you
imagine for a moment that you are
approaching a building this building has
Corinthian columns rising 15 meters into
the sky each of these columns is topped
by winding ornate acanthus leaves
unusually you approach the entrance on a
long side of this rectangular building
you see that the strong Desert Sun has
turned the formerly white limestone into
a rich golden yellow color to your right
and to your left there’s an altar you
look closely and you see some carved
artwork it’s Arab an origin but
greco-roman in an Egyptian as well in
influence standing in front of this
temple in 1902 Gertrude Bell a renowned
traveler and poetry translator said that
with the exception of Petra this was the
most beautiful place she had ever been
this as she’d photographed it in 1902 is
the temple of bel in Palmyra Syria it
stood since 32 ad if you want to visit
it I’m afraid that’s no longer possible
it was razed to the ground in August
2015
by Isis I have long wanted to visit long
before I became a historian long before
I took an art history course which
introduced me to another way to tell
time
in fact my fascination with historical
monuments and historical architecture
goes back far longer than that I still
work all being a child being glued to
the television watching documentary
films that looked at Egyptian pyramids
that still held secrets or Sumerian
tombs that were still sealed shut and
the technologies that we were developing
to gather more and more insights about
how people lived in the past to me the
idea that these ancient monuments that
these artifacts continued to exist that
they were out there for us to see was
nothing short of a miracle away in fact
to time travel
during times of upheaval during times of
revolution particular groups have made a
point sometimes protracted point of
deliberately destroying these particular
cultural artifacts and these particular
historical monuments so I’m not speaking
of collateral damage in this case I’m
speaking of the systemic deliberate and
targeted destruction of these particular
artifacts in this kind of destruction
what we’re really seeing is the breaking
of that tactile experience shell link
that we can have with the past our
ability to see it to come close to it to
potentially touch it and for some of us
to interpret it this kind of destruction
I believe has a parallel disruption
which is more insidious the destruction
of cultural memory and thereby of
cultural identity why does this matter
it matters because when these historical
objects are destroyed it makes it harder
to assess and reassess history it makes
it harder for us to be able to
understand the place of these monuments
for us to experience them directly what
can we do about this I think in the
first instance it’s really important for
us to develop a stronger case for why we
should preserve these monuments I think
intuitively you know we think we like to
have these objects around to me this is
fundamental we do don’t we we
intuitively think would be nice to keep
these objects round it would be nice to
have museums but I think that we should
make a case a stronger case for
defending and preserving these historic
monuments and we should be very aware at
attempts at destroying things in
parallel to the destruction of buildings
themselves because ultimately what’s
being destroyed it’s not just buildings
it’s collective memory it’s a
multiplicity of approaches it’s the
right of access to objects and the
identities that it unlocks that it
validates that it explains
in August of 1992 during the siege of
Sarajevo the National Library was bombed
this library had held rare manuscripts
rare volumes that detailed the
flourishing of a multicultural life of
the region under the ottoman and
austro-hungarian empires foreign
journalists who were watching this
destruction happen in front of them had
reported that the library’s main Reading
Room had these thin moorish columns
which could not take the intense heat
and exploded and that sections of the
roof fell through the ceiling three
months prior to this bombing Sarajevo’s
Oriental Institute which held the
country’s largest collection of Islamic
and Ottoman texts likewise had been
targeted for destruction in both of
these instances and in several more
across Bosnia around this time the
targeting was deliberate the buildings
on either side were untouched
so in this destruction of of archives of
libraries of cultural institutions and
therefore all of these documents it
seemed to be about breaking that
material link that we have that
experience all link of looking at
documents of looking at books of looking
at works of art that can show a future
generation that in fact people of
different ethnic backgrounds people of
different religious traditions had once
shared a common ancestry in this
particular region people had volunteered
along with the librarians to form a
human chain while the library was
burning to get some of these manuscripts
to safety when one of the when one of
the volunteers was asked why he was
risking his life he said pointing to the
library or heritage our national
identity is there when the chief fire
brigade was asked why he was risking his
life he said because I was born here and
now they are burning a part of me
in 2002 in a report to UNESCO the
library director took pains to explain
that the reconstruction of this building
was at the same time the reconstruction
of memory from April of 2012 to
September of 2013
members of Ansar Dean destroyed most of
Molly’s mausoleums and shrines in a
landmark ruling the International
Criminal Court found formal several
servant Ahmadi guilty of warm of war
crimes in a case that was solely focused
on cultural destruction in recorded
videos Almaty had said we must remove
from the landscape everything which does
not belong but to answer dean members it
was not merely the the ancient
mausoleums and shrines which did not
belong which they found idolatrous it
was the activities that took place
alongside them for prior to their
destruction these sites had been used by
members of the community for a number of
diverse religious and diverse cultural
ceremonies so for instance they held
music festivals there they’re held oral
literature festivals but they were also
the sites of community conflict
resolution in community building these
shrines were built in the 15th and 16th
century when Timbuktu was in fact the
the center of this particular region it
was the center economically of the
center intellectually and it was the
center spiritually in current day
molly’s diversity you know comes from
this culmination of years of
interweaving of different groups in that
area in August 2015
Isis completed the destruction of the
temple of bel which they had started two
years prior until its destruction it was
one of the most complete structures to
have survived from this time the temple
was consecrated in 32 AD and it was a
long a major trade route
and as a result of this the area grew
prosperous and it was also heavily
influenced by the cultures east and west
of it in the architectural heritage in
the temple of bow we have evidence of
cultures coming together creatively
through the passage of time with the the
rise of Christianity the temple became
converted to a Byzantine church and then
with the coming of Islam it became a
mosque in the early 1900’s the the site
of ancient Palmyra had long been in
ruins but in fact it was still being
used it was still being inhabited in
parts so the the surrounding areas were
used as shelter by nomads and herders
and the temple itself had a little
thriving village in it a microcosm a
tribute in fact to the different groups
that had traded together that I’d live
together harmoniously for large periods
of time prior a number of social
psychologists now argue that identities
are not composed of narratives and
stories but in fact identities are
narratives and stories so where do these
stories come from how do we believe the
things we believe about ourselves and
our past so this is a complicated
question but at least part of the answer
is found in first-hand experiences so
educational psychologists will tell you
that first-hand experience is better
than second because that experiential
learning can fundamentally shift your
mindset so what happens then in the
absence of these first-hand experiences
or the absence of what historians call
primary sources that the base material
for which we’ve we understand in
interpret history we all know that
there’s a distance between what we are
told and what we believe but in fact you
can shorten this distance you can even
overcome this distance with well-crafted
well-constructed even if
not necessarily always well-meaning
narratives researchers at the University
of Waterloo found that narratives were
particularly effective at overcoming
strong resistance to persuasion and that
a couple of reasons that they found for
that one of these reasons was that
people don’t expect narratives to shift
their beliefs they don’t expect
narratives to challenge the things that
they believe and their attitudes and so
therefore their resistance to what a
narrative brought to them was lower
secondly narratives inspired a kind of
close attention to detail in listening
for how the story proceeds
that’s not inspired by say rhetoric or
direct targeted messages which we tend
to ignore if it doesn’t line up with our
previously held attitudes or previous
experiences but the researchers
concluded that these narratives were
particularly good at conveying
under-the-radar
certain messages so for instance you can
think of any number of advertising and
marketing campaigns now that use a
social media story to envelop you so
further to this psychologists Alice idli
and Shelley chagan also demonstrated
that the timing and the delivery of a
message is particularly crucial to how
we accept it and to whether or not we
believe it they discovered that when the
timing in the delivery of a message is
forced that you’re more likely to be
persuaded by it then if you have a
message which are exposed to in a
self-paced way that is to say if you
have time to think about the message if
you have time to reflect on it and have
that space for critical thinking in
relation to what you’re what you’re
actually listening to or being exposed
to so what is the purpose of history in
light of all of this a rich and complex
history is a bulwark and a threat to
simple one-dimensional particularly
motivated but potentially nevertheless
convincing narratives about the path
a few years ago I was at a history
conference and I heard historian and
journalist Timothy Garton ash make the
case that historians and non historians
alike ought to defend the frontier of
fact despite the inherent complexity and
subjectivity of studying identity and
memory we must still be clear about what
the base facts the primary sources the
raw material on which we build these
stories and narratives are it seems to
me it’s precisely because of this
complex interweaving of memory of
identity of history of
self-identification that we must defend
the right of the past to speak to us and
to future generations directly our
resultant interpretations may not always
be equally valid or equally compelling
but we must guard against the erasure of
these objects when in doing so that
erasure might attempt to limit us to one
or a few interpretations so in defense
in defending historical objects we are
allowing a multiplicity of
interpretations a multiplicity of
meanings even ones that we don’t like or
that we don’t agree with to flourish in
ensuring that the objects of inquiry
themselves remain thank you
[Applause]
you
imagine for a moment that you are
approaching a building this building has
Corinthian columns rising 15 meters into
the sky each of these columns is topped
by winding ornate acanthus leaves
unusually you approach the entrance on a
long side of this rectangular building
you see that the strong Desert Sun has
turned the formerly white limestone into
a rich golden yellow color to your right
and to your left there’s an altar you
look closely and you see some carved
artwork it’s Arab an origin but
greco-roman in an Egyptian as well in
influence standing in front of this
temple in 1902 Gertrude Bell a renowned
traveler and poetry translator said that
with the exception of Petra this was the
most beautiful place she had ever been
this as she’d photographed it in 1902 is
the temple of bel in Palmyra Syria it
stood since 32 ad if you want to visit
it I’m afraid that’s no longer possible
it was razed to the ground in August
2015
by Isis I have long wanted to visit long
before I became a historian long before
I took an art history course which
introduced me to another way to tell
time
in fact my fascination with historical
monuments and historical architecture
goes back far longer than that I still
work all being a child being glued to
the television watching documentary
films that looked at Egyptian pyramids
that still held secrets or Sumerian
tombs that were still sealed shut and
the technologies that we were developing
to gather more and more insights about
how people lived in the past to me the
idea that these ancient monuments that
these artifacts continued to exist that
they were out there for us to see was
nothing short of a miracle away in fact
to time travel
during times of upheaval during times of
revolution particular groups have made a
point sometimes protracted point of
deliberately destroying these particular
cultural artifacts and these particular
historical monuments so I’m not speaking
of collateral damage in this case I’m
speaking of the systemic deliberate and
targeted destruction of these particular
artifacts in this kind of destruction
what we’re really seeing is the breaking
of that tactile experience shell link
that we can have with the past our
ability to see it to come close to it to
potentially touch it and for some of us
to interpret it this kind of destruction
I believe has a parallel disruption
which is more insidious the destruction
of cultural memory and thereby of
cultural identity why does this matter
it matters because when these historical
objects are destroyed it makes it harder
to assess and reassess history it makes
it harder for us to be able to
understand the place of these monuments
for us to experience them directly what
can we do about this I think in the
first instance it’s really important for
us to develop a stronger case for why we
should preserve these monuments I think
intuitively you know we think we like to
have these objects around to me this is
fundamental we do don’t we we
intuitively think would be nice to keep
these objects round it would be nice to
have museums but I think that we should
make a case a stronger case for
defending and preserving these historic
monuments and we should be very aware at
attempts at destroying things in
parallel to the destruction of buildings
themselves because ultimately what’s
being destroyed it’s not just buildings
it’s collective memory it’s a
multiplicity of approaches it’s the
right of access to objects and the
identities that it unlocks that it
validates that it explains
in August of 1992 during the siege of
Sarajevo the National Library was bombed
this library had held rare manuscripts
rare volumes that detailed the
flourishing of a multicultural life of
the region under the ottoman and
austro-hungarian empires foreign
journalists who were watching this
destruction happen in front of them had
reported that the library’s main Reading
Room had these thin moorish columns
which could not take the intense heat
and exploded and that sections of the
roof fell through the ceiling three
months prior to this bombing Sarajevo’s
Oriental Institute which held the
country’s largest collection of Islamic
and Ottoman texts likewise had been
targeted for destruction in both of
these instances and in several more
across Bosnia around this time the
targeting was deliberate the buildings
on either side were untouched
so in this destruction of of archives of
libraries of cultural institutions and
therefore all of these documents it
seemed to be about breaking that
material link that we have that
experience all link of looking at
documents of looking at books of looking
at works of art that can show a future
generation that in fact people of
different ethnic backgrounds people of
different religious traditions had once
shared a common ancestry in this
particular region people had volunteered
along with the librarians to form a
human chain while the library was
burning to get some of these manuscripts
to safety when one of the when one of
the volunteers was asked why he was
risking his life he said pointing to the
library or heritage our national
identity is there when the chief fire
brigade was asked why he was risking his
life he said because I was born here and
now they are burning a part of me
in 2002 in a report to UNESCO the
library director took pains to explain
that the reconstruction of this building
was at the same time the reconstruction
of memory from April of 2012 to
September of 2013
members of Ansar Dean destroyed most of
Molly’s mausoleums and shrines in a
landmark ruling the International
Criminal Court found formal several
servant Ahmadi guilty of warm of war
crimes in a case that was solely focused
on cultural destruction in recorded
videos Almaty had said we must remove
from the landscape everything which does
not belong but to answer dean members it
was not merely the the ancient
mausoleums and shrines which did not
belong which they found idolatrous it
was the activities that took place
alongside them for prior to their
destruction these sites had been used by
members of the community for a number of
diverse religious and diverse cultural
ceremonies so for instance they held
music festivals there they’re held oral
literature festivals but they were also
the sites of community conflict
resolution in community building these
shrines were built in the 15th and 16th
century when Timbuktu was in fact the
the center of this particular region it
was the center economically of the
center intellectually and it was the
center spiritually in current day
molly’s diversity you know comes from
this culmination of years of
interweaving of different groups in that
area in August 2015
Isis completed the destruction of the
temple of bel which they had started two
years prior until its destruction it was
one of the most complete structures to
have survived from this time the temple
was consecrated in 32 AD and it was a
long a major trade route
and as a result of this the area grew
prosperous and it was also heavily
influenced by the cultures east and west
of it in the architectural heritage in
the temple of bow we have evidence of
cultures coming together creatively
through the passage of time with the the
rise of Christianity the temple became
converted to a Byzantine church and then
with the coming of Islam it became a
mosque in the early 1900’s the the site
of ancient Palmyra had long been in
ruins but in fact it was still being
used it was still being inhabited in
parts so the the surrounding areas were
used as shelter by nomads and herders
and the temple itself had a little
thriving village in it a microcosm a
tribute in fact to the different groups
that had traded together that I’d live
together harmoniously for large periods
of time prior a number of social
psychologists now argue that identities
are not composed of narratives and
stories but in fact identities are
narratives and stories so where do these
stories come from how do we believe the
things we believe about ourselves and
our past so this is a complicated
question but at least part of the answer
is found in first-hand experiences so
educational psychologists will tell you
that first-hand experience is better
than second because that experiential
learning can fundamentally shift your
mindset so what happens then in the
absence of these first-hand experiences
or the absence of what historians call
primary sources that the base material
for which we’ve we understand in
interpret history we all know that
there’s a distance between what we are
told and what we believe but in fact you
can shorten this distance you can even
overcome this distance with well-crafted
well-constructed even if
not necessarily always well-meaning
narratives researchers at the University
of Waterloo found that narratives were
particularly effective at overcoming
strong resistance to persuasion and that
a couple of reasons that they found for
that one of these reasons was that
people don’t expect narratives to shift
their beliefs they don’t expect
narratives to challenge the things that
they believe and their attitudes and so
therefore their resistance to what a
narrative brought to them was lower
secondly narratives inspired a kind of
close attention to detail in listening
for how the story proceeds
that’s not inspired by say rhetoric or
direct targeted messages which we tend
to ignore if it doesn’t line up with our
previously held attitudes or previous
experiences but the researchers
concluded that these narratives were
particularly good at conveying
under-the-radar
certain messages so for instance you can
think of any number of advertising and
marketing campaigns now that use a
social media story to envelop you so
further to this psychologists Alice idli
and Shelley chagan also demonstrated
that the timing and the delivery of a
message is particularly crucial to how
we accept it and to whether or not we
believe it they discovered that when the
timing in the delivery of a message is
forced that you’re more likely to be
persuaded by it then if you have a
message which are exposed to in a
self-paced way that is to say if you
have time to think about the message if
you have time to reflect on it and have
that space for critical thinking in
relation to what you’re what you’re
actually listening to or being exposed
to so what is the purpose of history in
light of all of this a rich and complex
history is a bulwark and a threat to
simple one-dimensional particularly
motivated but potentially nevertheless
convincing narratives about the path
a few years ago I was at a history
conference and I heard historian and
journalist Timothy Garton ash make the
case that historians and non historians
alike ought to defend the frontier of
fact despite the inherent complexity and
subjectivity of studying identity and
memory we must still be clear about what
the base facts the primary sources the
raw material on which we build these
stories and narratives are it seems to
me it’s precisely because of this
complex interweaving of memory of
identity of history of
self-identification that we must defend
the right of the past to speak to us and
to future generations directly our
resultant interpretations may not always
be equally valid or equally compelling
but we must guard against the erasure of
these objects when in doing so that
erasure might attempt to limit us to one
or a few interpretations so in defense
in defending historical objects we are
allowing a multiplicity of
interpretations a multiplicity of
meanings even ones that we don’t like or
that we don’t agree with to flourish in
ensuring that the objects of inquiry
themselves remain thank you
[Applause]
you
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