Letter of support for Jan Grabowski

On June 7, 2017, the Polish League Against Defamation (Fundacja Reduta Dobrego Imienia - Polska Liga Przeciw Zniesławieniom) sent an official statement to the University of Ottawa and other institutions in the United States and Europe in order to discredit the work of historian Dr. Jan Grabowski. The letter, signed by Polish academics who have no connection to the subject at hand (ironically, none is a historian), accuses the professor of history of “defaming the Polish nation.” Dr. Grabowski’s research focuses on violence perpetrated by ethnic Poles on their Jewish co-citizens during the Holocaust, and the Polish league claims that his research is flawed.

It would appear that a letter written by 150 academics – most of them affiliated with engineering and science departments – instructing a scholar in the humanities about “acceptable” lines of historical research belonged on an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Yet such are the desperate tactics of the Polish League Against Defamation. It should go without saying that in a free an open society, historical truth should be sought by uninhibited research and vigorous debate among scholars, not by threatening letter-writing campaigns. Unfortunately for the “good name” of the League, most readers will interpret such tactics as a mark of weakness, not strength.

There is an additional irony here. While the raison d'être for the League is the protection of “the good name of Poland” in the international arena, such attempts at censorship will have the unintended consequence of bringing Poland closer to the defensive posture of Turkey regarding the Armenian genocide of 1915. The historical comparison is certainly unfair, but such analogies will arise outside of Poland the more such campaigns are launched. If Poland’s “interests” must be considered here, these are certainly better served by free and unfettered research in a liberal society.

Since the election of Law and Justice government (PiS) in November 2015, intellectual integrity has been severely compromised in Poland. The authorities, with the help of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), have fired several historians, who did not share their vision of the national past. Among these the founders of the Museum of History of WWII in Gdańsk, Pawel Machciewicz. The Polish League Against Defamation, quite obviously shares the same vision, and tries to attack the work of a renowned historian trying to discredit his academic record.

This letter attacking Dr. Jan Grabowski is not only disrespectful to the professor’s work: it is an insult to research in the Humanities and a threat to the integrity of independent research. The Polish League Against Defamation, in this same letter, attacks several institutions that promote academic research, knowledge, and research integrity, among them Oxford and Harvard editions and Yad Vashem Institute. According to the League, these institutions lost their credibility when they published and awarded Jan Grabowski’s work. This is a clear attempt to interfere with research conducted within the university setting, and we won’t accept it.

Because we believe that research in the Humanities – this includes research on the Holocaust – should not be compromised by political groups of any kind,

Because we believe in intellectual integrity,

Because we believe in the freedom of independent research,

Because we believe that the university must remain a place of exchange and discussion and not a place where scholars could be threatened because of their research topic, we lend our support to Professor Jan Grabowski.

We ask that the Polish League Against Defamation detract its shameless statement (even if we understand that they will not), and we hope its signatories spare themselves additional embarrassment and protect their “good names” by abstaining from similar campaigns in the future.