75TH ANNIVERSARY

The Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry, marks this year the 75th anniversary of its founding in 1930. Throughout the year, the Institute will mark its milestone anniversary with a range of events that celebrate the work of its four Schools – Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science – as well as its founders and Einstein.

As part of this 75th anniversary celebration, on Friday, April 8, 2005 the School of Historical Studies presented a symposium on, "The Matter of History" that featured a special multimedia presentation entitled Text, Space & Object. It was chaired by Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Oxford University, and former Professor, Institute for Advanced Study.

This presentation explored the diversity of materials from which history has to be recovered and interpreted. Texts, in the form of books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, are only part of the historian's repertoire. The interaction of space and object were exemplified through early modern maps, medieval relics and processions, the Great Wall of China, and the architecture of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad. Documentary footage exposed the deliberations that lay beneath the surface of great historical events such as the Cuban missile crisis. The presentation placed the Institute itself among the materials of history, with particular reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atom bomb. The fragility of history—the polyvalence of text, space, and object as well as history's susceptibility to manipulation or fraud—makes the necessity of getting it right all the more difficult and important. The future depends upon what we think and say about the past.

To view video and slides of the presentation, click here.

On Saturday, April 9, 2005 the School organized a series of interactive seminars, arranged in pairs:

IA. The Vulnerability of History 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Led by Professor Heinrich von Staden and Fritz Stern, University Professor Emeritus and former Provost at Columbia University, and former Member, on the misuse and corruption of historical evidence

IB. Fraud & Forgery 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Led by Professor Glen Bowersock and Professor Patricia Crone, with special attention to the ban on tomb-robbery in Palestine at the time of the Resurrection of Christ, and the notoriously anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion



IIA. Intellectual Rebels 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Led by Professor Jonathan Israel and Kinch Hoekstra, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford University, and current Member, on outsiders in the Enlightenment

IIB. Hidden People 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m
Led by Professor Caroline Bynum and Robert Darnton, Professor of History at Princeton University and former Member, on issues of gender, class, and sex in European History



IIIA. Museums & Great Collections 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Led by Professor Emeritus Oleg Grabar and Henri Zerner, Professor at Harvard University, Curator in the Fogg Art Museum, and former Member, on the ideological and nationalist motivation for the creation of museums and major collections

IIIB. National History 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m
Led by Professor Nicola Di Cosmo and Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at New York University and former Member, with particular attention to East Asia and the Middle East