Academics in an occupied country

I have been fascinated to read recently an account of what happens to universities in what had been a democratic country, which find themselves under pressure from a government that takes its orders from an unelected power based abroad.

New policy objectives laid down by the new masters rapidly affected many areas of university life,
and gave many academics a crisis of conscience over how they could be compatible with traditional university values. Others, however, seized the opportunity to further their careers by endorsing the policy objectives imposed from outside and transmitted by government ministers.

Does this sounds like a description of English universities complying with the higher education policies of Brussels? Surely not. It's in a book, Les Savants sous l'Occupation, by Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis (Editions du Seuil, 2004),  that describes what happened to universities and research institutions during the Nazi occupation of France in 1940-1944.

Policy objectives of racial purity and removing intellectuals judged dangerous to the regime were accompanied by an emphasis on applied research and working with industry, encouraged by technocrat government ministers collaborating with the German occupying power.

French universities were never closed or purged by the Germans, who relied on trusted rectors and research institute directors to toe the line. Throughout, the iron hand remained decorously enclosed in the velvet glove.  French universities received hypocritical communiques from the occupying authorities, couched in seemingly bland phrases such as:

'Without wishing to tell you what to do, we would be pleased to see that you do such-and-such...'

and:-

'You will want to decide for yourself just how long you will be able to continue your existing practice of...'

And by and large they complied with them. The veiled orders implicit in these forms of words were to persecute Jewish academics. The policy proceeded insidiously, in small steps at first, denying them the right to teach, then the right to publish, and gradually excluding them from university life altogether, by which time they were being rounded up for the concentration camps anyway.

There were plenty of exceptions, academics who joined the resistance and sometimes paid for their lives with it, or refused to implement the racial directives of their government and the occupying power. But the 'Dark Years', as the French call them, were a horrible time, in which the human need to carry on as normally as possible when disaster strikes, meant that not all felt they could be heroes.

In the end, I was left wondering how different things in my country would have been, had foreign occupation in 1940 deprived the authorities, including university authorities, of their autonomy, subjugating them to policy directives they felt were anathema to the values of human freedom and individuality. I wonder if, after all, I might get some idea of the answer by looking around me at how things are now in the sector...

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