On Languages and Academic Expertise

Languages are not my direct field of study, but I am regularly facing decisions that involve a choice of a language or another. The linguistic diversity was part of my everyday life as a child and reached complex levels of development later in the day, once faced with life and professional contexts.

My area of expertise has to do with Central and Eastern Europe and for my PhD I had to refresh and improve my knowledge of Hungarian, a language that I used to speak as a child, but that was relatively neglected once I left the linguistic realm where this language was spoken. Although I had the chance to do interviews and field work in another language than the Hungarian, being able to go directly to the sources and being familiar with a certain mindset helped me tremendously to grasp the chore ideas for my research.

For various professional reasons, once I was extremely interested in a specific geographical area, I realize how important it is to have direct access to sources of the everyday life, such as media but also to be able to communicate with people directly in their mother tongue. 

Time is limited and life priorities might be completely other than to spend your time learning a new language every couple of months or so. However, if you want to succeed in your professional assignments, linguistic knowledge is key.

Once upon a time I had for a short time the experience of the diplomatic service. Unfortunatelly, not all of the diplomats I met were able to set a conversation in the language of the country they were assigned to. Those were the worse and the most inefficient parts of the diplomatic corps. Except the information exchanged over a plate with canapés they were unable to understand too much from the complexity of the countries they were working to. They depended on mediated information, on translators and most of their time was spent in offices, reading second hand information.

For the academic research, such a lack of linguistic knowledge creates serious credibility gaps. Big academic centers such as Georgetown University for instance, require as part of the academic preparadness spending a significant amount of time learning a new language, or even more. As many as you need in order to properly understand your topics. 

True is also that the complex academic and political life require permanent adaptations and switches of topics. During the Cold War, the knowledge of Russian was mandatory for most of the political scientists and diplomats dipatched on the red part of the Iron Curtain. The Balkan Wars and the Balkans in general turned into the mainstream topic of actuality, therefore many of the academics were faced with the challenge of learning the local languages in the area. Since 11/9, learning Arabic in order to understand the Middle East is mandatory, as most of the funding is generally directed for researches pertaining to this area. Chinese or Persian are also top linguistic priorities.

During an active academic lifetime, an academic might need nowadays to change more than once his or her area of study. However, if he or she wants really to be considered a reliable academic, taking such a challenge is very important. The capacity of having a direct access to sources, both human and of academic and scientific nature, is a guarantee of credibility. Learning a new language nowadays is so easy, by using various online tools and apps. You can do it at the convenience of your home and with minimal investment. But, if you really want to be considered yourself an expert, you have to do it. It is a guarantee of credibility and respect towards your domain and the people that although they have lesser visibility, might have a much better graps of the reality because they speak the language.

A language means more than the knowlege of a couple of words or grammar structure, but it confers direct access to a mindset and a way  of thinking. No translation could provide this.

Book Review: Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran, by Laura Secor

What man can do to man for the sake of ideologies, religion or just because he have been given the power to do so it's inimaginable. I've read about the Gulag experiences, about what happened during the Shoah, about the Chinese Revolution or the Latin American dictatorships. Also, extensively about the fate of individuals sent to Evin prison in Iran, especially during the so-called 'Green Revolution' (I would avoid to use the word 'revolution' without brackets as, actually, nothing really changed after those events). Hobbes' 'Homo homini lupus' sounds like a very elegant description of what fellow man can inflict to another creature.

Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran by Laura Secor is a dramatic bloody account of the post-revolutionary intellectual history of Iran. Very often, the stories about intellectual influences - both local and foreign - are interrupted by accounts of terrible beatings and torture. 

The author gathered the information during around ten years of visits in Iran, extensive study of various local sources and contacts with local intellectuals both in the country and abroad. It is not sure if she speaks Farsi as well. Secor is familiar with post-Yugoslavia which was a complex political and ethnic structure, but I don't think it applies to the complexities and intricacies of the Iranian political and religious system.

A great merit of this book is that it traced admirably the sources of knowledge that made the intellectual history of Iran, as well as the genesis of the ideas and the translations of various Western/European contexts into the local ideological web. This is one of the most facinating part of the history of mentalities, because during the 'longue durée' of the adaptation the original ideas can be completely redefined and acquire a completely new sense. In the cases approached in the book, for instance, Heidegger - a chore atheist - was adapted to some local versions of Islam - particulary the concepts of 'truth' and being', while Popper was very popular among those looking to adapt the 'open society concepts' to a mix of Islam and Marxist (Popper was originally a marxist but his major works were a permanent dispute with this ideology). Hannah Arendt considerations about the French Revolution and the role of terror in the revolutionary practice was used as a compedium of understanding the post-revolutionary Iran. The fact that theological seminaries curricula include extensive study of Plato and Aristotle might offer an interesting topic of research for a further mapping of various interpretations in different centers of religious knowledge, in Qom and in other places. 

Intellectual histories and changes of mind among people that played political roles at certain moments are as well interesting. The perceptions are part of specific contexts. For instance Mir Hossein Mousavi considered a 'reformist' used to be a couple of decades ago a strong supporter of exporting the Islamic revolution abroad.

But the intellectual reception and interpretations are taking place in a landscape bordered by extensive violence and secrecy. 

Proeminent intellectuals continue to be the direct victims of various changes and conflicts of power among the layers of the establishment. Critical voices are made redundant after forced to sign and pronounce public denunciations of their works and of their colleagues. The idea of dissent and intellectual uniqueness, so vital to creating ideas are compromised. I witnessed myself such processes and extensively encountered such terrible stories during my communist childhood and post-communist coming of age. It's terrible for the credibility of intellectuals as such, and it only serves long term the pervert aims of the ideologues. They win on the long term because the intellectuals lost their credibility, by the simple fact that they were put to prison and forced to confess. It's part of the horrible destiny of the dictatorships and especially in a country with such a huge intellectual potential as Iran it definitely diminishes the chances of in-depth, long-term democratic change.

Although the author doesn't discuss extensively the repercursions of the mixture between religious interpretations and political pressure as such, there are a lot of ideas to think about such aspects too, especially from the point of view of the dangers of theocracies. What happened in Iran - and can easily happen everywhere where religious leaders were given the right to decide in political and social matters - is that the everyday relationships and interactions are defined and punished based on a religious code. 'Under the Islamic Republic draconian moral code, nearly every Iranian was guilty of something that could carry a prison  sentence: extramarital sex, drinking, even shaking hands with members of the opposite sex. What had begun as a religious imperative had become little more than a system of universal blackmail. The right information could afford an interrogator a good deal of leverage over a political prisoner'. Therefore, not only the trust in the intellectuals is eroded, but also the normal trust between humans is for ever compromised. 

Change is hard to endeavour and cannot be long-term without the contributions of those people who loved so much the country but were forced to go out. But once those people will be in, most probably they will live the drama of being rejected or the facts that were associated with various episodes of their lives will compromise an eventual political destiny in a new context. 

Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran is a good start for understanding intellectual journeys as well as some terrible personal histories of both intellectuals and everyday Iranians (after many years when I've read about it from accounts of some of the people mentioned in the book, the stories about stoning continue to haunt me deeply). It has the merit of creating a different level of discussion that doesn't focus on political and international frictions but goes into the deep roots of the post-revolutionary Iran. It is a welcomed spin that requires though more and more discussion and reflection. 

Rating: 4 stars  

On Academic Arrogance (again)

It is such an awesome thing that nowadays, academics are using in an increase number social media. In just a couple of words, they can share their latest researches, connect with researchers and aspiring academics interested in their line of work and eventually start substantial collaborations in real life.

But clearly, social media in the academic field has, as in the case of many other circumstances, a two-edge: if used wisely it can be a very useful tool advancing knowledge - regardless the domain, but it can also be a self-reproducing tool of stereotypes, intolerance and non-sense.

A couple of hours ago, someone tweeted on a topic I am not academically qualified - although it pertains to my area of study, which is about ethnic minorities and intellectual representations in Central and Eastern Europe, but that happens to know as a fact of life. It was about the Yiddish culture and language. The respective tweet was complaining that as the number of Yiddish native speakers is diminishing, the language itself is entering a threatening stage. The quoted article was referring though to a very intellectual version of Yiddish, promoted by YIVO, which mostly relies to the intellectual works done in this language, like the works of Shalom Aleihem or other known Yiddishists.

However, I have a good news and a bad news. Although the literary, intellectual production in the Yiddish language decreases, the language is not dying at all. Rather the opposite. There are thousands of children born in the US, Europe - Belgium and France mostly - and Israel whose first language it Yiddish. Part of very strict religious groups - like for instance the Satmer - they are using the language in a very active way, in their specific variants - Hungarian, Lithuanian etc.. They do not write literature - yet, but think about those children who once growing up will probably decide to not be religious anymore but they keep the language and might want to write first in their mother tongue. 

I bet - and I hope I am wrong - the academics involved in the discussion about the dying status of Yiddish are not familiar -in a direct, non-academic way - to those realities, never actually spoke with someone belonging to this group and if there are not some academic references about the topic, they will never actually figure out such people really exist.

I am often faced with such discrepancies between the realities of the academic worlds and life. The arrogance and self-referential attitude which ignores anything coming from 'non-expert' - probably a bunch of 5 people spending their time reading everything on the topic but with a very narrow interest in checking the facts - as such an approach is depreciativelly qualified as 'journalistic' creates the premises of false projections. When you are talking about a language in danger, the measures that might come to mind, if not connected to a reality on the ground, will not help in any respect.

Personally, I will not cease to balance the intensive academic research and reading with direct contact with the 'subjects' I am about to study. For the preparation of my PhD I've spent an impressive amount of time talking with people, learning and speaking their languages, understanding their education system and their mindset, instead of relying exclusively on academic approaches. It helped me to understand the conundrum of the mentality, the eventual evolutions as well as the patterns. Such an attitude keeps me busy enough to avoid both in real life and through social media self-sufficient academics. 

Let's Have a lit' bit of Middle East Fun

The academic summer vacations are around the corner and it is about time to have a little bit of relaxing time. Yes, I know I am vane and a serious academic never ever relax as there are always 15,000 pages to be read out of which one may write a concise 1,200 words article. Life is way too serious for an academic but still, if you are a hedonist - as this humble writer - you might need a bit of funny take of things because everything is becoming dramatically serious.

Where else can you find inspiration, especially nowadays, if not in the Middle East, that area 'between Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Turkey and the British Museum'? Karl ReMarks collected some thoughts and tweets about the region, added some images too - it does good to the overall impression and published a book with the impressive title: 'And then god created the Middle East and Said ''Let there be breaking news'''.

I remember how the Balkans were so popular a couple of years ago because there were so many conflicts and minorities and names impossible to pronounce. Once peace settled no one really cares about them. The Middle East never disappoints and it seems to always provide that necessary dose of excitement the West is so much keen about, as long as it is far far away from its borders. No worries, said the writer, 'regions of the world were competing to host the apocalypse and the Middle East won'. 

It's so much irony and sarcasm in those couple of pages - the book is unfortunatelly too short. Like this line: 'For an Arab to be fluent in English: write a PhD. For a Westerner to be fluent in Arabic: order lunch'. But if you know exactly the situation this joke might have a good percentage of truth and it is not necessarily good. Keep the information for later though and get the best of fun while keeping reading the rest. And get ready for some additional notes after reading that other line: 'While Khalil Gibran is famous in the West for its writing, in Lebanon he is famous for getting an American visa on his first attempt'.

You see, the world looks different if you see it from the left or from the right and there is so much drama unfolding that needs your academic attention - for writing tens of article no one will really read them further but anyway, you need to offer yourself a reason to be academically alive.  Such books bring a little bit of fun into life, in-between some scary news about wars and the increase of oil prices. 

It's worth to keep yourself entertained for half an hour or so. The apocalypse can wait a little bit and if it is still about to happen, why not welcome it with a big smile on your face.

Who Are the MeK?

In the current discussion regarding the situation in Iran, which is becoming more heated than based on logical, political and strategical arguments - on any sides, the name of the MeK - Mujahedin-e Khalq (in English, the People's Holy Warriors) appears more often that it might be. A controversial movement, with barely any support within Iran, based on a bizarre mixture of Marxism and Islam, with clear cultish orientation, MeK invested an enormous amount of money in being taken from the list of terrorist organisations (during Obama administration) and nowadays, found its voice amplified through Pres. Trump's lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani, or the staunch supporter of bombing Iran, at any price, John Bolton. 

If people like Giuliani and Bolton are far from being naive and their participation to events in support of MeK is handsomely rewarded, there is a certain naive approach among people that all their life lived in democracies regarding who really are the 'freedom fighters'. It happened often during the Cold War, when people escaping communist states presented themselves as 'alternatives' to different dictatorships, told some moving half-truth stories about their persecutions and the role in building up a possible opposition, took the money and lived well ever after. In the case of MeK, less known is the cultish aspects of the ideological commitment. 

A couple of years ago, the prestigious RAND Corporation prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense a report about MeK in Iraq, which covers not only specific details regarding the then presence of MeK in this country -which they supported during the decade war against Iran - but also information about the elements of the cult. A welcomed reading for those who want to understand this group and have a well-informed opinion about this part of the world.
PS: Some of the MeK members were trained in the PLO camps in Jordan and Lebanon.

Against Labels

Don't Label Me by Irshad Manji is not an academic book in the very strict, elitist sense of the world. Rather a collection of thoughts and ideas about diversity, race, gender and their enemies, told as a dialogue between the author and her dog - a choice that it doesn't necessarily resonate with my academic/writing style - it analyses through examples and personal experiences the impact of stereotypes and ready-made ideas. 

Based on cultural, gender and personal history experiences, we are rather tempted to operate with labels than with open identifications. We don't have time, we don't trust our judgement and the challenges of new situations. Therefore, it is much better to apply the label used for a community to the entire sum of the individuals it is made of. It is also safe, as human nature is rather tempted towards the familiar than to the unusual and original - be it in ideas, feelings or personalities.

Irshad Manji is not stranger to controversy. Pledging for a reform of Islam, without placing herself on an atheist position, she is a person of faith that rejects dogmatism. In an approach that involves knowledge and empathy, the author demonstrates that labels - that are 'never innocent' - can be avoided following a careful deconstruction. A life where the use of labels is minimal is a life where individuals are free to be read and express themselves because once someone is instantly assigned a specific box of features, they 'involuntarily' turn into an 'avatar of other people's projections'. 'When one let labels stand in for people, we end up manipulating people. Our shared humanity, along with our distinctive individuality loses out'. 

When it comes to multiculturalism, the risk is to prefer to use the label(s) in order to designate the diversity, labels that, in fact, ignore the specificities and individual character threats. Therefore, the terms turns to be just another label which operates against the supposed openness it is aimed to represent. 'A society that revels in multiculturalism resembles a room full of folks buzzinh around with identity cards stuck to their foreheads. The first thing you see is their labels'. 

Thus, if one wants to really start a social change in terms of identity and openness towards the other, one should start with difficult dialogues about the concepts easily used without a proper critical feedback. Listening shall be a faculty used in order to understand and analyse not to win over arguments. At the end of the process, changing the mind is a state of mind and it cannot be done without a proper openness about it. 

Although the book is not stuffed with theories and critical approaches, it is guided by critical thinking, a character feature that is unfortunatelly absent sometimes from the academic discussions, as often limited to pledging pro or against a theory, based on dogmatic perspectives. 

Rating: 3.5 

About The Epigenetics Revolution

Reading a scientific book out of your academic comfort zone might be a half-way challenge, but deciding to write about it is a complex and not always successful endeavour. For a number of very specific personal reasons, I am very interesting in epigenetics and the challenges that this branch of science brought to the field of genetics and biology. Clear observations and analysis are bringing a dramatic change of scientific perspective to this domain.

Why out of two identical twins, only one developed schizofrenia? At what extent the food shortages experienced by a mother during pregnancy are influencing the weight and eventual eating disorder of the teen or adult? How is trauma integrated into the genetic code?

Some of those questions are extensively answered in The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey. Although it approaches a very complicated topic, not so easy to 'translate' into a mundane, popular language, the author maintains a certain balance in terms of vocabulary and affordability. It doesn't mean that you can understand the book and its topics without a minimal to advanced knowledge about modern biology, genetics and DNA structure. For those not necessarily familiar with the topic and the terminology, I recommend to read especially Chapter 12, which is relatively easy to approach by someone with a basic scientific background.

Most of the results exposed in the book are based on extensive research and experiments using rats, but also studies on various genetical diseases or evolution of a specific pattern from mother to child. At a very great extent: 'Events that take place in the first three months of development, a stage when the foetus is very small, can affect an individual for the rest of their life'. However, the epigenetics demonstrated that cells can change metabolically and specific internal or external - for instance, smoking, stress, pollution - can distort the genetic narrative. Some areas are resistant to reprogramming, but trigger events have the potential of reproducing DNA patterns that were actually passive, in stand-by. Sometimes, a trauma underwent by the child is enough to cause 'an ateration in gene expression in the brain, which is generated or maintained (or both) by epigenetic mechamisms. These epigenetically mediated abnormalities in gene expression predispose adults to increase risk of mental illness'. It is not a cause-effect trigger however and the multiple environmental, social and family influences can avoid the actualization of the mental illness.

I've pesonally found the book very interested from both the scientific and human point of view and most probably will use the knowledge I've built by reading this book for further reading in this fascinating topic.

Rating: 4 stars