Dissonant Legacies: Engaging with Difficult University Heritage
The Memory of Totalitarian Regimes
This section presents objects related to one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century: that of totalitarian regimes. University institutions have often favoured narratives focused on the celebration of students and faculty members who resisted or were persecuted. Conversely, little attention has been paid to the involvement of universities in the activities of totalitarian regimes and in the production of knowledge functional to hegemonic projects, or the lack of effective reintegration and reparation policies for those expelled from the university for political or racial reasons. The items displayed on this page show that European universities are beginning to take responsibility for this difficult past through different practices, examples of which include installing memorial plaques as formal acknowledgements of institutional responsibility; implementing restitution policies for illegally plundered materials; and critically examining the relationships between science and politics.
