To: Russia. With Love, the American Historical Association

Surprise, surprise! Censorship has once again reared its ugly head in Russia. Fortunately, this time the international historical community isn’t taking it lying down.

In May, the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitrii Medvedev, announced the creation of the Commission to Counteract Attempts at Falsifying History to Damage the Interests of Russia, a 28 member panel charged with investigating historical works and debate and determining whether or not they are harmful to the country’s reputation. Works found to be “unfavorable” to Russia are to be suppressed and those responsible for them may face criminal charges or fines. No specifics were given as to exactly what sort of “falsifications” the commission would be looking into.

Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of the commission is its makeup – of the 28 members, only 3 are historians (one archivist and 2 researchers). That means that the other 25 people responsible for categorizing historical works as “harmful” or “unfavorable” to Russia are bureaucrats and politicians. I’m sure that I’m not alone in questioning what qualifications those men and women who have been appointed by the government have to judge the merit of historical debates and pass judgement on those that take part in them.

Further, anyone who feels strongly about the freedoms of speech, thought and expression will likely take issue with this blatant attempt at censorship. In fact, historians both in Russia and abroad were quick to express their discontent with the new initiative. In the United States, Arnita Jones, executive director of the American Historical Association (AHA), has responded to the commission’s creation by writing an open letter to President Medvedev. In the letter (a link to which can be found here), she implores the president to reconsider the commission and support free and open debate amongst the members of the historical community. She argues (quite eloquently, I think) that:

"Any limitation on freedom of research or expression, however well intentioned, violates a fundamental principal of scholarship: that the researcher must be able to investigate any aspect of the past and to report without fear what the evidence reveals."

The AHA’s position on Medvedev’s commission is clear – it impedes intellectual freedom, seeks to influence the course of historical research and fosters an environment in which dissent, and therefore debate, are unwelcome. Since all of these conditions are intolerable, the commission must be disbanded.

Personally, I find the most interesting facet of the AHA’s argument against the commission to be one that I had not previously perceived as a connected issue – they have linked their stance on the commission with their stance on criminalizing Holocaust denial. While the AHA vehemently opposes the work of Holocaust deniers (as do I, just for the record), they do support their right to conduct research and enter into scholarly debate on the topic without fear of legal repercussions.

This is a fascinating argument. I have never questioned the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals have consistently found against Holocaust deniers. In fact, in the past these decisions have made me proud to be a citizen in a country that has taken a stand against what I see to be both ludicrous and hateful claims. However, the more that I consider it, the more I believe that the AHA might have it right. If we, in Canada, make certain interpretations of historical evidence related to the Holocaust illegal, how soon before we make similar restrictions against other topics? How soon before we move from criminalizing only truly hateful claims to the point where we start restricting historical debate on topics that are only mildly distasteful or tarnishing to Canada's reputation? Where do you draw the line? And, perhaps more to the AHA's point -- who should draw that line?

I worry about the work that this commission will do. It seems to me that it’s a pretty slippery slope from attempting to suppress the out-and-out fiction to calling something fiction so that you can get away with suppressing it.

Tweet at Me, I Dare Ya...

Ok, I’m a nerd. I fully and freely admit this fact. I love school. I love history. And, as my time in Korea comes to a close (30 days and counting!), I find myself more and more excited for my next big adventure – the Public History MA program at the University of Western Ontario.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the requirements of the digital history course that I’ll be taking in September is that students keep a blog related to issues of public history. It should be pretty apparent by now that I’ve embraced that part of the course wholeheartedly. Most days I have no shortage of topics that I’d like to discuss or reflect upon. But, when I sat down at my computer today to make a long overdue post, my mind was suddenly blank; the few half-formed thoughts floating around in my brain refused to become fully formed. What to discuss?

Eventually I turned to the current crop of Public History students and their blogs, hoping for a little inspiration. Sadly, when I arrived at the Digital History page today I found that Dr. Turkel had updated it since my last visit and that the links to past blogs had been removed! I was stumped for a moment. But, as I read the updated schedule for September and all of the notes about different course components, I realized that the inspiration for today’s blog was part of the update – not only would we be required to maintain a blog this year, but we’d also be responsible for creating and utilizing a Twitter account as part of an effort to “experiment with new forms of interaction and learning.”

I have to be honest. My initial reaction went a little something like this: Twitter? Really?! Isn’t Twitter mainly home to celebrities who think you care about every waking minute of their lives and businesses trying to use “the next big thing” on the internet to promote their products and increase their bottom lines? How can it possibly be useful to me?

Twitter’s homepage claims that it is a social networking tool that acts as “a modern antidote to information overload,” but I see it as being the exact opposite. I really don’t need to know when my friends or peers are eating a bagel, watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 or contemplating the meaning of life (unless, of course, they find the answer).

It’s strange, but I never would have questioned it had Dr. Turkel suggested that the Public History students use a group page on Facebook to discuss issues that arise in class, scheduling for group projects or to arrange social gatherings. I’ve used Facebook in similar ways in the past and it has worked out amazingly well. But, I’m finding it hard to wrap my head around how a social networking tool that relies solely on 140 character status updates can be helpful to my learning process. At least with Facebook you can supplement your status updates with a slew of other practical (and some not-so-practical) features.

That said, perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to write Twitter off completely. Maybe the importance of Twitter is not in how I will use it (as a student of public history), but in how others use will use it. If you think about it, Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social networking sites that have blossomed in the last two decades are constantly changing what we consider to be primary documents. Records of internet activity, be it Facebook posts, Tweets, emails or chat room histories have almost become to current generations what journals and letters were to past generations. Who knows, maybe the big news in the future will be about how Facebook or Twitter can make or break a career, or how a political debate on YouTube was more influential to voters than the televised one. Maybe in a few years historians will even be citing Tweets or Wall-to-Wall messages in the footnotes of their books about our next great public figure.

Until then, however, you can "follow" me on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/ccaughell.