The rector [Huizinga] reports that he has been informed that Dr. J. von Leers, leader of the German delegation to the current ISS Congress, is the author of a pamphlet entitled "Forderung der Stunde, Juden 'raus!" [The call of the hour: Out with the Jews!], which was reprinted in March 1933 and in which can be found a passage on the ritual murder of Christian children. The passage in question concludes that this popular belief should he considered an urgent threat from which there is need for protection even today. In the event that the report proves to be true, the committee believes the Senate should make its views known unequivocally and discuss possible further measures. Finally, it was agreed that, through Professor van Wijk, Dr. von Leers should be invited to discuss the matter with the rector in the Senate Chamber, in the presence of the Clerks, at which point he will be asked whether the report is correct. If he denies that it is correct, a protocol to that effect will be drawn up, to be signed by him. If he admits this is correct, the Senate will communicate its disgust by requesting char he no longer avail himself of the hospitality of the university, and by reserving the right to rake further measures.--Quoted from Otterspeer, Willem. "Huizinga before the Abyss: The von Leers incident at the University of Leiden, April 1933." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.3 (1997): 396. Translated by Lionel Gossman and Remier Leushuis
I recently read Huizinga's Homo Ludens. I was surprised that it closes on a profound criticism of Carl Schmitt's views on the friend-enemy distinction. (Huizinga explicitly cites Der Begriff der Politischen.) I intended to write a blog post about it, and decided to look at some secondary literature. I found two very stimulating papers on their wider exchange (see here Geertjan de Vugt 2017; and here Alexander Lambrow 2020.) The Lambrow paper confirmed the existence of a 'Von Leers incident' mentioned on the Wikipedia page devoted to Huizinga. Lambrow referred me to Otterspeer's study which is very much worth reading (not the least for its dry commentary). The passage quoted above is from the Archives of the Leiden University Senate, and are the minutes of its meeting. The date of the the event is April 11, 1933.
The ISS Congres was an opportunity for students from Germany, France, England, and Holland to meet. The Congress was hosted by Leiden university and had been opened by Huizinga. In 1933, Von Leers (the leader of the German student delegation) was not a student anymore. He had been added to the delegation, presumably by the new regime in Germany. The meeting between Huizinga nd Von Leers was quickly arranged, and Von Leers confronted with his writings. I quote some of the minutes:
When the incriminating passages were read out, he had admitted the possibility that they might be his own words, with the proviso, however, that the passage might turn out to be a quotation. With that same proviso, the rector had expressed the Senate's "tiefen Abscheu und tiefe Verachtung" deep revulsion and deep contempt-in German in the text], had added that he reserved the right to take further measures, and that he requested that Dr. von Leers no longer avail himself of the university's hospitality. Dr. von Leers had noted first that the reproved opinions were shared by the Reichs Chancellor and other high officials...Since the conversation seemed likely to become needlessly painful, [Huizinga] had put an end to it, observing chat he could no longer shake hands with Dr. von Leers. (396-7)
Now, Huizinga was already a famous scholar for his Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919), translated as Herbst des Mittelalters (1924), and as The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924). And he was by no means a Marxist, Socialist, or Positivist. In fact, Huizinga had been invited to the Lippmann colloquium in 1938, so during the period he was viewed as potentially sympathetic to liberalism. In the article, Otterspeer, himself an accomplished scholar, suggests that he is "what we would now call a conservative liberal, and in his version of that position, he expressed the values of a petit-bourgeois elite." (413) I don't think this is false, and it is certainly worth noting, as Otterspeer does, that Huizinga had expressed some skepticism about parliamentarianism (especially in its mass form (415-416)). But it is also worth noting that Huizinga was astutely sensitive to what we now call 'cultural' even 'agonistic pluralism' (anticipating Lippmann's own views) and that's a view we don't tend to associate with what in the low countries passes for conservative liberalism. In addition, Huizinga was not especially known for philosemitic views.
I used a cognate of 'canceling' in this the title of this post not just as click-bait. (Von Leers really was a Nazi.) As the passages reveal, Huizinga revoked the university's hospitality while Von Leers was in Leiden. (This led to the conference ending prematurely amongst other consequences.) In addition, he used the occasion to formally express the "deep revulsion and deep contempt" of the university to Von Leers and this is symbolically reiterated by the refusal to shake hands. What is especially notable about this, is that all reports suggest that Von Leers remained polite throughout. And that while Von Leers had expressed anti-Jewish sentiments at the conference, the desire to take action did not come from any student participants, but from the rector, that is, Huizinga, who had been informed that Von Leers was the author of an anti-Semitic pamphlet which espoused blood libel.*
Now, as it happens some members of the board of governors, who had been exposed to German complaints about Huizinga's decision, were not happy with Huizinga's actions. It's not entirely clear if their lack of approval is due, as seems most likely, their sense that Huizinga over-stepped his authority and took a decision which he should have run by the board first, or whether they thought it was imprudent to make enemies out of the new German government. It's also possible they thought he made the wrong decision on substantive grounds (although Otterspeer offers no evidence of substantive criticism). Much remains unclear to me about the subsequent interaction between the Board and Huizinga.**
It seems to have been self-evident to Huizinga that somebody who expressed blood libel as an imminent danger to the German people in print had no place at a serious university. This also means he didn't really formulate the principles on which he was acting. Lionel Gossman, who wrote an afterword to Otterspeer's paper in the English translation, thinks that Huizinga decided to act in order to defend "the honor of the university" which embodied so many of his ideals. (p. 417) What this amounts to Gossman explain near the end of his afterword:
Von Leers's transgression seems rather to be of nonprofessional conduct-not playing by the basic rules of the scholarly or academic game. For Huizinga evidently assumed that as an educated man, von Leers knew that the popular stories about ritual murders or Christian children by Jews were unfounded and had been shown to be so by historical scholarship. In other words, von Leers had cynically sought to manipulate public opinion by presenting palpably false statements in the guise of historically valid ones. He had only played at playing the scholarly game; in fact, he had shown no respect for any partner nor observed any rules. (324; this interpretation is endorsed with some elaboration by Lambrow 2020: 827)
Gossman's account also fits with the argument that Huizinga was to develop in Homo Ludens. But in the absence of direct evidence, it must be treated cautiously as informed speculation.
Having said that, what I like about Gossman's suggestion is that Huizinga intuits an important distinction between scholarship and ersatz scholarship as an ideal worth policing at a university. And that it is unbecoming to universities to welcome those that promote ersatz scholarship to the public. For all involved in the dispute it is telling that Von Leers seems to think that the approval of the Reichs Chancelor is at all salient to the matter at hand. Why this is so is worth articulating.
Gossman makes clear that Huizinga's expulsion of Von Leers should not be merely interpreted as Huizinga seeing Von Leers as a spoilsport. (These can be useful sometimes according to Huizinga.) Rather, it is Von Leers' aims that are very much part of the problem. (And this is where Gossman connects the issue to Huizinga's later polemic with Schmitt--some other time I return to this.) "He had betrayed," Gossman writes," "and undermined the game, had ''played" at playing, for the sake of no higher principle, no principle at all nothing but the elimination or all obstacles for the untrammeled exercise of power." (429)+ This must be met by contempt and expulsion.
Clearly, Huizinga's position as attributed to him by Gossman, presupposes a willingness to make two kinds of substantive judgments: first, that some agent is involved in ersatz scholarship; second, that this ersatz scholarship does not serve a proper aim or principle. And, in fact, the approval of the Reichs chancelor is not a proper aim of scholarship. And whatever else one can say about Huizinga, he was not deluded about the nature of National Socialism in 1933.++
Huizinga's position cannot be defended under freedom of speech and seems to go against the ordinary norms of hospitality, but it is wholly intelligible in terms of academic freedom. For, academic freedom recognizes that scholarly speech is rule-bound (and evidence/method-bound) in lots of evolving ways, and that it presupposes judgments of quality on a regular basis. And engaging in ersatz scholarship disrespects the scholarly community and its members. In addition, Huizinga's position presupposes that once a determination of ersatz scholarship has been made, there is a willingness to judge the ends it is serving. And it is pretty clear that these ends are in this case not just incompatible with commitment to truth, but also what we may call the spiritual authority of a university--it must not be seen as a mere servant of power. It is surely not a coincidence, that mere weeks after Hitler acquired dictatorial powers, Huizinga didn't treat Von Leers' past writings as an insignificant curiosity.
Now, Huizinga's stance is not an easy position to defend. It's notable that Huizinga was not being critical of what Von Leers said at the conference (where he was plainly anti-semitic, as Otterspeer notes), but of his previous published writings. But it can help explain the particular animus shown to some scholars who present themselves as scientific authorities, but avoid (say) the normal practices of scholarly peer review and scholarly give and take, and who seem to welcome the protests they generate as good for business or the political ends they serve. I have come to think this is characteristic of, say, the work of Charles Murray (recall here for evidence; here), but fill in your favorite example. Of course, such judgments can and must be defeasible. (Notice, that Huizinga makes a real effort to establish whether Von Leers is the author of what's attributed to him.) Of course, once one has established that someone is engaged in ersatz scholarship, it is very difficult to treat their ends as somehow redemptive.
I perfectly grant that a lot of apparent and real contemporary canceling is not like this on contemporary campuses. So, I don't want to suggest Huizinga anticipates all the versions of canceling and the excesses of our age. I also think that it is perfectly legitimate for universities to invite despicable characters in order to facilitate mutual understanding among hostile groups (which is what ISS was trying to promote). Some celebrated universities today have friends of torture and other war criminals on faculty, after all.
But in virtue of Huizinga's willingness to take academic life seriously, and the fact that his academic achievements were not insignificant (and, for all the limitations we have discovered in them by now, still worth engaging with), I do wish to treat him as a kind of exemplar. Huizinga was rather cautious about involvement in political affairs, and for most of his life he kept his distance from politics. Huizinga's role in the Von Leers incident challenges many common preconceptions about the significance of canceling not the least the claim that the policing of academic speech is somehow extraneous to academic life or motivated by political ideologies or partisanship of various sorts. Unlike those that conflate academic freedom with freedom of speech, Huizinga recognizes that academic speech is governed by rules and an ethos that need to be enforced. And to respect these rules and that ethos, one most be willing to discriminate and judge, and hold some agents accountable for their words such that they are unwelcome on campus. It's incumbent on each academic community to figure out if they are willing to live by such demanding ideals.***
*It's unclear to me who informed Huizinga of this. When he confronted Von Leers he had not seen or read the pamphlet yet. He read the pamphlet after the conference.
**The Chair of the Board was Adriaan van de Sande Bakhuyzen, who was the mayor of Leiden at the time and the son of an important Leiden astronomer. This was not someone who would naturally defer to the rector, even one as eminent as Huizinga.
+Lambrow ignores this about Otterspeer's article.
++In a fascinating recent essay, Liam Kofi Bright has discussed the significance of cultural theory capable of judging one's own age. It is by no means easy to be a discerning and impartial judge of one's own age. And certainly partisan polarization makes it very difficult to be impartial about these matters. But Huizinga's practice as a cultural historian seems to have facilitated his good judgment in 1933.
***[UPDATE]: An earlier version of this post failed to identify Gossman as the author of the afterword to Otterspeer's article and so misidentified some of the claims in my digression.
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