The most recent Veritasium video touched on this — Emmy Noether worked under Hilbert and made significant contributions to general relativity, worked at University of Göttingen (Jewish, and first woman professor) until 1933.
What a coincidence! I happened to navigate to this page just after watching the video on another tab. And this was my exact thought.
tlogan [3 hidden]5 mins ago
One lesser-known and deeply unsettling fact from academic history is that a significant number of professors at major German universities supported the Nazi regime during its rise to power. Far from being passive bystanders, many actively embraced Nazi ideology, joined the party, or participated in the purge of Jewish and politically dissident faculty.
A detailed exploration of this phenomenon can be found in the books “Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany” by Robert P. Ericksen
and “Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus” by Richard J. Evans. An accessible summary is also available via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
This isn’t just a historical footnote—it’s a sobering reminder of how institutions of knowledge can be wrong.
analog31 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Also, institutuons of knowledge are not right or wrong. It's the people and their ideas who are. And they are not ideologically monolithic.
littlestymaar [3 hidden]5 mins ago
And like the head of École Polytechnique (France's top university) once said in an address to the students: “there are 10% of complete idiots in the population, and I see no reason to assume the ratio is any different in here”.
If you have a political power that rewards stupidity, then those people will become empowered everywhere they are, including in the universities.
edding4500 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Among them were jewish nationalists like Fritz Haber. He was allegedly a very proud german. Didnt help him though.
klipt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
He saw the writing on the wall enough to quit his job in Germany and move his children to the UK.
realo [3 hidden]5 mins ago
And with all the trumpist shit going on in US universities right now, I wonder how many professors suddenly feel a need to advertise pro-Donald propaganda in order to keep their funding.
whatshisface [3 hidden]5 mins ago
That's not going to happen with the current people, all of whom see credibility as their only tool.
RajT88 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Some may think differently once a few are killed in a Salvadorean prison. Unless SCOTUS or Congress puts the kibosh on some of this nonsense, that's where we're heading.
idoubtit [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Isn't it just obvious? When the Nazi ideology was widespread, of course it permeated into every domain of the society.
I haven't read the books, but the presentation by this holocaust museum was not informative. For instance, it fails to mention a relevant fact: some people earned their academic position to their activity in the party.
And, most of all, the existence is irrelevant without some prevalence. I would be very surprised if the established scholars that "actively embraced Nazi ideology" were a majority.
From the Vietnam wars to nowadays, there have been US academics that embraced war or actively supported genocides, but I think most academics and students are less heinous or indifferent than the average population. That's why some German scholars were oppressed by their government, even when they were not Jews, and chose to emigrate.
Telemakhos [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> When the Nazi ideology was widespread, of course it permeated into every domain of the society.
One of the architects of that ideology was Carl Schmitt, who formulated the concept of the Totalstaat or "total state" as a state that did exactly what you say: permeated into every domain of society. He considered a state "total" when it was co-extensive with the entirety of its people's endeavors, co-opting or liquidating any alternative authority such as media, academia, or church. This was a novel concept at the time, especially after the swing to liberal (small and restrained) republics in the late eighteenth century. As a novel concept, the total permeation of the Nazi state into academia and the rest of the spheres of non-governmental authority would have been far from obvious at the time to observers of prior governments, but it was also the intent.
The Nazis were not the only ones to adopt an illiberal, totalitarian stance: the twentieth century saw a huge growth in government authority and its permeation through other parts of human life, like academia, in regimes that rejected other aspects of the Nazi ideology. The Soviet Union comes to mind as an example: the government coopted authorities like academia and liquidated others like churches in order to pervade as far as possible every aspect of society.
The fact that it seems obvious in retrospect that Nazi ideology would permeate academia and every domain of society shows how successful the concept of a Totalstaat was, even in an age that looks back with horror upon the Nazis. The way to counter the spread of government is to put strong limits on government, keeping it out of academia, the media, religion, and so forth completely, with no government funding for any of them. If academia requires government funding, the government of the day will always control academia.
whatshisface [3 hidden]5 mins ago
>keeping it out of academia [...] with no government funding for [academia]. If academia requires government funding, the government of the day will always control academia.
In this case, you'd have to transfer most research in the biological and physical sciences to NASA-style government departments, at the expense of communication between theorists and experimentalists, otherwise it would not occur. The present system is for "politically sensitive" positions like historians to be covered by endowments, and for economically service-providing research to be performed on government grants.
P.S. in some ways being controlled by people who are wealthy enough to hire professors is more politically charged than being controlled by a democratic government with checks and balances. Be careful who you wish for in matters of replacing the taxpayer's authority with that of private donors...
saghm [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> In this case, you'd have to transfer most research in the biological and physical sciences to NASA-style government departments
I understand most of the points you've made, but I'm not sure I understand this part. NASA's budget is directly controlled by Congress, so how would moving all research into departments like that be more insulated it from government funding than university researchers getting grants? If anything, it feels like it would make it _more_ susceptible to politics than grants.
whatshisface [3 hidden]5 mins ago
That's exactly right, it is the one other alternative and less independent. I'm saying that you could take it away from universities without necessarily shutting down all research; but it would be a direct employment program that worked like NASA. If Congress has to statutorily protect the research funding flowing back to their districts 2026-2027 that may be the way they accomplish it.
kibwen [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Benito Mussolini: "Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
constantcrying [3 hidden]5 mins ago
A bit bizarre to push this on Schmitt, when it was a common thread throughout fascism.
>As a novel concept, the total permeation of the Nazi state into academia and the rest of the spheres of non-governmental authority would have been far from obvious at the time to observers of prior governments, but it was also the intent.
It wasn't a novel concept. What are you on about? Mussolini seized power in 1922, while Germany was still a functional democracy.
Schmitts Most influential writings were all after 1922, pretending he conceived of the idea while Mussolini was already implementing it is patently absurd. The history of totalitarian thought did not start with Schmitt.
>The way to counter the spread of government is to put strong limits on government, keeping it out of academia, the media, religion, and so forth completely, with no government funding for any of them.
Just FYI. Germany post WW2 has publicly funded universities, churches and media.
lo_zamoyski [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Compare this with the fate of universities in occupied countries[0].
"Now in retrospect, the whole development is a
decisive demonstration of the damage done to
academic and mathematical life by any subor-
dination to populism, political pressure and pro-
posed political principles."
"It’s not so much that people are persecuted because of their
beliefs, but there is a certain trend where careful reasoning, the
search for truth, all the delicacies of having a balanced point of
view, acting on facts, being honest about what you do and don’t
know, your uncertainty, all these values we have in science and
scholarship are at risk."
Isn't this epistemic crisis [0]. I think mistrust in the world
increased to the extent the it got digital, but taking advantage of
crisis, even conjuring untruth, mistrust and polycrisis [1] as a
smokescreen strategy for taking control is also a basic Machiavelli
thing, right?. This (epistemic injury) is more easily done to already
traumatised people. Germans of 1930s, already reeling from recent war,
were vulnerable to a rampage of anti-intellectualism and a bonfire of
knowledge.
> About a year later, Hilbert attended a banquet and was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust. Rust asked whether "the Mathematical Institute really suffered so much because of the departure of the Jews." Hilbert replied, "Suffered? It doesn't exist any longer, does it?"
The excellent mathematical history "The Music of the Primes" by Marcus du Sautoy covers this period:
"Within the space of a few weeks, Hitler had destroyed the great Gottingen tradition forged by Gauss, Riemann, Dirichlet and Hilbert. One commentator wrote that it was 'one of the greatest tragedies experienced by human culture since the time of the Renaissance'. Gottingen (and some might argue, German mathematics itself) has never recovered from its destruction by Nazi Germany during the thirties. Hilbert died on St. Valentine's Day in 1943... his death marked the end of the city's position as the Mecca of mathematics."
The central rational for the initial Nazi assault on the Gottingen department of mathematics was its Marxist leanings, with Nazi street protests decrying the 'fortress of Marxism'. Note that 'Landau, who was Jewish, was allowed to stay because he had been appointed before the outbreak of the First World War. The non-Aryan clause in the civil-service law of April 1933 did not apply to long-serving professors or those who had fought in the war.' Later Landau was targeted for his Jewishness, forced to resign, and died in 1938 in Germany after a bried exodus to Britain.
People should be somewhat cautious in applying these historical examples to the USA today - indeed, the corruption of the American academic system began long ago in the 1980s, when Bayh-Dole legislation initiated the corporatization of research via the exclusive licensing of tax-payer funded research to private interests, who then stopped financing their own proprietary industrial research centers like Bell Labs. Now American universities are packed with shady entrepreneurs who routinely cook data and found startups in the hope of large financial payouts via acquistion by large corporations. This has lead to rampant fraud, a culture of secrecy and distrust, and various other ills.
iterance [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Many of my academic colleagues are considering emigration. A nontrivial fraction have already begun (or in certain prescient cases completed) the process. It is sad to say, but it is difficult to imagine a career in science in the US right now. I am also considering whether that future for myself is best pursued elsewhere. Or, I'm sadder to say, whether the opportunity has been foreclosed upon for good. There is no way to know yet what the future truly holds, but the rhyme history offers for our times is an unpleasant one to imagine.
gsaines [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Where are they planning to go if you mind me asking? My brother is considering moving to Canada, but he's already living in Ohio, so that wouldn't be a huge move in absolute geographical terms. Another friend is in the process of moving to Spain, but there really doesn't seem to be a particularly safe place.
Most nations appear to have their own brand of populist hard-right political leaders at the moment and I've cautioned people that unless they know a lot about where they are moving to, they are likely to just be exchanging one scary regime for another and taking on outsider immigrant status in that new society.
I'm genuinely curious about this, no sarcasm of cynicism here.
fnordpiglet [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It isn’t just the young. My father is a professor of clinical psychology with a long and storied career and is looking outside the country. He works a lot with the government on psychometric personality evaluation for security clearances and has gotten lists of words that are banned and guidances towards discrimination against certain groups in denying security clearances. He’s seeing grants for his doctorate and post doctorate students denied if their focus is not aligned against certain groups (including pregnant women and depression in men, as odd as it sounds). He came of age in the 1960’s, and this is everything his parents and his generation fought against come to fruition. He is torn between staying and putting up a fight or going somewhere where he is valued and give value to people who seek his mentorship without constraints and political ideology imposed on it. Frankly, I think he should give to humanity what he has to give and let my generation do the fighting - if there’s any that we will do.
HN.zip
https://youtu.be/lcjdwSY2AzM?si=qVZdS1QTBgmMTX9r
A detailed exploration of this phenomenon can be found in the books “Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany” by Robert P. Ericksen and “Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus” by Richard J. Evans. An accessible summary is also available via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-role-o...
This isn’t just a historical footnote—it’s a sobering reminder of how institutions of knowledge can be wrong.
If you have a political power that rewards stupidity, then those people will become empowered everywhere they are, including in the universities.
I haven't read the books, but the presentation by this holocaust museum was not informative. For instance, it fails to mention a relevant fact: some people earned their academic position to their activity in the party.
And, most of all, the existence is irrelevant without some prevalence. I would be very surprised if the established scholars that "actively embraced Nazi ideology" were a majority. From the Vietnam wars to nowadays, there have been US academics that embraced war or actively supported genocides, but I think most academics and students are less heinous or indifferent than the average population. That's why some German scholars were oppressed by their government, even when they were not Jews, and chose to emigrate.
One of the architects of that ideology was Carl Schmitt, who formulated the concept of the Totalstaat or "total state" as a state that did exactly what you say: permeated into every domain of society. He considered a state "total" when it was co-extensive with the entirety of its people's endeavors, co-opting or liquidating any alternative authority such as media, academia, or church. This was a novel concept at the time, especially after the swing to liberal (small and restrained) republics in the late eighteenth century. As a novel concept, the total permeation of the Nazi state into academia and the rest of the spheres of non-governmental authority would have been far from obvious at the time to observers of prior governments, but it was also the intent.
The Nazis were not the only ones to adopt an illiberal, totalitarian stance: the twentieth century saw a huge growth in government authority and its permeation through other parts of human life, like academia, in regimes that rejected other aspects of the Nazi ideology. The Soviet Union comes to mind as an example: the government coopted authorities like academia and liquidated others like churches in order to pervade as far as possible every aspect of society.
The fact that it seems obvious in retrospect that Nazi ideology would permeate academia and every domain of society shows how successful the concept of a Totalstaat was, even in an age that looks back with horror upon the Nazis. The way to counter the spread of government is to put strong limits on government, keeping it out of academia, the media, religion, and so forth completely, with no government funding for any of them. If academia requires government funding, the government of the day will always control academia.
In this case, you'd have to transfer most research in the biological and physical sciences to NASA-style government departments, at the expense of communication between theorists and experimentalists, otherwise it would not occur. The present system is for "politically sensitive" positions like historians to be covered by endowments, and for economically service-providing research to be performed on government grants.
P.S. in some ways being controlled by people who are wealthy enough to hire professors is more politically charged than being controlled by a democratic government with checks and balances. Be careful who you wish for in matters of replacing the taxpayer's authority with that of private donors...
I understand most of the points you've made, but I'm not sure I understand this part. NASA's budget is directly controlled by Congress, so how would moving all research into departments like that be more insulated it from government funding than university researchers getting grants? If anything, it feels like it would make it _more_ susceptible to politics than grants.
>As a novel concept, the total permeation of the Nazi state into academia and the rest of the spheres of non-governmental authority would have been far from obvious at the time to observers of prior governments, but it was also the intent.
It wasn't a novel concept. What are you on about? Mussolini seized power in 1922, while Germany was still a functional democracy.
Schmitts Most influential writings were all after 1922, pretending he conceived of the idea while Mussolini was already implementing it is patently absurd. The history of totalitarian thought did not start with Schmitt.
>The way to counter the spread of government is to put strong limits on government, keeping it out of academia, the media, religion, and so forth completely, with no government funding for any of them.
Just FYI. Germany post WW2 has publicly funded universities, churches and media.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion
Saunders Mac Lane
"Now in retrospect, the whole development is a decisive demonstration of the damage done to academic and mathematical life by any subor- dination to populism, political pressure and pro- posed political principles."
https://www.ams.org/notices/199510/maclane.pdf
[0] https://academic.oup.com/book/26406/chapter/194768451
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20210209-the-greatest-s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert
"Within the space of a few weeks, Hitler had destroyed the great Gottingen tradition forged by Gauss, Riemann, Dirichlet and Hilbert. One commentator wrote that it was 'one of the greatest tragedies experienced by human culture since the time of the Renaissance'. Gottingen (and some might argue, German mathematics itself) has never recovered from its destruction by Nazi Germany during the thirties. Hilbert died on St. Valentine's Day in 1943... his death marked the end of the city's position as the Mecca of mathematics."
The central rational for the initial Nazi assault on the Gottingen department of mathematics was its Marxist leanings, with Nazi street protests decrying the 'fortress of Marxism'. Note that 'Landau, who was Jewish, was allowed to stay because he had been appointed before the outbreak of the First World War. The non-Aryan clause in the civil-service law of April 1933 did not apply to long-serving professors or those who had fought in the war.' Later Landau was targeted for his Jewishness, forced to resign, and died in 1938 in Germany after a bried exodus to Britain.
People should be somewhat cautious in applying these historical examples to the USA today - indeed, the corruption of the American academic system began long ago in the 1980s, when Bayh-Dole legislation initiated the corporatization of research via the exclusive licensing of tax-payer funded research to private interests, who then stopped financing their own proprietary industrial research centers like Bell Labs. Now American universities are packed with shady entrepreneurs who routinely cook data and found startups in the hope of large financial payouts via acquistion by large corporations. This has lead to rampant fraud, a culture of secrecy and distrust, and various other ills.
Most nations appear to have their own brand of populist hard-right political leaders at the moment and I've cautioned people that unless they know a lot about where they are moving to, they are likely to just be exchanging one scary regime for another and taking on outsider immigrant status in that new society.
I'm genuinely curious about this, no sarcasm of cynicism here.