Sorin Antohi
Encyclopedia
Biography
Antohi was born in Târgu OcnaTârgu Ocna
Târgu Ocna is a town in Bacău County, Romania, situated on the left bank of the Trotuş River, an affluent of the Siret, and on a branch railway which crosses the Ghimeş Pass from Moldavia into Transylvania. Târgu Ocna is built among the Carpathian Mountains on bare hills formed of rock salt...
. He received his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
and Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
degrees from the University of Iaşi and a DEA
DEA (former French degree)
A Master of Advanced Studies is a non-consecutive postgraduate degree awarded predominantly in European countries. A MAS program offers comprehensive training in a specific field and can either give access to higher qualification in one's profession or lead to a new profession...
from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...
. He taught history at the University of Michigan, at the University of Bucharest and at the Central-European University of Budapest (since 1995). At CEU, he founded Pasts, Inc. Institute for Historical Studies, where he pursued many scholarly activities. Antohi was part of the "Presidential Committee for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania" at the bequest of its chair, Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, before resigning in May 2006.
Controversy
In a 2006 open letter published in the BucharestBucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
-based 22 review, Antohi admitted to having collaborated with the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
, the secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
in Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, during the 1970s and the 1980s. He also claimed that he had been persecuted, and physically abused by the same Securitate as a member of the Jassy Group of anti-communist intellectuals, which included Dan Petrescu, Liviu Antonesei, Luca Piţu and others. As an informant
Informant
An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants , and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information...
, he claimed that he offered non-detrimental information on the political views of many of his close friends.
On October 20, 2006, the Romanian press reported that representatives of the Romanian Ministry of Education
Ministry of Education and Research of Romania
The Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport is one of the nineteen ministries of the Government of Romania.Over the years the Ministry changed its title...
discovered that Antohi never defended his doctoral thesis in the country. It appears that he failed to write his PhD thesis, and was expelled from the doctoral program of the University of Iaşi in 2000. His Curriculum vitae at the Central European University also listed several books that Antohi claimed were published by Polirom
Polirom
Polirom or Editura Polirom is a Romanian publishing house with a tradition of publishing classics of international literature and also various titles in the fields of social sciences, such as psychology, sociology and anthropology. The company was founded in February 1995. The first title...
press, but which journalists from the Ziua de Iaşi
Ziua
Ziua was a major Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was published in Romanian with a fairly sizeable and often informative English section. Ziua was founded in 1994 by Sorin Roşca Stănescu, eventually becoming foreign-owned...
daily were unable to locate; Antohi was unavailable for comment.
In October 2006, this sequence of scandals led him to resign from his position as head of the history department at the Central European University
Central European University
For other uses, see European University Central European University is a graduate-level, English-language university offering degrees in the social sciences, humanities, law, public policy, business management, environmental science, and mathematics...
in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and from the Pasts, Inc. Institute for Historical Studies. He is still an editor of the academic journal East European Politics and Societies.
As of December 21, 2006, Sorin Antohi is still an editor of the academic journal East European Politics and Societies, where his collaborator Vladimir Tismăneanu is chair of the editorial committee.
The scandal broke out again in July–August 2008, in Germany and Romania, after having co-directed a Conference with the financial help of the Institute for Cultural Studies. Newspapers in Germany and Romania alleged that Antohi had, in public forums over the course of the previous year, represented himself as the director of two research institutes, one in Germany and one in Romania, which do not exist. At this time the scandal was, in part, revived by the Romanian-German author and Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
Winner Herta Müller
Herta Müller
Herta Müller is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime which she experienced herself...
who, in a letter in the Frankfurter Rundschau, asked how it was that Antohi, who had been an informer since the age of 19, and who had falsified his PhD diploma, had been invited to an event at a Romanian cultural institute in Berlin.
Work
His historical work focuses on intellectual historyIntellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
, the history of ideas, historical theory and the history of historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
, and Romanian studies in European contexts. Antohi has also been actively involved in many institutional projects, focusing on the "education, training and career development of emerging scholars" from Eastern Europe.http://www.pasts.ceu.hu/
Published volumes
- Utopica. Studii asupra imaginarului social ("Utopica. Studies on Social Imagination"). Editura Ştiinţifică, Bucharest, 1991 (second, revised and expanded [edition]Idea, Cluj-NapocaCluj-NapocaCluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
, 2005) - Civitas imaginalis. Istorie şi utopie în cultura română ("Civitas Imaginalis. History and Utopia in Romanian Culture"), Litera, BucharestBucharestBucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, 1994 (second revised edition, Polirom, Iaşi, 1999) - Exerciţiul distanţei. Discursuri, societăţi, metode ("The Practice of Distance. Discourses, Societies, and Methods"), Nemira, Bucharest, 1997 (second edition, 1998)
- Imaginaire culturel et réalité politique dans la Roumanie moderne. Le Stigmate et l'utopie ("Cultural Imagination and Political Reality in Modern Romania. The Stigma and the Utopia"), L'Harmattan, ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
-MontréalMontrealMontreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, 1999 - Războaie culturale. Idei, intelectuali, spirit public (Cultural wars. Ideas, Intellectuals and Public Ethos), Jassy, Ed. Polirom, 2007
Co-authored
- with Moshe Idel, Ceea ce ne uneste. Istorii, biografii, idei (What binds us together. Histories, biographies, ideas), Polirom, Iasi, 2006 http://www.polirom.ro/catalog/carte/ceea-ce-ne-uneste-istorii-biografii-idei-sorin-antohi-in-dialog-cu-moshe-ide-2347/
- with Adrian Marino, Al treilea discurs. Cultură, ideologie şi politică în România ("The Third Discourse. Culture, Ideology, and Politics in Romania"), Polirom, Iaşi, 2001
- with Mihai Şora: Mai avem un viitor? România la început de mileniu ("Do We Still Have a Future? Romania at the Start of the Millennium"), Polirom, Iaşi, 2001
- with Alexandru ZubAlexandru ZubAlexandru Zub is a Romanian historian, biographer, essayist, political activist and academic. A former Professor at the University of Iaşi, noted for his contribution to the study of cultural history and Romanian history, he is currently head of the A. D. Xenopol Institute of History and Archeology...
: Oglinzi retrovizoare. Istorie, memorie si morală în România ("Rearview Mirrors. History, Memory, and Morals in Romania"), Polirom, Iaşi, 2000
Edited volumes
- 2007, Narratives Unbound. Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. New York-Budapest: CEU Press, 514 pages (co-edited with Balazs Trencsenyi and Peter Apor).
- 2003, Geografii simbolice, Caietele Echinox. Cluj: Dacia, 296 pp (co-edited with Corin Braga).
- 2003, Ioan Petru Culianu. Omul şi opera, Jassy , Editura Polirom, 653 pp.
- 2001, Religion, Fiction, and History. Essays in Memory of Ioan Petru Culianu. Bucharest: Nemira. 2 vols. (415 + 590 pp.).
- 2000, Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath, Central European University Press, Budapest (coeditor Vladimir Tismăneanu)
- 1997, Dialog şi libertate. Eseuri în onoarea lui Mihai Şora, Bucureşti, ed. Nemira, 332 pp. (coeditor Aurelian Crăiuţu).