Jaci Eisenberg: What has your academic path up to now been?
Jussi Hanhimäki: I studied first in Finland – Tampere University – where I did my Bachelor’s Degree. Then I went to the United States – I was at Boston University – where I did my Master’s and my Ph.D. Afterwards I taught in Canada for one year, at Bishop’s University, which is in the province of Québec. Then I had a couple of years of post-docs. I spent a year at Harvard, at the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History, and then I spent a year at the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University, after which - 1995 - I moved to London, and was at the LSE for five years as a Lecturer in International History. And then in 2000 I came to the Institute.
Jaci Eisenberg: How did you become interested in your specific areas of research? Were you influenced by certain professors?
Jussi Hanhimäki: In Finland, what got me interested in American History was an American Fulbright Professor who was there, and who was a very good teacher. He recommended that I spend a year in the US in this exchange program, to which then I applied, and was accepted, and I went for a year, and then I never went back, in part because there was another professor at Boston University who then got me interested in more specifically in US foreign policy. Initially I wanted to go to the US to study African-American history, but for some reason that didn’t happen, and then… so I didn’t write about the Black Panthers, but instead I wrote about the United States and Finland during the Cold War. I think those two professors, probably, are the most influential.
Jaci Eisenberg: How have your research interests evolved over time?
Jussi Hanhimäki: They’ve expanded. When I started out with my dissertation it was on, like I said, the United States and Finland after the Second World War. That then became a book, and then I wrote another book that was about the United States and Scandinavia since 1945… so always my main interest has been in American foreign policy, but the scope has expanded. I wrote a book about Kissinger later on, and, so, from the more narrow regional focus, it has become, well, I guess, global in some ways. And more recently then I’ve, I guess at the moment it’s really three things, they’re all related to American foreign policy. One is transatlantic relations, which is a key interest, and I’m writing a book about that. The United Nations, which I just finished last year; and then, more recently, refugees and migration issues. So, looking at historical perspectives of those… evolving interests, I guess.
Jaci Eisenberg: Could you elaborate on some of the projects that you’ve done in the past, either on some of the books you’ve written or on research groups you’ve been involved with?
Jussi Hanhimäki: I think, individual research, the interesting part, the reason I did my dissertation in, is I, aside from intellectual ones, is a very practical one. Since I was studying at an American University, and to write about something that had to do with Finland, and, not very many others had any kind of language skills that would have been useful. So I think that’s something that is sort of very practical and not very scientific, perhaps, but, I got to spend time in Finland doing research, etc. etc. And that was very interesting in its own right, I think, but then working on someone like Kissinger, has its own different kind of appeal in the sense that there’s a huge amount of material; it’s interesting to look at global affairs, but to use one man as a way of gaining some insight into it. And it was fascinating because it was a more recent period, the dissertation had to do with the 1940s and 50s, so most of the actors had died - I couldn’t do any interviews, really, for that, but for the Kissinger book, you got to meet a lot of the people who you read about in books and documents, and that was fascinating, meeting with Henry Kissinger and some others – Brent Scowcroft and people like that – gives a different sense of history. When you actually get to be face-to-face with somebody who was there, and who doesn’t, of course, remember much about the specific documents that you have been studying for months and months, and has forgotten much of the detail that went on. But that was sort of fascinating, fascinating to me to meet those people.
Jaci Eisenberg: Tell me about your more recent project, as part of the Programme for the Study of Global Migration.
Jussi Hanhimäki: The Programme for the Study of Global Migration is a broad program which has several projects within it, and one of the projects I’m most closely associated with is the Refugee project – it’s called “UNHCR and the Cold War.” We are using the UNHCR archives, which are across the street from where we are sitting. And we’re looking into a group of people – the refugees – that were in many ways caught in between the currents of the international politics of the Cold War. Refugees were not, for most people like Henry Kissinger or others, refugees were not important in their own right; they could be used as tools of policy, and so on, but they were unimportant in their own right; so in that sense it’s a very different approach to looking at international relations. And of course the important part there is the role of international organizations like UNHCR who tried to play an important role, but also tried to play a non-political role, which proved to be quite impossible. If you’re going to help refugees in a conflict area, in which the Soviet Union and the United States have some interest, in which you have often several national liberation movements fighting over control of territory, etc., etc., for a humanitarian organization to go in there and try to act non-politically was extremely difficult. So, it’s interesting to see how these neutral, supposedly neutral actors have to also compromise in order to be able to help the people; after all, they’re there in order to be able to save lives. So it’s interesting to see how these compromises are made, and how successful the organization ultimately, ultimately is, and I think in most cases, you see in Angola and in other parts of Africa, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, with the boat people and, so you see that the UNHCR was a very adaptable organization. It could actually deal, relatively successfully with relatively modest means at its disposal, and actually help people. Of course, it didn’t solve the refugee problems, um, as such, but at least it was able to operate and save lives every day, so that’s an interesting, um, interesting way to learn about another side of international history, rather than what I used to do more, almost exclusively which was sort of conference table and diplomacy, and high politics, and so on.
Jaci Eisenberg: Do you have any advice, or anything at all, that you would like to impart to the students of the IHP section?
Jussi Hanhimäki: There is a wide variety of courses available, and there will be also next year… What I would say is try some new things. Don’t think, since you did this as an undergraduate this will be an easy course, so I’m just going to do this and get a good grade. So don’t do that. Try new things, try things that really are something you wouldn’t find elsewhere, I think, at least not in the form that they are taught here. I think the Institute, and Geneva, offers a certain value-added that you won’t find in the sort of, I guess, more traditional History department or University. And a lot of the courses are interdisciplinary… they’re all good, the courses! But I think you should follow one’s instincts and try as many different possibilities of different courses. And certainly every term when it’s the first week you should go and check out a few options before you finally decide what you are going to do. And get involved in, you know, in other ways. We have the seminars that we are organizing, we have a couple of seminars in April and May, conferences and guest speakers coming. The Transatlantic Security Conference in April, 23rd, 24th, and then we have Margaret Macmillan, she’s coming to give a talk on May 12th. And the week after that we have Matthew Connelly, who is a young, historian from Columbia University who has written a book about population control. So there’s a lot of events coming, interesting courses, and all the guest speakers, and Conferences… as much time as you can spend, I think those can be very inspiring. Take advantage, because two years passes fast.
Jaci Eisenberg: If there are potential students that are looking at this page, what would you say is the value of HEI over other schools that a student might choose?
Jussi Hanhimäki: One is where we are. Geneva is the… the fact that it is called the humanitarian capital of the world is in part propaganda, but it is also very true. I think the University experience here, because of that, is something very unique. There is the opportunity to see and interact with global actors, that you will not find in a sort-of, you know, if you go to Oxford or Cambridge, you do not find this sort of international environment. And secondly, I think the faculty and the courses reflect, as well as the student body, they reflect this international nature of the Institute. Most of our students speak three, four languages, many of them carry more than one passport, and same is true of a lot of the faculty. Faculty and the students, they have more than linguistic and national variety, they come from different educational backgrounds, so you will find – sometimes this is confusing, because you go to a course, and you’re used to doing courses exactly in this way, right?, in the United States, for example, you get your list, with specific page to page readings and so on. Here, the Professor may have been trained in a very different kind of system and has a very different approach, this may be confusing, I think first year students are often a little bit confused in the beginning because there is no uniformity to how courses are organized or taught, but you think of that as sort of an asset, an enriching experience, you do get exposed, even if you never venture beyond the HEID campus, you will get exposed to all of these international influences.
And thirdly, all the activities (conferences, guest speakers) and the teaching programs, and together offer a first-rate graduate education that is internationally highly respected, and I think, in comparison to a number of other places, also relatively inexpensive. So it’s extremely good value for money, I think that’s one of the important points that you could add. And, so… it’s a win-win situation.
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