Conflict and Cultural Destruction: Why Totalitarian Regimes Seek to Destroy Historical Memory
Evoking memory of the Nazi onslaught on cultural icons, the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan statues and ISIS's pillaging of pre-Islamic sites has horrified contemporary observers and raised new concerns about the ways certain regimes seek to destroy historical memory. This expert panel will analyze the causes and broader consequences of demolishing culture and heritage and the challenges it poses in today’s world.
Overview
Evoking memory of the Nazi onslaught on cultural icons, the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan statues and ISIS's pillaging of pre-Islamic sites has horrified contemporary observers and raised new concerns about the ways certain regimes seek to destroy historical memory. At the same time, new narratives of cultural persistence and survival are emerging, such as Romanian efforts in the Cold War to circumvent censorship through theatre, or contemporary ways to counter hardline censorship of Persian literature in Iran. This expert panel will analyze the causes and broader consequences of demolishing culture and heritage and the challenges it poses in today’s world.
The panel will be followed by the opening of an art exhibition entitled “Last Folio: A Photographic Memory,” which documents books and buildings of cultural significance destroyed in Slovakia during the Holocaust. A short film documenting the origins of this exhibition will open the discussion at 4:30pm.
C-SPAN video coverage of the event is available here.
Speakers
Cristina A. Bejan
Executive Director, Bucharest Inside the Beltway
Peter Black
Deborah Lehr
Azar Nafisi
Christian F. Ostermann
Woodrow Wilson Center
Hosted By
Global Europe Program
The Global Europe Program is focused on Europe’s capabilities, and how it engages on critical global issues. We investigate European approaches to critical global issues. We examine Europe’s relations with Russia and Eurasia, China and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Our initiatives include “Ukraine in Europe” – an examination of what it will take to make Ukraine’s European future a reality. But we also examine the role of NATO, the European Union and the OSCE, Europe’s energy security, transatlantic trade disputes, and challenges to democracy. The Global Europe Program’s staff, scholars-in-residence, and Global Fellows participate in seminars, policy study groups, and international conferences to provide analytical recommendations to policy makers and the media. Read more
Middle East Program
The Wilson Center’s Middle East Program serves as a crucial resource for the policymaking community and beyond, providing analyses and research that helps inform US foreign policymaking, stimulates public debate, and expands knowledge about issues in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Read more
History and Public Policy Program
The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs. Read more
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