Parkes Institute statement in support of Polish Scholars Engelking and Grabowski
The Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton joins with scholarly institutes and academics around the world in expressing solidarity with our colleagues Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski in the face of unacceptable attacks in a Polish court on their right to free speech, in this particular case with regard to detailed and impeccable scholarship. This is both a breach of their individual Human Rights and an attack on academic freedom everywhere. The right to disagree is a core privilege of democratic citizenship, but one that should be exercised in open, civil debate, and not through the courts. The attack on Engelking and Grabowski’s freedom of academic expression is a symptom of a wider nationalist policing of scholarship on the Holocaust in Poland that we regard as incompatible with democratic values and norms.