time. The other view is centered on the nation and the community of which is supposed to embody, which is seen as primordial and transcending the transient individuals of which it is comprised.  As Pierre Nora has argued, this can be framed as a conflict between history and memory. In the Polish case, this is why history is vitally important for ruling Prawo i Sprawiedliwość party (PiS—Law and Justice), for which it is, in the words of the historian Brian Porter-Szücs,  “the biography of the national community and the source of the traditions and values that hold everything together.” The issue here is not historical truth as such; instead, history is important because it is the “long-range…foundation of the state.”  It is those stories that a community tells and retells in order to establish a bond between generations and to teach young people what “we” believe—one of those factors that must never be contested or debated. One can see the same conflict over what should be taught in the schools about the troubled relations between whites and blacks in the United States and in the United Kingdom over how to evaluate our imperial past—should Rhodes fall?.

It must be stressed that there is considerable common ground between these two understandings of how history should be written and it is important not to demonize the historians of whom one disapproves. There is a role both for a patriotic history which celebrates the achievements of the nation and for one which also points out the mistakes and wrongdoings committed in the past. In dealing with these difficult problems, we need to base our work above all on the careful use of primary material. Governments should understand that these are complex issues. Although official support for historical study is to be welcomed, this is best carried out in universities and academic research bodies, independent of direct state intervention. Just as truth is the first casualty in war, so complexity is the first casualty in historical wars.

Above all we need to assert the value of scholarly history and the critical analysis of the past. More than ever we must stress the value of a nuanced, archival-based and dispassionate account of the difficult and disputed problems of the past. This is the type of history which I have tried to practice and I am proud that my students have also done so in an impressive way. It will not be easy to overcome populism. We cannot assume that there is a “Gresham’s law” in historical scholarship—that good history will drive out the bad. Yet historical scholarship of this type is a vital element in the preservation of democracy, to which we are all committed. It is up to you to carry on this task and I am confident you will do so.