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Conversation, discussion, and debate are central not only to universities but also to democracies. Such exchanges depend on a free and independent press that takes its responsibilities seriously. They also depend on informed citizens willing to listen to and learn from one another. Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote that democracy is based on the assumption that we do not all think alike and there is value in our differing points of view. She noted, "To hold different opinions and to be aware that other people think differently on the same issue shields us from that god-like certainty." Arendt's words take on special importance at a time when conversations both at universities and in the nation as a whole often degenerate into heated debates that assume that there are only two sides to every story and one of those sides is totally wrong.

An essay by Imre Kertesz, a Holocaust survivor who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature, reveals what is at stake in those discussions.

My subject is the freedom of self-definition, which entails the simple notion that each and every member of society has the right to be what he or she is. No one should become the object of derision or the victim of discrimination on account of his birth or the way he chooses to regard himself-even if such discrimination is condoned, openly or in secret, by the powers that be. At the same time, of course, no one should enjoy unfair advantages due to his origins, beliefs, thoughts, or simply because of who he is. Here in Europe, you presumably take these freedoms for granted; you enjoy them in your everyday life as basic human rights and may not see the need to talk about them.

But it is necessary to discuss the question, for even in western democracies, freedom of self-definition is not the satisfactorily resolved issue it may first appear to be. It is true that the concept of human rights, the most fundamental of which is the right to liberty and dignity, was first formulated by western civilization. But the totalitarian state also has its origins here. For 20th-century dictatorships, it was natural to do away with individual rights, to confine people like sheep in giant folds, and to attach to them easily recognizable, garish labels-the all-too-obvious emblems of a privileged or stigmatized state. One usually thinks of the extreme ends of such defining enclosures. But there were dozens of others in between, representing various forms of discrimination.

We cannot overestimate the damage done by the institutionalization and practical application of this system of collective labeling - how it distorted people's views, poisoned their relationships with one another, and perverted their own self-images.

The system of symbols devised by the Nazis was in a way the simplest and most transparent. Their aim was to exterminate certain people while encouraging others to breed as though they were brood mares. In communist dictatorships, the situation was more complicated. Here the officers doing the selection were always inside the enclosures, and they kept sending people from one pen to another. It sometimes happened that, in the middle of the selection process, the officer in charge was grabbed from the back and rudely thrust into one of the unpleasant pens, into which, until that moment, he had been busy shoving others.

In reflecting on the 20th century, Kertesz exposes what the labels and stereotypes try to obscure:

In the universities and colleges of a cruelly truncated Hungary, discriminatory laws were put into effect, and, in 1938, more sweeping anti-Jewish legislation was enacted. In 1944, they put a yellow star on me, which in a symbolic sense is still there; to this day I have not been able to remove it.

I admit it must seem astonishing that more than 10 years after the elimination of the last European totalitarian states, more than 10 years after the introduction of representative democracy in this part of Europe, I should still say this. The truth is that it wasn't easy to face up to this fact, and it was even harder to try to come to terms with it. Such painful states of mind, it seems, automatically produce their own pathology without our being fully aware of it. For example, you get the feeling that the world around you is intangible, ghost-like, even though it's you yourself who has become unreal and spectral.

Or the opposite happens: you perceive your own self as foreign, though all you've done is blend in with your alienating surroundings. My wife, who is American and therefore free of these east European maladies, has noticed that, when we are abroad, I undergo a complete personality change. In foreign countries, I feel at home while, at home, I act like a stranger.

With foreigners, I converse freely, but, with my own countrymen, I am ill at ease. In the dictatorship called socialism, this was a natural state, and I more or less learned to live with it. Getting accustomed to racism in a democracy takes more time. But at least I am now getting to the bottom of a problem, which, I believe, is not only mine.

In my daily life, I must constantly respond to disturbing stimuli that come my way from the world around me; they are like mild electric shocks that prickle the skin. Metaphorically speaking, I am forever scratching myself. We are all familiar with Montesquieu's famous dictum: "First I am a human being, and then a Frenchman." The racist-for anti-Semitism since Auschwitz is no longer just anti-Semitism-wants me to be first a Jew and then not to be a human being any more.

At first, in our confusion, we grope for arguments with which to defend ourselves and find that we talk to and think about ourselves in a most primitive manner. No wonder: what we are up against is above all primitive. If we are shoved into an animal cage, we have to fight like animals. The debased thinking we protest against leads us to think about ourselves in lowly ways; after a while, it's not ourselves we're thinking about but somebody else. This process, in short, distorts our personality. The ultimate and most painful self-defense of such a distorted personality is also familiar: confronted with inhuman ideologues, the hapless victim is bent on proving his own humanity. There is something pathetic in these exertions, for the very thing ideologues want to rob him of is his humanity. But once he accepts racist categories, he becomes a Jew, and the more he tries to prove that he is human, the more pitiful and less human he becomes. In a racist environment, a Jew cannot be human, but he cannot be a Jew either. For "Jew" is an unambiguous designation only in the eyes of anti-Semites.^{1 [3]}

How can we protect our right to self-definition-our right to be viewed as an individual? It is a question that haunts educators at home and abroad. Shareeq Ghabra, the former director of Kuwait's public information center and now a professor at Kuwait University, believes that answer lies in the traditional openness of American universities. He writes of his own college education in the United States:

When I first came to the United States I was a leftist and had in me all the anti-American slogans of the Vietnam War and the Palestine struggle. My American professors surprised me with their tolerance. Even when the professors were hard-core Republicans or fundamentalist Christians-I studied for one year at a very small junior college in the Midwest-the fair-mindedness was consistent. It amazed me.

In graduate school, in the 1980s, the most Zionist of all my teachers would listen with empathy to my opinion and my difference of perspective, then argue. This opened the way for respect, learning, and understanding. Tolerance, even without accepting the other view, does have a moderating power on people and permits for the repetition of the cycle of understanding. Tolerance breeds tolerance. As a professor of political science at Kuwait University, I practice my old professor's technique on my own fundamentalist students.^{2 [4]}

Tolerance is central to learning and to a free society. So is respect for others. The Center for Humanistic Education at The Ghetto Fighters' Museum in Israel was founded in 1997 to promote respect, learning, and understanding among Jews, Druse, and Arabs. On April 30, 2002-in the midst of violence and acts of terrorism-young graduates of the program held a reunion and issued a statement. It says in part:

We are a group of Arab and Jewish youth who work together in the framework of the Center for Humanistic Education at The Ghetto Fighters' Museum. Together we studied the emotionally charged and painful history of both our nations. Here we learned to listen to the other side, and we discovered that they had problems we knew nothing about. Today we understand that despite the difficulty, we must let go of our personal pain, fear, desire for revenge, and not allow the scars of the past to rule our lives. We must continue moving forward, based on the faith that will lead each of us to act: we will continue to meet and talk in order to understand each other.

From our limited experience as teenagers, we understand today that in order to understand you need to look at the person in front of you not as a Jew, not as an Arab, not as a Palestinian, American, Afghani or Rwandan, but as a human being-as Shachar, Morad, Amira, Sachar, Raja, and Reut. Let us not give in to despair, let us hang on in these difficult moments, in the hope that ordinary people will be able to overcome the threatening extremism and hatred.

In the story of the Tower of Babel, G-d commanded people to speak in different languages so that they would not understand each other. We pray that the day will come when people again speak the same language and begin to rebuild the tower...the tower of peace.

This is not an attempt to change the world, it is an attempt to find a common language, to look people straight in the eye and ask: "Hey brother, how are you?"^{3 [5]}

Connections
What does Imre Kertesz mean when he writes, "In 1944, they put a yellow star on me, which in a symbolic sense is still there; to this day I have not been able to remove it"? What is he suggesting about the power of labels? What power do words have-particularly words that are used to define or label us? How do those words shape our attitudes, values, and behavior?

Ghabra was "surprised" by his professors' tolerance and the willingness of "the most Zionist of all my teachers" to show empathy. What do his words reveal about his own stereotypes? About the role his education played in challenging those stereotypes? What allows stereotypes to flourish? What part do leaders play in keeping them alive? What part does education play?

What does it mean to be free to define yourself? How important is freedom of self-definition to the way you see yourself? To the way your view others? What kinds of dialogues allow individuals to define themselves? How important are such dialogues to democracy? What rules would you set for engaging in such conversations?

In Reading 1 [6], Frank Wu, a professor of law, was quoted as saying that there is a "slippery slope" leading from stereotypes about foreign governments, "races," and ethnic groups to an individual by way of the catch-all phrase "you people." Stereotyping often leads to violence, because there are no clear stopping points on that "slippery slope." What kind of education avoids that slippery slope?

 

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¹ ©Imre Kertész Translated by Ivan Sanders. Edited extract from "The Freedom of Self-Definition," which will appear in Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium, ed. by Horace Engdahl, to be published by Scientific World .Publishing, Singapore, in December 2002. The Guardian, October 19, 2002.

 

² "What Catastrophe Can Reveal" by Shafeeq Ghabra. The New York Times, August 26, 2002, op-ed. page.

³ "Summing Up the Graduates Reunion" by participants in the meeting of Center for Humanistic Education. Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, April 30, 2002.

 

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