History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation by Karina V. Korostelina & Simone Lässig

Author:Karina V. Korostelina & Simone Lässig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-135-10032-2
Publisher: Routledge

The Scholars' Initiative design

The Scholars' Initiative stemmed from the conviction that native historians and social scientists are best positioned to challenge the tendentious nationalistic narratives that have succeeded so well in dividing the peoples of Central Europe. But to do so, they would need to accomplish two tasks to which most are unaccustomed and with which they are even uncomfortable. First, they would have to join with scholars from across the successor states to craft a common narrative that exposes and discredits each belligerent's myths about the Yugoslav conflicts, while simultaneously inserting indisput able but inconvenient facts known to their former adversaries.

Second, they would need to reach out to the public by engaging media and, when possible, politicians willing to place at least one foot on the common platform that their own scholars have helped construct. If leaders from across the region's newly erected borders were to do likewise, they would take an important first step along the long road that begins with mutual recognition and ends with mutual reconciliation.

At first glance this ambitious agenda would appear to be a mission impossible. Indeed, a number of the SI's early supporters readily welcomed and contributed to the project, despite feeling that the magnitude of the task and of the obstacles it confronted would prevent it from succeeding. One reason for their initial pessimism was that they did not fully realize what the SI was not and need not be.

First, given the lack of time, cognitive distance and extramural funding, it could not pretend to undertake a significant amount of groundbreaking research. Nor did it need to, since so many of the most divisive myths and inconvenient facts are already well known to scholars on all sides of the region's newly created borders. There is, in fact, an enormous amount of published material avail able, including many hundreds of book-length accounts, memoirs and documentary compendia, thousands of scholarly articles and hundreds of thousands of pages of trial transcripts already released by the ICTY and various national courts. These sources alone enabled the SI's research teams to narrow the cognitive gap between peoples by simultaneously validating evidence and discrediting unfounded, proprietary myths through a combination of sober scholarship and sustained interaction with media and public officials. Although scholars may continue to argue over some issues for which there remains a dearth of documentation, most are finer points that are less well known or important to the general public.

Even if major disagreements remain, it is hardly necessary to resolve every controversy in the otherwise common narrative. After all, scholars always enjoy the latitude to admit to the insufficiency of evidence and the existence of multiple, divergent inferences. During the course of the project, team leaders were frequently reminded that it was not necessary to resolve every difference within their group, and that it was perfectly permissible to highlight the existence of two or more contradictory explanations or interpretations in their final report and to call for more research on the subject.

In identifying those areas

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