Abstract: In recent years, a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have issued controversial memory laws and judgements featuring nationalistic historical narratives and putting democratic standards under pressure. This development signals a broader shift towards anti-liberal discourse, hate speech, the rise of far-right and populist movements and a greater interference with academic freedom. The recent memory politics in CEE and beyond has largely been driven by dystopian visions of a dark past, populated with heroic fighters and victims of atrocities perpetrated by foreign regimes. This presentation will focus on the uses of the past as a political instrumentality through legal regulation. It will address the role of law in articulating signally important events such as genocide and its manipulation of national narratives in order to understand the impact of these strategies.
About the speaker: Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences and member of the Advisory Board of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. Expert in anti-discrimination law, freedom of speech and memory laws. She is co-editor and co-author of Constitutionalism under Stress (OUP, 2020) and Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History (CUP, 2017). She was Bohdan Winiarski Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre of the University of Cambridge, Fellow at the Yale University Initiative for the Study of Antisemitism and Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute. Principal Investigator in international research consortiums ‘Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective’ (2016-2019) and ‘The Challenge of Populist Memory Politics for Europe: Towards Effective Responses to Militant Legislation on the Past’ (2021–2024). Apart from her academic and expert work, she co-leads Public Interest Strategic Litigation Program at Dentons global law firm, Polish branch.
The seminar will be hybrid: Room 229, Siltavuorenpenger 1 A, 2nd floor. Lunch will be provided. If you are attending in person and would like to have lunch, please send an e-mail to karolina.stenlund@helsinki.fi.
Zoom link: https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/66057388922?pwd=azR2YXlMWmk3cVN0a09MSG1IMUxndz09
Meeting ID: 660 5738 8922
Passcode: 372648