UCLA International Institute, April 27, 2017 — The UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS) will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a concert this evening, April 27, at 8 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall. Neal Stulberg of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music will conduct the school’s flagship orchestra, the UCLA Philharmonia, in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103 (“The Year 1905”). Tickets may be purchased either at the Central Ticket Office or the door.*
The concert is made possible by the David and Imgard Dobrow Fund and will salute 60 years of CERS support for education and scholarship on the modern states of Europe and Russia. Center director Laure Murat, professor of French & Francophone Studies, will welcome associated faculty and staff of the center, together with UCLA students, supporters and community members, prior to the performance.
Murat specifically chose a musical performance to mark the center’s anniversary because throughout the world, “Europe and Russia are intimately associated with music, art and literature,” she says.
Forum for the study Europe and Russia
CERS provides faculty grants for conferences, workshops, lecture series and visiting scholars at UCLA, as well as student fellowships for research, language study, conference travel grants and grad student conferences and workshops. Since 2010, for example, the center has awarded 64 summer research fellowships
Over the course of its existence at UCLA, CERS has provided significant funding for advanced language training at UCLA, helped create area studies courses and underwritten K–12 outreach programs, library collections and visiting professors (to teach the aforementioned courses), all the while offering a rich program of public events. The center’s lectures, book talks, symposia, conferences, film screenings, concerts and other cultural events link it to the UCLA campus as a whole, as well as to broad sections of the Los Angeles general public and diverse academic, business, government and consular communities.
Noted figures who have spoken at CERS in recent years include Joschka Fischer, former Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany (1998–-2005); Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy; David O'Sullivan, Ambassador of the European Union to the U.S.; Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza; and Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit.
Soviet tanks in Budapest, Andrássy Avenue, 1956. (Photo: Nagy Gyula,
courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, cropped.) CC BY-SA 3.0.
Navigating enormous historical change
Over the past six decades, CERS has promoted greater understanding not only of Russia and the states of Europe — their cultures, politics, economics and societies — but of two great historical forces: the Cold War and European integration. Fittingly, the center was founded in 1957 at the near-intersection of those forces: a year after the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the year the European Economic Community was created (predecessor of today’s European Union).
CERS began its work when the Cold War was in full throttle, with the U.S. and its west European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) facing off against the USSR and its east European allies in the Warsaw Pact. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. government and U.S. foundations began to provide significant funding to universities to build area studies programs, a commitment that endured throughout the Cold War and the détente of the 1970s, but waned quickly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
European integration soon accelerated, with the renamed European Union (Maastrich Treaty, 1993) expanding (in 1995, 2004, 2009) to 26 members in less than 15 years. A series of agreements and treaties reduced border controls and facilitated visa-free travel within the EU (1985, 1990), introduced the euro as a common currency and created the European Central Bank (both in 1999). The EU soon became the largest development donor in the world.
In the past decade, however, a series of crises have shaken the continent’s stability: the global financial crisis of 2008 and the pain of consequent austerity measures, the Greek debt crisis (2009, ongoing), Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Eastern Ukraine (both in 2014), the flood of 1 million refugees into Europe in 2015 (most of them Syrians fleeing a civil war), the U.K. vote to leave the EU in 2016 and the rise of xenophobia and nationalism in European states. The combined effects of these crises have stressed the fabric of the EU and its institutions to the breaking point.
Syrian refugees strike at the platform of Budapest Keleti railway station, Hungary, 2015.
(Photo: Mstyslav Chernov, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; cropped.) CC BY-SA 4.0.
Plans for the future
“The world as we know it is changing dramatically and in the most threatening ways,” remarks Murat. “And Europe and Russia are at the very heart of this upheaval. Brexit, the refugee crisis, the rise of populist and far right movements, the upcoming elections (especially in France and in Germany) are mapping a territory that is as yet unknown to us.
“We are facing a difficult situation that has renewed the relevance of the CERS mission,” she observes. “We need to understand — with the help of historians, economists, sociologists and political scientists — what is at stake and how we can shape a better world,” she continues. “What is the future of democracy? How do we define ‘European values?’”
Yet at a time a time when Europe is once again wrestling with key values of western civilization, funding for European and Russian Studies has become scarce. Two years ago, CERS lost its Title VI funding (it had been a Title VI National Resource Center for decades), and with it, the means to award generous student fellowships for advanced language and area studies, as well as to subsidize advanced language classes.
Murat’s plans for CERS include not only the difficult task of fundraising, but less frequent, higher-profile events and new cultural programming. She is, for example, planning a major conference for the 2017–2018 academic year entitled “Trump and the World,” that will address new directions in American foreign policy with respect to Europe and Russia. Her goal: to bring top-notch European political theorists to speak on topics of immediate relevance.
March for Europe, July 2016. (Photo: Alex via Flickr; cropped.) CC BY-NC 2.0..
What else is in the works? New events that highlight the cultural legacy of Europe and Russia, including a film series with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and a culinary traditions series. Both will be modeled on the annual Sonnets & Sonatas lecture-concert series that Murat created in 2013 (now hosted by the Getty Museum.)
“The goal of Sonnets & Sonatas is twofold,” she says, “First, to demonstrate that literature, painting and music are not isolated but work in conjunction with one another; second, to bridge the gap between the university and a larger audience by means of an engaging performance that showcases the work and interests of scholars without the usual constraints and rigidity of an academic lecture.”
As for gastronomy, Murat is envisioning events that can, in her words, “associate cultural historians, biologists, food critics and chefs from the extraordinary food scene of Los Angeles. Cooking techniques, nutritional facts and food science say a lot about a country, its geography, its climate and its identity,” she observes.
“Food can even turn political,” she adds. “As General de Gaulle famously said, ‘How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?’”
*$15 general admission/ $10 for UCLA faculty, staff and students with valid I.D.