Why I Am Here (More or Less)

Last week I was fortunate to be the subject of an on-line interview by Michaela Stanková of The Slovak Spectator, who asked great questions and forced me to think about and put into words why I came to Slovakia and why I keep coming back.   She has transformed our discussion into an article that appeared in this week’s edition of the paper.  The article itself is still subject to the paper’s one-week lock, but I will post it as soon as it is publicly available.  In the meantime, I post below a transcript of our conversation below.–Kevin

What was your dream job when you were a teenager? Why did you go into political science, what did you find interesting about it?

My early career choices followed the fairly predictable trajectory from firefighter to astronaut and from there, in my teens, to astrophysics and aerospace engineering.  But once I joined the debate team in secondary school it was not long before I became incurably addicted to economics and politics.  I still love to look at the sky—and I would be ecstatic if my daughter or son chose a career in astronomy—but I have become ever more fascinated by the way that people struggle with each other here on earth.  In particular, I am fascinated to try and figure out who is on what side and what they are really fighting about.  I’m also interested in how this can change over time, sometimes without conscious effort, and sometimes because politicians succeed in reorienting the political struggle to play to their own strengths.

Where does your interest in Central Europe in particular and post-communist countries in general come from?

As a university student in the late 1980’s I had a vague interest in Communist systems, and I remember watching their collapse with some curiosity in the fall of 1989, but I never expected that those changes would be central to my life.  In the spring of 1990, however, somebody at my university had the good luck to arrange an address by Vaclav Havel just before his address to a joint session of the US Congress.  Havel invited my fellow students—I had to work and couldn’t go—to come to Czechoslovakia and teach.  Since I had no better plan for after graduation—I had not yet been to Europe—I signed on to teach English for a year in Plzen, starting in the late summer of 1990.  The result was another incurable addiction: since then I’ve made 20 trips back to the region and I would not be surprised if the next 18 years bring 20 more (especially if I can figure out some way to offset my carbon footprint and deal with the sinking American dollar).

What kind of international experience have you had so far in your academic career? Did you do any exchange stays as a student or later as a teacher?

I lived for more than a year in the Czech Republic—Plzen and Prague—and for almost two years in Slovakia—mainly in Karlova Ves, Ruzinov and other Bratislava suburbs.  This year for the first time I am here with my entire family and we are enjoying living near downtown in the middle of everything.  But I’ve also felt the need to get out of the capital and spend time across the country.  Toward that end, I’ve had the good fortune to visit every kraj and nearly every okres in the country and nearly all of the 50 biggest cities and towns.

Outside of Slovakia, my research has taken me to universities and parliaments and polling stations across Europe, but there are still a few countries that have eluded me: particularly Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Albania.  With the recent declaration of independence by Kosova, the number of new countries in Europe has this year expanded faster than my ability to visit them all.  I hope for a variety of reasons that this expansion does not become a trend.

How do you like the Comenius University so far? What do you think are the crucial differences between the Slovak and the US system of university education?

The faculty members in the political science department at Comenius University are a remarkable group of people and ever since I first set foot in the department back in 1994 I have found them unfailingly generous with their time and encouragement.  And I am absolutely delighted to find that in addition to the well-established and internationally-known scholars who have chaired the department since I first arrived—Miroslav Kusy, Sona Szomolanyi and Darina Malova—the department has a new generation—Marek Rybar, Vlado Bilcik, and many others—whose work has found a worldwide audience in scholarly journals.  I am looking forward to having a chance to work with them and to join them in the classroom to work with students, something I have not been able to do in Slovakia for a long time.

I suppose teaching is just a small part of your work. Anyway, what do you like about teaching?

I have the great good fortune to do what I love. My chosen profession allows me to spend large parts of each week thinking about the most interesting questions ever asked and then discussing those questions with intelligent, energetic young people who want to find the answers as much as I do.  That is what I like about teaching.  To my delight, somebody is willing me to pay me to encourage students’ enthusiasm, to broaden their perspectives, to sharpen their abilities, and to call on their sense of responsibility.

International exchange became an important part of one’s university education worldwide and it’s growing more and more popular in Slovakia as well. From your point of view, what are the benefits of international exchange for students, teachers and universities in general?

Every year I bring a group of students to Europe and every year I am newly amazed at their amazement.  If we are really going to call ourselves “universities” then it is up to us to make sure that our students have access to as much of the universe as we can currently reach.  T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets says it much better: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

Of course somebody has to pay for all the exploring and that is not something that is easy for students or faculty members to do.  Universities and governments have to step in include foreign study among their myriad priorities.  (I am here, for example, with the financial help of my employer, Wayne State University, and my government’s remarkable Fulbright Scholarship program.).

Your research is focused on Slovakia and the Czech Republic to a large extent, judging from the research projects you’ve worked on so far and the book you wrote. For sure there are still many challenges to democracy in Slovakia, even 18 years after the revolution. What do you think are the main problems of Slovakia, in terms of political situation and other things included in your research? Are you optimistic about the future of democracy in Slovakia? Why?

There was a time when Slovakia’s political problems were exceptional, even for postcommunist Europe.  That time is over, and Slovakia’s problems are now much more normal, at least by European standards.  But “normal” does not mean unimportant or painless.  In the political realm, I worry that government in Slovakia, might lose the ability to be truly responsive to its people’s needs and become ever more focused on media-driven, symbolic politics rather than the hard work of making compromises and finding innovative solutions.  This is a problem in all democracies, but the problem has the potential to be worse here because Slovakia’s political parties have become so centralized.  Parties across the political spectrum need to cultivate their local organizations and become more open to changes within the top leadership.

Nevertheless, I am hopeful.  Indeed, I have been hopeful about Slovakia ever since I first came here to study the language and politics.  Even when things were at their worst, I encountered people of good will and energy who demonstrated great courage in trying to make life better for others.  I am proud that my earliest writings on Slovakia offered good reasons for expecting that the citizens of Slovakia would be able to mobilize against the abuse of political power and produce a government that upheld values of accountability and tolerance.  I have also seen a broad commitment among Slovaks to a just society without extremes of rich and poor.  It is an open question whether the country can manage to pursue both sets of goals at the same time.  But Slovakia is not the only country that faces this question; my own country falls short of those same ideals.

According to your CV you speak Slovak and Czech. Is it just because of your research interests? Where did you learn these languages?

I spent a year teaching English in the Czech Republic without learning much Czech.  When I came back as a researcher, I spent months remedying that situation by learning Slovak here in Bratislava.  I will be forever grateful to the teachers at the Ustav jazykovej a odbornej pripravy (UJOP) and especially to Eva Maierova, the most generous teacher I have ever had in any subject.  I also owe a great debt to the many Slovaks and Czechs who have patiently endured my efforts to master their languages, giving me the benefit of the doubt when I explained to them that I really did have ideas more sensible and complicated than my childish vocabulary would permit.

What are your plans after your stay at Comenius University is finished? Do you have any particular long-term goals (perhaps connected with Slovakia)?
Slovakia has become a part of me and I will keep coming back as long as I am welcome.  (If anything, I am more tied to this place than ever now that my two small children have learned to love eletricky and halusky.)  Slovakia is also central to my research, and what I learn in Slovakia I take back to professional circles.  Slovakia continues to yield insights about problems that face most countries in the world: the ways that political leaders can shape the terms of debate, the difficulty of building national identities that acknowledge a common sense of belonging and yet accommodate differences, and the reasons why people sometimes vote for the kinds of leaders who would be happy to get rid of voting altogether.  About two years ago I decided (along with many of my colleagues) that the closed and cumbersome academic publishing system was not well-suited to sharing my work with others and so I have started to post occasional thoughts on such questions online at www.pozorblog.com.  Most of the posts are about the dynamics of public opinion in Slovakia but I have started to address bigger questions as well. How do you like Slovakia and Slovak people in general? Is there anything you think you will miss after leaving the country?

Whenever I come back to Slovakia I feel like I am coming home.  I have no right to say such a thing—neither my citizenship nor my ethnic heritage explain my affinity for this country—but the feeling persists nevertheless.  I’m sure my feelings have a lot to do with the beauty of Slovakia’s landscape, the richness of its history and politics, the liveliness of a walkable city like Bratislava (which I prefer to all but a few of its American counterparts) and the warmth and generosity of the people I gotten to know here.  And bryndzove halusky.  Especially bryndzove halusky.