As exemplified by the recent election results from Sweden, immigration is one of the most important and heated topics of debate in contemporary Scandinavian society. Immigrants are accused of being unwilling to integrate and adopt Scandinavian cultural values and practices, while the countries themselves are often criticized for not realizing that they have, in fact, become multicultural. By comparison, Jewish immigration to Scandinavia is generally regarded as a success and a strategy for others to emulate. In her presentation, Vibeke Kieding Banik will highlight some key features of Scandinavian Jewish history (with a particular focus on Norway) and argue that the skepticism characterizing the current debate was also present when Jews were allowed to emigrate to Scandinavia, and especially during the arrival of Eastern European Jews in the early 1900s.

Vibeke Kieding Banik, a Norwegian national, received her PhD in history in 2009 from the University of Oslo, where she is currently affiliated as a part time lecturer. She teaches a course entitled "The Holocaust" and supervises and examines undergraduate and postgraduate students. Her research interests include gender studies, modern Jewish history and immigration, integration and identity in Scandinavia. During her Anna Lindh fellowship at The Europe Center, Vibeke will begin work on her new project, “Gendered integration? The Jewish Encounter with Scandinavia, 1900-1940."

Audio Synopsis:

Dr. Kieding Banik begins by outlining the historical context of the Jewish experience in Scandinavia. She describes how early Jewish immigrants faced a homogenous, largely Lutheran Scandinavian population with strong anti-Semitic prejudices, with Norway even banning Jewish immigration entirely until 1851, for fear Jews would "overflow" the country. Immigration in all parts of Scandinavia was greatly restricted between 1880 and the beginning of World War I, before and after which time Jews from Eastern Europe arrived in greater numbers, often en route to other destinations.

While by 1918 Jews had full legal rights in Scandinavia, the amount of assimilation of Jews into local society differed between countries. For example, Jews in Denmark demonstrated higher levels of cultural assimilation, and prominence in society, academia, politics and civil society than in Sweden or Norway.

Dr. Kieding Banik goes on to describe the challenges immigrants faced as they attempted to balance assimilation with their Jewish identity; the effects of the Holocaust on Jewish populations in Scandinavia; the response of established Jewish communities to new immigrants; and the differences of experience between present-day Jewish immigrants to Scandinavia and their predecessors.

A discussion session addresses issues such as: the reasons for variety in the Jewish experience between Scandinavian countries; how post-war attitudes changed to facilitate increased Jewish integration; the relationship ofJews to other immigrant groups in Scandinavia; and the level of assistance for immigrant groups in Scandinavia today.

Susie Linfield is author of The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (University of Chicago Press). She directs the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University, where she is an associate professor of journalism. Her articles and essays on politics and culture have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Washington Post Book World, the New York Times, Dissent, the Nation, Guernica, Bookforum, Salmagundi, and the Boston Review. For six years she was a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and she was formerly an editor at American Film, the Village Voice, and the Washington Post.

The European Union’s efforts to export its model of regional integration have often been contrasted with the persistently top-down character of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations.  Few, however, have examined the actual pattern of interest representation inside ASEAN and the extent to which it has been influenced by EU norms. 

The findings are surprising:  Neither has the EU actively promoted its essentially liberal-pluralist brand of interest representation in Southeast Asia, nor have ASEAN elites been inclined to adopt it, notwithstanding domestic pressures to make the Association more “people-centered.”  ASEAN elites have instead equipped the organization with a top-down, state-centered political culture with corporatist and organicist features reminiscent of Europe before World War II.

Jürgen Rüland is a professor of political science at the University of Freiburg, whose Southeast Asia Program he chairs with support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.  He also heads the Advisory Council of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (Hamburg).  Together with Christl Kessler, he was awarded the William Holland Prize for the best article published in Pacific Affairs in 2006.  His research interests include Southeast Asian regionalism, interactions between different regions, and processes of cultural appropriation.  He will be at Stanford from September through December 2010

A discussion of the missions, boundaries and pitfalls of nonfiction, to mark the publication of Timothy Garton Ash’s Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name. With Timothy Garton Ash, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, and Tobias Wolff, Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor, Department of English; moderated by Amir Eshel, Charles Michael Professor in Jewish History and Culture.

Sponsored by The Europe Center. Co-sponsored by the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and the Stanford Humanities Center.