Internationalization of Higher Education, 1933

While the internationalization of higher education is a hot topic at the moment and is widely seen as unique to the present, internationalization of higher education is not new. The politics of internationalization at Istanbul University in the early years of the Turkish republic provide a fascinating case study (Ergin, 2009).

In the 1930s 38 out of 65 chair professors at Istanbul University were German. If university rankings had been around then, Istanbul University would obviously have done fantastically well on the ‘internationalization’ criterion. Two events in 1933 were responsible for this amazing level of internationalization: Hitler’s ascent to power meant that Germany’s Jewish and/or Socialist intellectual elite started to leave the country. Simultaneously, the Turkish republic undertook a major reform of higher education, which was to be a radical break from the Ottoman past.

In its efforts to modernize and Westernize, Turkey employed a large number of Western academics in the early years of the Republic (1923-1950), many of them refugees from Nazi Germany. The irony of employing the victims of Western modernity to achieve Western modernity was not lost on many of those academics who inhabited this paradoxical world.

The Turkish reformers largely accepted the Orientalist and racist world view of the time but wanted to switch sides. They accepted that ‘the West’ was superior to ‘the East’ but contested the idea that they were part of ‘the East.’ The humanities and social sciences of the reformed universities were expected to demonstrate exactly that: that historically, linguistically and racially Turkey was on par, if not superior, to Western modernity and civilization, conceived as an essential trait of culture and race. Specifically, academics were mobilized to demonstrate the ‘Europeanness’ of Turks and their membership in ‘the white race;’ to establish the ancient and enduring character of ‘Turkishness;’ and to show that the Turkish language was the source of Western languages.

In effect, refugees from Nazi Germany, which was ideologically built on exactly the same universalist conceptions of history, language and race (localized, of course, to “Germanness” rather than “Turkishness”), became the local personifications of Turkey’s modernization project. How did they live their paradoxical situation?

Ergin (2009) explores this paradox with reference to the work of Wolfram Eberhard, who was Professor of Chinese at Ankara University from 1937 to 1948. Eberhard, who was widely seen as one of the most talented sinologists of his generation, left Germany because he was under pressure to become a member of the Nazi Party in order to advance his academic career. His approach to language and culture did not fit in with the nationalistic and racial ideologies of the time (neither in Germany nor in Turkey) and his work thus provides an interesting case of intercultural communication in research.

Specifically, Eberhard sought to reject the then-prevailing idea of Chinese as an autonomous civilization and to demonstrate that Chinese language and civilization were as much a product of linguistic and cultural contact and exchange as any other. In one article, he identified five major influences on ancient Chinese, including a ‘Western’ influence “whose possessors were of Turkish stock” (quoted in Ergin, 2009, p. 117). While intended to contest notions of national and racial purity, this academic article was reinterpreted by Turkish academics and in the Turkish media as evidence that many achievements of Chinese civilization occurred because of Turkish influence. Eberhard’s anti-nationalistic and anti-essentialist argument thus came to be read as its exact opposite.

However, it would be wrong to assume that Turkey’s German academics only participated in the Turkish nationalist project inadvertently and through being misinterpreted, as in this example. They also had their careers and the interests of their employer – the Turkish state – to consider. Like many others, Eberhard, too, on occasion explicitly located his research agenda in Turkish nationalistic and racial positions. The tension between producing universalistic research for local purposes was continuously present.

While finding themselves welcomed and admired as ‘Western intellectuals’ these émigré scholars also found themselves resented and envied by their Turkish colleagues. One terrain where resentment against ‘Westerners’ could be openly expressed was language: most of the German academics taught in English, French or German and their contracts stipulated that, after three years, they would switch to Turkish. The assumption was that they would help to enrich and develop the Turkish language by lecturing and publishing in Turkish. In practice, unsurprisingly, only a relatively small number was able to achieve sufficient proficiency in Turkish to be able to teach in Turkish. For most, the contractually stipulated linguistic transition period went by and they quietly continued to teach in English, French or German.

Internationalizing Turkish academia in the early years of the republic was a creative response by the Turkish modernizers to turn Western academic Orientalism to their advantage. They tried to establish the Turkish origins of Western civilization with the help of Western knowledge and Western academics. Ergin’s article is a fascinating account of the entanglements in global and local power struggles that internationalizing discourses and international academics can find themselves in – then as today.

Ergin, M. (2009). Cultural encounters in the social sciences and humanities: western emigre scholars in Turkey History of the Human Sciences, 22 (1), 105-130 DOI: 10.1177/0952695108099137