The Betrayal of the Humanities

"This collection of valuable studies shows how the German universities—already home to many conservative-nationalist and anti-democratic faculty as well as nazified students before 1933—welcomed the onset of the Nazi dictatorship and pursued a course of "self-coordination" in purging Jews and political opponents. Within the humanities, a core of Nazi activists in major disciplines such as theology, law, archeology, and history certainly exercised an inordinate influence over hiring, funding, and curriculum, but numerous opportunists and fellow travelers even in smaller departments adopted Nazi racial rhetoric and sought to demonstrate their "relevance" and "usefulness" to the Nazi cause. In the post-war period a few of the most egregious academic Nazis served as useful scapegoats, but the vast majority of faculty viewed themselves as the double victims of Hitler's dictatorship and war on the one hand and the Allies' unfair denazification on the other. But at least, in a second act of self-coordination, they sanitized their vitas, forgot their past complicities, and began to act like the non-Nazi, apolitical scholars they now claimed to have been all along."—Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"This is a sobering study of how quickly and completely German universities and the humanities were corrupted by Nazi ideology and policies during the National Socialist era. Led by some of the most prominent scholars in their fields, entire scholarly disciplines conformed to Nazi rule, leading to the broader perversion of humanistic values, standards and ethics throughout Germany. Thoughtful and profound, the essays in this volume explore this history as a warning for our own times."—Victoria J. Barnett, Director (retired), Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

"As I read this rich collection, I found myself learning at nearly every turn, even from many of the footnotes. These are serious, well-researched and well-written studies; their authors draw upon both primary sources (not infrequently unpublished archival items) and secondary sources in the original languages to construct their arguments. Taken together, this is a compelling collection of serious essays from which readers, whether specialists or non-specialists, will learn much. The essays complement each other and even build on each other."—Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University

"With Jewish students under assault on campuses across the United States, The Betrayal of the Humanities demonstrates the role academicians can play in "validating" antisemitism and producing research to underpin genocidal worldviews."—The Times of Israel

"The Betrayal of the Humanities is a testimony to what can go wrong if humanistic education is separated from ethics, from moral imperatives, and from the face of one's neighbor. We would do well to heed its warning."—Kathleen Gallagher Elkins, Review of Biblical Literature

"While these accounts and perspectives about a receding era stand very well on their own, I can't help but see resonance with some of the intense fights over the role and function of universities today."—Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard University, The Harvard Gazette

"[W]e need more books like The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich. In a time of intensifying anti-Semitism, the volume edited by Levinson and Ericksen ought to be read by every single academic who stands in the tradition of the universities in Germany and surrounding countries."—Kristin de Troyer, Review of Biblical Literature

"My first response was fascinated horror and then a burning need to know more This new interdisciplinary volume,The Betrayal of the Humanities, while building on a current of recent scholarship, contains material that makes it especially relevant for members of the Society of Biblical Literature who specialize in the historical humanities, including Hebrew Bible, Assyriology, Egyptology, early Christianity, and rabbinics. It covers issues known to few scholars of religion, myself included. Today more than ever it is crucial for people to study such works, given the renewed attractions of authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and Christian nationalism in many countries."—