Category Archives: Law

Is it legal? Is it useful? Some questions on targeted killing

|

By Walter Rech (HCAS Core Fellow)

Photo by sibsky2016, Shutterstock

Whether carried out by sharpshooting, poisoning or drone attacks, targeted killing has become a defining tool of war and counterterrorism in the twenty-first century. While the term of ‘targeted’ killing seems to indicate a limited use of force, its significance goes well beyond the elimination of single individuals.

Possible justifications of targeted killing: utilitarian and humanitarian approaches

From a strategic perspective, targeted killing has been deemed useful and effective in particular as a means to neutralize enemy entities that rely on charismatic leadership and may find it difficult to replace charismatic leaders adequately or adjust their internal structure in response to external attacks. This especially applies to criminal groups in the early stages of organizational development or to governmental authorities that have recently seized power. These entities may not be able to deal with ‘decapitation’, i.e. the loss of key leader figures.

In addition to being useful and effective under the above circumstances, targeted killing may paradoxically be justified for humanitarian reasons as it allows the state to achieve security goals without starting a full-scale war leading to innumerable civilian and military casualties. Already Renaissance authors noted that although the elimination of enemy individuals may look very much like sheer assassination and thus as blameworthy, it had a humanitarian component. As Thomas More put it in Utopia:

‘[The Utopians] think it likewise an act of mercy and love to mankind to prevent the great slaughter of those that must otherwise be killed in the progress of the war, both on their own side and on that of their enemies, by the death of a few that are most guilty; and that in so doing they are kind even to their enemies, and pity them no less than their own people, as knowing that the greater part of them do not engage in the war of their own accord, but are driven into it by the passions of their prince.’

The human rights perspective

Yet despite utilitarian and humanitarian arguments the practice of targeted killing still raises a number of legal and policy issues. At least in times of (formal) peace, the elimination of individuals without due process seems at odds with international human rights, in particular the individual’s right to life, and may not always comply with strict law enforcement standards typically required by liberal democracies. The elimination of foreign public figures, in particular, would be tantamount to political assassination, which is illegal under domestic laws and international treaties. It could qualify as an act of aggression against a foreign state, unless carried out in self-defence. Beyond the killing of public figures, even the elimination of terrorists, which might raise fewer legal and ethical issues, might turn out to be problematic in the long term if the targeting state deploys security arguments and emergency measures in ways that undermine human rights and constitutional guarantees.

Ticking bombs?

But surely, some might respond, there must be some justification at least for neutralizing terrorists who are preparing an attack, the classical ticking bomb scenario. This would clearly differ from the elimination of foreign leaders. One cannot deprive the state of its right to protect its citizens from terrorists simply because of the risk that some states will manipulate counterterrorism as an ideological tool. In a ticking bomb scenario, targeted killing would be a lesser evil compared with the consequences of a terrorist attack.

Yet the ticking bomb scenarios in which targeted killing seems most legitimate occur fairly rarely in the real world. Most targeted killings are meant to eliminate individuals who may not constitute an immediate threat. As a result, they should be apprehended whenever possible rather than killed, as most liberal legal systems require. If states decide to allow so-called shoot-to-kill policies to address security threats, strict standards of proportionality and necessity should be applied.

Breaching the law to protect the law?

Some have still argued that fully respecting ordinary criminal laws and human rights standards may in some exceptional cases prevent the state from properly addressing security threats, and terrorists should be eliminated as soon as the occasion arises. This might contravene liberal democracy standards, but it may sometimes be necessary to breach the law, or lower legal standards, in order to protect the law itself. The argument goes that when the legal system is threatened by people whose very aim is to destroy the law, legal protections should not be granted to them.

Is this a ‘war’? The law of armed conflict

In addition to utilitarian arguments, there would be a legal avenue for justifying targeted killing occurring in wartime. If terrorist attacks are recurrent and part of a continuous threat, the conflict between the state and opposition forces that the state regards as terrorists may legally be considered as a situation of outright armed conflict. The law of armed conflict would then apply, and this law offers more leeway to the state than human rights law or domestic criminal law. Under the law of armed conflict, all those taking active part in the hostilities – hence not only those constituting immediate threats – represent military targets and may lawfully be killed. There is no strict rule of armed conflict requiring the targeting entity to apprehend rather than kill the targeted person as long as the person is engaged in the hostilities, for instance by virtue of belonging to an armed group. Thus, the targeted killing of enemies during armed conflict does not raise many issues, and indeed states have often eliminated enemy troops and military officers through sharpshooting in wartime. Under this view, the central distinction would be the one between the state of war, in which targeted killing would typically be allowed, and a state of peace, in which human rights would play a major role and would place a heavier burden of proof on the targeting state to show that the targeting is lawful.

Operations abroad

Some further argue that a situation of armed conflict may also exist between the targeting state and terrorist entities based abroad. Under this view the targeting state, as a victim of terrorist attacks, would have a right to defend itself against those entities, including by means of extraterritorial operations. It has been argued that if a country is unwilling or unable to stop terrorists who threaten another state, the latter state has a right to take action to neutralize the terrorist threat on that country’s soil. This would be supported by Art. 51 UN Charter, which endows member states with an ‘inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs’ against them.

A slippery slope?

But could the justification of targeted killing turn into a slippery slope nevertheless? Even when targeting states do not intend to undermine the global human rights regime, merely resorting to and justifying targeted killing in an expansive way could weaken constitutional rights for ordinary citizens and introduce worrying precedents in international relations. The fact that targeted killing has sometimes been used by some states to neutralize internal dissidents shows that there is a fine line between legitimate counterterrorism and the more controversial elimination of internal opposition. Who will decide which kind of enemy qualifies as a legitimate target or rather the victim of domestic repression?

As the world order seems to be in transition it is important to keep in mind that targeted killing is part and parcel of broader practices of and discourses on the use of force in global politics. In previous centuries, targeted killing has been seen as a useful and even humanitarian tool, as More suggested, but it has also been used by some states to secure international influence and force regime change abroad. What is at stake in targeted killing policies and practices is not only the legality of specific acts but also the broader standards applicable to the use of force as a way of addressing domestic and international threats.

–

Walter Rech’s Collegium project “Targeted Killing and International Law, 1600–1800” investigates the history of state-sponsored assassinations and targeted killing in early-modern times, in particular in the period 1600–1800, when lawyers and government officials developed a set of core arguments on the matter. The project addresses the legal, political and ethical issues at stake in targeted killing and why it is important to rethink this practice today.

 

 

 

 

“Truth, Injustice and Reconciliation in Comparative Perspective: Finland, Canada, United States” – Summary of the Webinar held at the Helsinki Collegium on May 25, 2021

|

By Sofie Henriksen

In anticipation of the work of Finland’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Concerning the Sámi People (TRC), the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (HCAS) hosted the online event “Truth, Injustice and Reconciliation in Comparative Perspective: Finland, Canada, United States” on May 25th, 2021, for which 120 people from academia, government and civil society in 12 different countries registered.

Outi Pieski: Beavvit – Rising Together, installation, 2021. Photo by Sang Tae Kim.

In line with the Collegium’s interdisciplinary mission, the event brought together Professor of Political Science Rauna Kuokkanen (University of Lapland), Professor of Law Mayo Moran (Trinity College, University of Toronto), and Professor of History David Collins (HCAS/Georgetown University) to discuss historical injustice and reconciliation in a comparative perspective. The event was moderated by Karen Knop, international lawyer and Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor at the Helsinki Collegium in 2020–2021, and Tuomas Forsberg, the director of HCAS and an expert in international relations. 

Truth and Reconciliation Process in Finland concerning the Sámi People

According to its mandate negotiated between the Finnish government and the Sámi Parliament, the purpose of the Sámi TRC in Finland is threefold:

“to identify and assess historical and current discrimination, including the assimilation policy of the state and violations of rights, to find out how they affect the Sámi and their communities in the current situation, and to propose ways to promote links between the Sámi and the state of Finland and among the Sámi people.”

“By forming a common understanding of historical and current discrimination,” the TRC is intended to “lay the foundation for reconciliation between the Sámi and the state and for structural change and trust-based interaction that supports the ability of the Sámi to maintain and develop their own language and culture, including traditional livelihoods – at the core of which is the connection to land and water.”

Rauna Kuokkanen, Research Professor of Arctic Indigenous Studies at the University of Lapland, discussed the prospects for a truth and reconciliation process in Finland. Drawing on political theorist Catherine Lu’s work on justice and reconciliation, Kuokkanen focused on the TRC’s mandate to address contemporary as well as historical injustice and its commitment to structural change. Kuokkanen argued that it would be inadequate to focus only on the examination and rectification of historical wrongdoings and relations between victims and perpetrators because this “interactional” form of justice, as Lu defines it, depoliticises reconciliation by concentrating solely on individual psychological healing. Instead, the foundational problems of structural injustice embedded in institutions, norms and practices must be addressed because they continue to reproduce injustice. Kuokkanen argued that structural reconciliation would require the Sámi to have “genuine and meaningful capacity to govern the central aspects of their society and culture, which inseparably include land rights and land use practices”. In other words, the self-determination of the Sámi people is at the core of structural justice and manifests as what Lu defines as ‘structural dignity’ within a reconciliation context. Kuokkanen categorizes the current form of Sámi self-determination of the Sámi as self-administration rather than self-government, based on the theoretical distinction by Stephen Cornell. Whereas self-government has decision-making authority and has a structure designed by Indigenous peoples themselves, self-administration is often imposed by outsiders, e.g. the settler state, and limited to administering the dissemination of state funding for cultural programs, service delivery and distribution of resources such as jobs.

Furthermore, Kuokkanen touched upon another important aspect of reconciliation related to structural injustice: how to hold the majority population accountable for past injustices. For this discussion, Kuokkanen drew on Iris Marion Young’s distinction between a ‘liability model’ and a ‘social connection model of responsibility’. Whereas the liability model assigns responsibility to the persons who have caused the injustice, the social connection model of responsibility aims at forms of structural injustice, in which linking the injustice directly to individuals is impossible. This is especially relevant in regard to colonial processes which took place in the past but continue as structural injustice in the present. With the social connection model of responsibility, the accountability is related to working against the unjust structures, in the Finnish context settler colonialism, which the majority is benefiting from and often perpetuating. In this sense, the liability model is backward-looking, whereas the social connection model is forward-looking. To illustrate this point, Kuokkanen gave an example of today’s teachers. Although they are not held responsible for the discrimination and racism that took place in the Finnish residential schools to which the Sámi were sent, they do have a shared obligation to counteract unjust structural processes by educating their pupils about the history and culture of the Sámi people in an up-to-date and non-stereotyped way.

Truth and Reconciliation Processes concerning Indigenous-Settler relations in Canada

To contextualize the Canadian TRC, Mayo Moran, Professor of Law, Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College at the University of Toronto, introduced the background of the Canadian Indigenous-Settler relations and the Canadian colonial policies. Since 2007, Professor Moran has chaired the Independent Assessment Process Oversight Committee that assists in the implementation of the Indian Residential Schools Agreement, the agreement that led to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.  Canadian colonial policies were designed to eradicate the Indigenous presence through dispossession of Indigenous land, cultural genocide and forced assimilation. As a part of the assimilation policy, Indian Residential Schools were established in partnerships with various churches. For 150 years, approximately 150.000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families and sent to brutal residential schools. Children were abused sexually, physically and spiritually.  Countless thousands of children never returned nor received any burial if they died. The schools have inflicted a profound intergenerational trauma within Indigenous families and communities.

Moran referred to the 1991 Royal Commission on Aboriginal People (RCAP) as a forerunner to the Canadian TRC. A Canadian government appointed body, it included both Indigenous and non-Indigenous commissioners and had the broad goal of investigating the relationship between Indigenous peoples, the government of Canada and Canadian society. In 1996,  RCAP submitted its five volume 4000 page report.  It contained 440 recommendations including legislative changes as well as the establishment of an Indigenous Parliament to redress gaps in education, health care and housing – which, Moran pointed out, is interesting in the light of Kuokkanen’s discussion of forms of Indigenous self-determination. Moran also noted that RCAP was rather similar to the Finnish TRC in origin and scope. To some degree, Canada’s RCAP could appear to serve as a cautionary tale to those hoping that the Finnish TRC will result in significant changes. But while the majority of the recommendations of RCAP remain unimplemented, it was actually very important in paving the way for the later Canadian TRC.  Among other things, it began to draw the attention of non-Indigenous Canadians to the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples. Many commentators also believe it was responsible for inspiring efforts to address the legacy of residential schools which had been little spoken about until then.

Partly as a result of the discussions that began in Indigenous communities after RCAP, in the late 1990s, survivors of Indian Residential Schools began to seek civil remedies for historic sexual abuse and to bring cases against the federal government and churches. By 2005, there were tens of thousands of claims also for loss of language and culture, as well as intergenerational harm. The only alternative was settlement and in 2006, the federal government, the Assembly of First Nations, and various churches signed the Indian Residential Schools Agreement. At an overall cost of between five and six billion dollars, the Agreement created several programs including most importantly the Canadian TRC. In contrast to RCAP, the context of litigation settlement meant that Indigenous people had a powerful voice—no agreement could be reached without their consent and the TRC was one of the most critical priorities of the Assembly of First Nations. Referring to Kuokkanen’s use of Lu’s distinction, Moran noted how the 2006 Agreement had elements of both interactional and structural reconciliation. The interactional element was addressed in several ways. For instance, there were two reparations processes, one for all who attended residential schools and an additional one for those who also suffered serious physical or sexual abuse.   In 2008, the Canadian Prime Minister delivered an apology in the House of Commons to the survivors of the Indian Residential Schools. The structural elements were addressed by the TRC which was tasked with the considering larger relationship and locating the history of residential schools within the broader context of colonial policy and ongoing discrimination.

Moran pointed out that although many worried that the focus on litigation and residential schools would distract from the larger narrative, the way that the TRC approached the residential school experience enabled it to serve as a focal point through which the whole Indigenous-Settler relationship could begin to come into focus for ordinary Canadians. Unlike RCAP, which involved broad discussions about politics, colonialism and sovereignty, the TRC approached settler colonialism from a profoundly human point of view: the terrible story of children forcibly taken from their families. Through this history, as Canadians we began started to understand something critical about our own history and place in colonialism. Moran noted that it is too soon to assess the significance of the TRC, since its 94 Calls to Action are only partly implemented. However, the discussions around the TRC have changed the conversation in Canada and forced contemporary Canadians to acknowledge themselves as settlers for the first time, which is in itself a critical step towards reconciliation.

Georgetown University’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation 

David Collins, Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University, spoke of Georgetown University’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation, which he chaired in 2015-2016, and the projects that have followed it. The Working Group (WG) was established to address slaveholding in the University’s history. Founded in 1789, the University ran in part on revenues generated by enslaved labor on plantations owned by the order of Catholic priests, the Jesuits, who ran the university. That history includes a notorious sale of 272 enslaved people in 1838, revenues from which were used to relieve the university from financial stress. The dialogue begun by the WG has continued and broadened to include the descendants of those enslaved by the Jesuit order in the US. Together these parties have, as recently reported in the New York Times, announced the erection of a foundation – the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation – devoted to alleviating racial discord and inequity in American society.

Before turning to several general insights, Prof. Collins highlighted important differences between his case and the Canadian and Finnish examples, e.g., that WG’s efforts were sponsored by a private and religious parties, and the State had/has no role; and that no direct participants in the historical events, as far in the past as they were, could participate in the WG’s efforts. Prof. Collins then offered five insights from his experience in these efforts. First, he noted the crucial importance of the descendants as participants in the discussions. The emergence of the descendants as a participant group followed the WG’s public handling of the university’s slave-holding history. Their work inspired others, who were descendants, to claim, rightly, the history as not simply the university’s but also theirs. Engagement with the descendants was not part of the WG’s initial mandate, and their emergence – ultimately as multifaceted and heterogeneous – took time; nonetheless, engagement with them became a central recommendation in the WG’s year-end report to the university.  A second insight derives from this unexpected, difficult, yet fruitful engagement with the descendants: that a “common” history will still necessarily be look different from different perspectives, and to let one perspective dominate the story-telling inevitably leads to a distorted history. That was certainly the experience for the university as it was confronted by the history of the sale of 1838 as told by the descendants of those sold. The results have been enriching for the university and the Jesuit order.

Third, the WG’s work and the subsequent Descendant-Jesuit-University discussions took (and are taking) place in the larger context of race relations and tensions in the US, which constantly influence(d) those discussions. Several times over the last fifty years, the university and order had turned to address publically their history of slaveholding and slave-trading, but never before had the history attracted such widespread attention both within the larger university community and across the nation. Racial unrest since 2015 has provided a different backdrop to the historical investigations, and the history’s modern-day implications have been raised into high relief as never before. In short, context matters. Fourth, WG’s efforts as well as the subsequent dialogue have had a distinctive religious underpinning. On the one hand, this highlights a difference between the Georgetown case and many others, where religious language and divergent religious commitment can be an impediment to reparative projects on account of religious institutions’ participation in the injustices.  On the other hand, in the Georgetown case it gave some common language and values for the emergent dialogue. In this instance, Catholicism – with its concepts of sin, confession, penance, atonement, forgiveness, reconciliation – has provided the common values that could be used both in indictment and in aspiration. Without such a shared touchstone, it is unclear how the Descendant-Jesuit-University dialogue would have proceeded. Fifth and last, there is so much unpredictability in this work. Participants need to be open to that, even as they draft ways forward and work toward particular goals. In the Georgetown case, no one anticipated in September 2015 that descendants would in 2021 be at the heart of any program of atonement and melioration. And yet today their participation is the single-most gratifying component to the work begun in 2015. Openness to the unplanned, Prof. Collins concluded, is clearly among the most important qualities for any group undertaking a process such as this.

Discussion

One of the themes discussed after the speakers’ presentations was that of the understandings and implications of the word ‘reconciliation’. Referring to Kuokkanen and Moran’s presentations, Tuomas Forsberg brought up how reconciliation, referring to the reconciling of two conflicting parties, is a substantively “thick” concept and can seem demanding and infeasible to many. In the Georgetown context, reconciliation was initially a part of the DTRF’s mandate, but Collins described how, for reasons such as Forsberg raised, the word “atonement” was slowly replacing the use of reconciliation. Atonement was a word that emerged in the discussions in which descendants were involved. Collins told of a descendant who, in line with the Catholic sacrament of confession, reminded the DTRF that reconciliation comes with penance. In a comment that illustrated the complexities of the implications of reconciliation, Moran noted that in the Canadian discussions on reconciliation, a departure from religious concepts was necessary precisely because Canadian churches had been involved in the Indian Residential Schools.

An audience member asked whether and how the Finnish TRC could contribute greater collaboration and solidarity within the Sámi community – a community in which certain conflicts are directly linked to colonization. Kuokkanen emphasized that the Finnish TRC is mandated to focus on the relationship between the state and the Sámi, and cannot resolve all conflicts. That does, however, not preclude reconciliation outside the context of the State-Sámi relations. To this, Moran added that the Canadian TRC held seven national events that brought together different groups to discuss reconciliation in what were called ‘learning tents’. Subsequent to these events, community initiatives separate from the national TRC process emerged focusing on commemoration and reconciliation in various ways. Moran described how one initiative was to restore a previous Indian Residential School and make it into an educational center for students to learn more about colonialism. In a starkly opposite and more symbolic initiative,  an Indian Residential School building was burned to the ground.

The last topic raised by the audience was the role of human rights in TRCs, which varied between the Canadian and U.S. contexts. Moran described how human rights were at the core of the Canadian TRC, both in a backward-looking manner, in terms of describing the wrong doings as violations of human rights, and in a forward-looking manner, in terms of Indigenous rights. In contrast, Collins described how appealing to human rights in U.S. courts or through U.S. legislation is not very well developed in relation to slavery and colonization. In relation to the Finnish TRC, Kuokkanen observed that one of its strategies is to strengthen the implementation of Sámi rights, articulated as collective rights in the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People. Therefore, the human rights discourse is embedded in the mandate of the TRC, but it is obviously still too early to say whether it will in fact be central to the discussion and whether the final report will be framed in terms of human rights violations.

—

This event was held just before the tragic news currently unfolding in Canada involving the discovery of children’s remains in unmarked graves on the sites of a number of former Indian Residential Schools.  On June 30, the Lower Kootenay Band said 182 human remains had been found at St Eugene’s Mission residential school, near the city of Cranbrook, British Columbia. The week before, the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced the discovery of 751 possible unmarked graves. These discoveries followed the May 27 announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc band that they had found 215 unmarked graves, most of which are believed to be children.

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission addressed the issue in Volume 4 of its report entitled “Missing Children”.  In 2015, it identified over 4100 children who were known to have died while at residential school but noted that there were likely thousands more, many in unmarked and untended graves. 

Researcher interested in Imperial Russia finds an archival heaven in Helsinki

|

By Minerva Juolahti, Vilja Myllyviita & Frida Wikblad

“The collegium has a great reputation and a great location. One of the attractive aspects of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies is that it has a broad spectrum of scholars in various states of their careers. I like that, I like to have that breadth.” Professor Peter Holquist reflects on the last six months he has spent at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (HCAS).

(c) Minerva Juolahti

HCAS has had the privilege of hosting Holquist from the University of Pennsylvania as a Core Fellow since last fall. In Helsinki he has been able to focus on his research concerning the role of Imperial Russia in the codification and practice of international law of war. His time in Helsinki has now come to an end and his next stop is the American Academy in Berlin.

Helsinki – a rich site for research on Russia and law

Holquist decided to come to Helsinki and the HCAS for many reasons. First of all, he had already visited the city several times, the first time already in 1983 for orientation prior to study in the Soviet Union. Secondly, the University of Helsinki has several research areas of his interest, where especially Russian studies and law are well represented by two of the university institutes: the Aleksanteri Institute is an important center concentrating on Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies, whereas law is well represented by the Erik Castrén Institute for International Law and Human Rights.

The Slavonic library of the Finnish National Library (formerly the University library), located right next to HCAS, was also important for Holquist’s decision to come to HCAS. Why Helsinki currently has a world-famous Slavonic library can be traced back to the period of Russian rule in Finland. When the University library was first moved to Helsinki in the 19th century, the Russian government designated the library to be a deposit library to store everything that was published in the empire. This is why the Finnish National Library now has such a stupendously rich collection of published materials, especially of the period that is the key point of interest for Holquist, the last third of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. The Slavonic Library has been very convenient to access and use, and the staff has been remarkably helpful in looking for material also from other Finnish institutions.

“The library has wonderful working conditions and an amazingly rich archive. I was able to order several different editions of the international law text books of the scholars that I’m studying. It’s wonderful having the entire run of the shelfs on many of the key Russian journals,” as Holquist describes his experience, when working at the Finnish National Library.

Free Public Spaces and Openness of Finnish Society

For Holquist, one of the great aspects about staying in Helsinki has been the chance to get to know a different cultural environment better. He has greatly enjoyed the openness of Finnish society, for instance the great availability of free public spaces, such as libraries. He has, for example, been able to use the resources of the Finnish National Library, the Library of Parliament and The National Defence University library. Also, Holquist’s wife was able to join him for his stay in Helsinki and, as an independent writer, she has greatly enjoyed the entirely open access to the libraries of Helsinki.

“There was a certain book I couldn’t find that wasn’t part of any of the Finnish university systems, but it was available in one place in Finland, the Library of Parliament, and that library is a public space as so many things in Finland are. They had no trouble giving me, a foreign researcher, a reading card.  And to my great surprise, I learned that it’s also a lending library! Most parliamentary libraries that I know of are on site libraries. So, I was able to work on this very fundamental book in my office alongside all of my other materials,” describes Holquist.

Wonderful Time at HCAS and Tips for Future Fellows

For Holquist, a collegial working environment and the freedom to focus on one’s research is valuable. What makes HCAS special from many other institutions of a similar nature is the fact that HCAS entails the entire career spectrum of scholars: early career and senior researchers work side by side. Time at the collegium has allowed him to concentrate on conducting research without having to spend time on administrative or teaching duties. The fact that HCAS is located at the very center of Helsinki, right next to the other essential institutions, has made it a very convenient place for him to work and do research. The possibility to present his own research, to interact with other scholars at the formal Tuesday seminars—as well as gathering at the informal get-togethers on Tuesday evenings—and the winter weather have been a few of the highlights of his stay at HCAS. During his stay, he also serendipitously discovered other scholars working on topics closely linked to his own study, both at HCAS and also at such unexpected places as the sauna in Töölö Towers.

(c) Minerva Juolahti

Holquist is now looking forward to incorporating into his academic writings the material that he collected during his time in Helsinki. He is also preparing his new book under the name ‘By Right of War’: The Discipline and Practice of International Law in Imperial Russia, 1868–1917.

As a tip for future fellows of the collegium Holquist states: “Reach out to people! For instance, in terms of research, I didn’t simply rely on what was available in the online catalogue, I went and asked for help from the researchers. The collegium is a wonderful place, but you also need to think whether there are communities outside of the collegium that you can benefit from.”

On travelling as an ex-IAS director

|

By Jo Shaw

The title needs a little explanation. Before taking up my one year EURIAS fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, I was privileged to spend more than three years as Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. Before that, to give my journey even more context, I was Dean of Research of what is now the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. I was therefore familiar with IASH’s work before I became Director. And I am a connoisseur of Institutes of Advanced Studies!

During my IASH directorship, I had the opportunity to involve myself in the work of a number of international networks in which we participate, including CHCI, UBIAS and ECHIC. I even came to a meeting at HCAS a few years ago. One of the huge pleasures of my time as director was organising and hosting in Edinburgh the 2017 ECHIC Conference under the rubric of inside/OUT. For me, this showcased the best of what humanities centres and institutes (and here I include not just humanities in the narrow sense, but all of the human sciences) can do. The plenary lectures were engaging and broadly focused, highlighting the strong links, for example, between fields of cultural studies and the social science disciplines of political science and sociology. Our shorter presentations and lightning talks were just that: short, punchy, informative. We fostered engagement between scholarship and broader society, with two broader panels focused on populist politics and on IASH’s Dangerous Women Project (another achievement of which I am incredibly proud). And we linked colleagues from universities across Europe with senior colleagues in humanities and social sciences management in Scotland and Ireland, in a very supportive encounter at the Scottish Parliament.

At the end of my term of office, I thought it would be good to spend time on the other side of the IAS fence, as a consumer of the values of interdisciplinarity and scholarly community that are the distinctive facets of Institutes of Advanced Studies wherever they are found. I can confirm, HCAS truly is a great place to rediscover your scholarly habits and to (re-)lay the foundations for a research programme. I’m sure it’s an equally apt destination if what you are looking for as a scholar is somewhere to finish a project and to write up some research for publication.

It is interesting to muse for a moment on the similarities and differences between my Edinburgh and Helsinki experiences, quite apart from the huge contrast between being director and being a fellow. Obviously the two universities are quite different in terms of history, heritage and organisation, although they are partnered together within the League of European Research Universities. There is, as a result, quite a bit of traffic between them, at the level of senior management and deans, as well as a number of research collaborations that I am aware of. An event was organised by colleagues in Edinburgh’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures to mark #Suomi100, highlighting research on Finland or by Finnish scholars in Scotland. During my time as Director of IASH we have regularly hosted scholars from Finland, especially those benefiting from Academy of Finland funding comprising a mobility element. There seems to be quite a lot less traffic in the opposite direction, as far as I can see, although I would be happy to be corrected by others with better data. This is despite the more general interest in Finland as a relatively young, rather small and fiercely independent state that exists in Scotland. I think there are regular visits here from the Scottish government and Scottish public bodies, interested in the many things that Finland gets right and which Scotland could do better at (education and innovation being two such things). Scotland has recently adopted the baby box initiative. The UK as a whole, which has a terrible homelessness problem, has shown an interest in how Finland is tackling the scourge of homelessness.

But returning closer to home, it’s worthwhile reflecting on how the two institutes/bodies fostering ‘advanced studies’ continue to flourish in university environments where so-called key performance indicators are becoming the dominant features of everyday life. It is very hard to count the value of giving scholars space and community to flourish. The collaborations that flourish in the environment of an institute of advanced study often take years to come to fruition. In a world obsessed by causality, can we really claim that the residency in the IAS ‘caused them’? New research grants or research collaborations which enrich the university may have been fostered by cross disciplinary discussion and debate within the IAS, or between IAS fellows and scholars in the Schools and Faculties of the host university, but again it is hard to pinpoint causality, or to highlight just what benefit or reward should flow back to the IAS as a result of its contribution to the university’s mission. And notwithstanding the ‘pure’ scholarly nature of the space and time to think offered by each of the two IASs, it is also the case that both Helsinki and Edinburgh are committed to public engagement and to taking the insights of the work of scholars to broader communities. Both IASs see the intense benefits that come from the juxtaposition of different types of ‘creative’ impulse, bringing creative arts fellows into dialogue with those on working within more ‘academic’ schemes.

I am convinced that for a university to maintain and develop an IAS it needs an a priori commitment to fostering the benefits of autonomy and scholarly enquiry that are intrinsic to their flourishing. A reductionist and calculating approach to benefits (‘does it wash its face financially?’) is liable to result in the downgrading of one of the most valuable aspects of international academic community, without appropriate staffing and funding. Management structures that integrate the IAS into the host institution, whilst preserving academic independence are vital. That said, IASs, their staff and their fellows also have responsibilities to intensify their collaborations within and beyond the host university and to tell the world all about it. They can no longer be, if they ever were, quiet inward-looking places. Websites, social media, blogs and more traditional scholarly communication mechanisms all have a role to play. In addition, former fellows and other stakeholders need to be kept in touch with and activated for their support, through newsletters and annual reports (pdf), particularly at key times, such as in the run up to anniversaries (hint: IASH goes 50 in 2019!).

In my still limited experience, I’m happy to say that both Helsinki CAS and IASH Edinburgh fit neatly into that model which brings together the inside and the outside; I sincerely hope that both will have many years of fruitful work ahead of them, based on their respective mottos of being the place where ‘ideas grow’ and offering ‘freedom to think’.

Jo Shaw holds the Salvesen Chair of European Institutions in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh and is a EURIAS Fellow at HCAS for the academic year 2017-2018. Her research interests lie in the field of citizenship, and you can find out more about her current work by following her blog.