First Meeting of the CIH Reading Group!

Our first meeting officially occurred yesterday. Discussion began with a focus on determining the purpose of the reading group - which is meant to stimulate dialogue with people in the field of scholar emigration history. Collaboration between researchers with similar interests who read similar materials will enable a fruitful discourse and hopes of international research projects in the future.

Our first meeting was convened by Aleksandra Loewenau, who gave a detailed discussion of a chapter from U. Deichmann (1995) Biologists under Hitler. We read the first chapter - "The Expulsion and Emigration of Scientists, 1933-1939" - which focused on the experience of scholars under national socialism in Germany. It was interesting to read about the problems many non-Jewish scholars also had with job loss and persecution due to their political leanings.

The chapter highlighted how much state control there was over academic institutes - and how this impacted the jobs of scientists and other scholars at the time. With the introduction of the Civil Service Act - which was soon expanded into the academic community - many Jewish and left wing academics lost their positions or were forced out.

This chapter was especially strong in quantitative research. Deichmann provided excellent statistics on emigration and the types of positions affected. It was noted in discussion however than a more nuanced understanding of the international perspective would have been useful. The international job market had a significant impact on German doctors and the positions available for academics were quite limited. This highlights a need for more work done on Canada and the Americas - to highlight questions that impacted these scholars. The current literature is highly individualized, usually autobiographies or works that focus on one scholar. But in order to access the refugee scholar experience we need to ask – how many of these people have had their experience defined by being a refugee? What was the experience of non-Jewish vs Jewish academics? Which places were easier to get to based on religion? How do the experiences of these individuals fit into a larger history of women, or intellectualism, or refugees?

These questions will be considered in our future meetings!

Exciting News! The Émigré Project has expanded beyond our little group into a larger collaborative project. Dr. Paul Stortz, who researches the intellectual history of Canadian universities and academic institutes has begun to collaborate on our project by focussing on émigré professors who came to North America during 1932-1950. His researcher nicely coincides with our project, as many of our scholars worked in academia in some form or another.

Dr. Stortz has just applied for a grant from the Calgary Institute of Humanities to help organize a collaborative reading group for our project. The hope is that such a grant will enable the individuals involved to read secondary literature on the subject of forced migration and academic culture. A reading group will enable us to meet once a month to discuss this literature, confer, and conceptualize the many facets of the project.

Such a reading group is an interdisciplinary one at its core. It is hoped that through further readings and discussion we can gain the tools we need to tease out the four main goals of the project:

1- Who these scholars were and their personal experiences of being forced out of Europe.
2- Their experiences of emigrating and the associated personal and professional upheaval they faced.
3- Their personal and professional experiences once they got to Canada, the United States, or (of interest to Dr. Stortz and Dr. Weindling) England.
4- (and most importantly) How they impacted the scientific culture of universities and scientists in their new countries.

The grant Dr. Stortz is applying for is a small one, with hopes for enough to provide a bit of refreshment during our reading group meetings and perhaps to allow us to bring in one speaker for a lecture on the topic. Dr. Stortz has currently planned five reading group meetings and already tracked down the relevant reading material for discussion! Most meetings will focus on either a specific émigré or a group of people.
Here's to hoping that the funding comes through - every academics’ wish!

- Paula