Humanity and ‚Humanities‘

Russia's war against Ukraine poses a number of challenges for the humanities and social sciences. Projects to rescue or preserve cultural heritage, as well as humanitarian aid initiatives, are realized out of a hybrid of contacts between academics, formalized collaborations and individuals. They can thus be located at the intersection of academic-professional and humanitarian-volunteer engagement and exhibit a mixture of "typical" established structures and a degree of improvisation, rather unusual for the academic world, which has led to a special form of network-based self-organization. At the same time, voices from the humanities increasingly find themselves in explanatory and advisory roles—academic communication becomes part of a public crisis in communication. At all these levels, the digital transformation already brought into focus during the covid pandemic is receiving new impetus. Based on the example of the Yuri Fedkovych University of Czernowitz (Tscherniwzi), these emergent processes are traced, reflected upon and embedded in larger contexts. Three closely related sets of topics will be discussed: protection of cultural assets, protection via digitization, and the rescue of material cultural assets have in the past year taken on a practical urgency that has been unknown in Europe for decades. The acute threat to works of art, monuments and archival assets brings into focus the importance of digital transformation for their safeguarding. Their virtualization complements the traditional protective measures for the originals locally, but also opens up possibilities for subsequent use beyond the acute intention of securing them. What opportunities are presented by this development, and what preliminary conclusions can be drawn? Network building, humanitarian aid, and academic relations have gained a special humanitarian dimension in the past year due to the war: immediately after the Russian invasion in February 2022, aid actions were launched that build on established academic networks and became effective directly locally, in the war-affected areas as well as for the refugees. The engagement of academics in cooperation with other civil society actors unfolds a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from the acute supply of essential consumer goods to cultural work by and with people directly and indirectly affected by the war. What can be deduced from these processes for the future role of academic institutions? Academic communication and "subject positions" in the public discourse on the war against Ukraine, mean expertise from the humanities will be increasingly in demand. Targeted academic communication that is adapted to the situation is gaining in importance; it must increasingly assert itself even in crisis situations. Social media intensify the exchange with a broader public, the discourse is more open, but is also more erratic. At the same time, the question of the subject position of academics arises: To what extent can expertise and commitment, factual analysis and positioning, be reconciled?

A Myth Makes Mobile: The Example of the University of Czernowitz (Tscherniwzi). After an introduction to the basic questions of the symposium, these will be made concrete using the example of the National Yuri Fedkovych University of Czernowitz (Tscherniwzi). Founded in 1875 as Franz Joseph University in the capital of the former Duchy of Bukovina, it maintained close academic ties with the University of Vienna until 1918. Belonging to Romania after 1918, the northern part of Bukovina with its capital Czernowitz fell to the Soviet Union during World War II and became part of independent Ukraine in 1991. Since 1955, the former residence of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan has functioned as the central campus and administrative headquarters of the university. Designed by Josef Hlávka, the brick ensemble has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011. Particularly since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the university has built up an international cooperative network, especially in German-speaking countries, which has been active in the current situation, especially for war-related aid operations. What is the role of long-term international, institutional and personal relations between academic institutions? How, with a view to the common Central European heritage of the Habsburg Monarchy, are these cooperative initiatives promoted on the basis of historical, sometimes non-academic (sentimental) arguments (keyword "Czernowitz myth")? In what way does the historical heritage of Bukovina—cross-border regional consciousness, a tradition of multilingualism and multiculturalism—play a role?

Retreat to the Cloud? Protection of Cultural Assets and the Digital Transformation: Building on the example of the University of Czernowitz. Panel 2 will discuss the concrete benefits of the digital transformation for acute and long-term protection of cultural assets in Europe: the activities of the internationally active "Netzwerks Kulturgutschutz Ukraine" (Network for the Protection of Cultural Assets in Ukraine) as well as the contribution to digital safeguards in the first year of the war will be presented and discussed using the example of a library that is playing a pioneering role. The topic of risk management for cultural property is placed in a geographically and thematically broader framework and the perspective is extended beyond the acute situation in Ukraine to other crisis situations. Various threat scenarios for material cultural assets will be outlined (armed conflicts, natural events, art theft, etc.) and the contribution of digitization to countering them will be presented. Round Table: Between Composure and Restraint:  The Role of the Humanities in Public Discourse. Building on the two lecture panels, the round table will broaden the perspective on the communicative and ethical challenges confronting scholars in the face of war and crises. The focus will be on the contribution of the humanities to meeting these challenges and the limits they must or should set themselves in doing so: Researchers and teachers participate in an observational and explanatory way and thus make an important contribution to the classification of crisis-related developments and events. However, this form of participation in the discourse of society as a whole also leads experts to make, or occasionally have to make, judgments that go beyond subject and research based analysis. Moreover, scientific and personal networks have obvious overlaps—providing assistance in the event of war and disaster might seem obvious. But how can humanitarian engagement and humanities be combined without being accused of a "bias"? Where is a demarcation between scientific analysis and personal opinion necessary—sometimes even against an understandably reflexive concern? In which situations are academics nevertheless allowed to take sides? How do institutions and their leaders deal with this ambivalence? How does successful academic communication work in this area of tension between ethical stance and academic restraint, and what role do social media play? From the Ukrainian perspective, in view of the immediate threat, the questions seem even more urgent: How can a minimum of academic-based distance and reflection be preserved in the extreme situation of a war, the effects of which directly affect a human being? How does the "reassessment" of cultural heritage and cultural relations function under such pressure? Must some monuments—tangible and intangible—inevitably fall?