Integrating the Past, Engaging the Present

Leveraging History and Memory in the Task of

Building a Just and Inclusive Europe

Margaret E. Smith, Ph.D. American University,

Washington, D.C.

Kippen, Scotland

War memorial

1914-19191939-1945

personal integrity <=> social change

History = the story of God’s unfolding plan

History = the story of “our” group

History = the story of empowering the disempowered

Freud

The past resides in ourunconscious

Trauma

The past locks us into a “threat response”

Narrative

The past is embedded in systems of power

Trustbuilding

Expanding the narrative

Creating overlapping narratives

Europe 2015• Minorities and Immigrants• Contested societies• Post communism• Relations with the

“developing” world• Russia• Ukraine• Mass atrocity – Srebrenica,

Armenia, Ukraine, Holocaust

Immigrant communities

Stories of exile; stories of home

Creating Resilient Communities

The City Walk

Romani people

Telling Roma history

Holocaust acknowledgement

Healing from a discriminatory past

Roma place at the European table

Racismand Colonialism

Transitional JusticeTribunals

Truth commissions

Archiving

Teacher training

Rewriting textbooks

Encouraging professional historians and journalists

Yerevan, Armenia, April 2015

Potocari CemeterySrebrenica, Bosnia and Hercegovina

Ukraine

• Find a narrative NOT dependent on history

• Focus on areas of common concern

• Complexify history

• Long term public airing of painful history

What narrative do we wish to promote for

Europe in the 21st century?