Not long ago, we published our first interview with Muriel Blaive, a French-born scholar specializing in the history of Czechoslovakia during the so-called “communist” (or socialist) period. Several points raised in that conversation piqued my interest, leading me to consider a follow-up interview—this time focusing more on the scientific methodology that not only shapes Muriel’s academic research but also informs her broader worldview. This methodology, as it turns out, influences how she navigates many of the realities she has encountered throughout her life, including her own academic community.
One particularly delicate issue arose in the period following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, a segment of society, including some members of the scientific community, began to exhibit sympathies for, or tendencies toward, authoritarianism—or even borderline totalitarianism, as Muriel herself and others have observed. Whether this reflects selective blindness, a natural inclination, or a failure to distinguish between what people preach and practice is one of the topics we will explore in this conversation.
R.S.: In our previous interview, you mentioned your education at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris, an institution you greatly admire and credit with shaping the core of your academic identity. You highlighted how it led you “naturally” to multidisciplinary research, where the focus is on the goal rather than how the discipline is labeled. This experience also grounded your scientific approach, which is rooted in the belief that “nothing should be taken for granted; nothing is sacred, not even authority and hierarchy—especially not authority and hierarchy.” Could you revisit some of the methods and approaches you learned during your time at EHESS that you found particularly interesting? Additionally, how has applying these methods in practice shaped your work? What have been the advantages and drawbacks of this approach? Has it always been an effective tool, a way to break barriers or act as a filter? Finally, have people generally responded well to this method—or at least with understanding? If possible, please share any anecdotes that stand out from your experiences.
M.B.: I must preface my nostalgic view of EHESS with the disclaimer that my relationship with the institution was physically distant, as I was already living in Prague. This meant I was spared the typical academic rivalries, everyday squabbles, and bureaucratic dead weight that plague any institution. I experienced the best EHESS had to offer without suffering its bad aspects—a fortunate but unusual situation. I was officially a student there for eight years, but I never attended regular classes, though I did attend a number of seminars.
Instead, my experience was shaped by the fact that EHESS lecturers would come to Prague every few weeks as part of annual workshop programs organized by the French Center for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES), where I was based for twelve years. To give you some context, CEFRES was established through a joint initiative by Presidents Mitterrand and Havel as a way to restore intellectual ties between France and Czechoslovakia. We were living the dream! I wasn’t attending classes in Paris because I was spending my time in the archives in Prague, working on my thesis.
Let me nevertheless begin with my personal, physical connection to EHESS. I had to travel there regularly, several times a year throughout my studies. The building was located close to Sciences Po, from where I also graduated. It was situated in a neighborhood on the border of the 6th and 7th districts of Paris, a place I loved. Unfortunately, the area has since lost much of its character, sanitized by hipsterization in an Emily-in-Paris fashion, along with the ostentatious presence of international real-estate investment, rendering it uninteresting today.
But back then, it was vibrant and full of life. Within a 500-meter radius, there were four excellent bookstores, several cafés, and a fantastic three-story university restaurant. On the top floor you could get a full lunch or dinner for just 9.90 francs (€1.50 in today’s currency.) EHESS was located directly across from the luxury Hotel Lutétia. Before the war, the hotel served as a meeting point for anti-Nazi immigrants, during the war it became the Nazi headquarters in Paris, and after the war, it was where returning Jewish survivors searched for their families. Next to EHESS stood a beautiful building of the Banque de France, which lost all its significance after the euro was introduced in 1999. Just around the corner was the historic department store Le Bon Marché, where we later bought chic Parisian suits and ties for my lawyer husband. Incidentally, the store was located right across the street from Milan Kundera’s apartment. This was the character of the neighborhood back then, one where you could seamlessly navigate between different social classes and intellectual spheres. It was a truly unique and stimulating environment.
EHESS was an amusingly quirky place, a melting pot of immigrants from all over the world, gathering in the cafeteria in search of the Parisian intellectual dream. There was a large contingent from Latin America, plenty from Africa, and, of course, a strong presence from Eastern Europe. I spent countless hours in that cafeteria, pretending to work while secretly eavesdropping on all sorts of hilarious conversations. The staff there was the most unfriendly I have encountered anywhere in the world. They saw themselves as part of the Parisian intellectual elite, too, but behaved with the breathless arrogance of civil servants who knew their job security was untouchable – quite the spectacle.
And of course, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of colleagues from every branch of the social sciences, along with my thesis advisor, Krzysztof Pomian. You couldn’t walk down a corridor without running into someone or overhearing an engaging conversation. EHESS truly embodied intellectual tradition at its finest, with a level of diversity that was remarkable, long before it became fashionable.
I’m not sure if this has been done before—likely it has—but it would be fascinating to study how the physical environment of the building influenced the people inside it. The Sciences Po building, for instance, feels like something straight out of 19th-century power circles, radiating an inflated (and deluded) sense of French grandeur. In contrast, EHESS was full of colorful personalities competing to be heard over the constant hum of the building’s loud ventilation system. And naturally, it was very left-wing. What is remarkable is that I never actually read Bourdieu, Foucault, or even Marc Bloch during my time there, yet by the end of my studies, I somehow knew their work by heart. Their ideas were quite literally part of the air you breathed.
And then there was my PhD supervisor, Krzysztof Pomian. For years, he terrified me. He was blunt, direct, and had no time to waste on diplomacy. Every time I entered his office, I was trembling, bracing myself for his latest devastating critique. I terribly struggled with writing my thesis, for reasons I did not understand myself. During the last year of my funding, driven by desperation, I wrote my first 100 pages. He tore my work apart and concluded with, “This is very disappointing, Mademoiselle Blaive. I can’t believe that after four years under my supervision, you still show so little critical thinking.” And he purposefully tossed my pages into the wastepaper basket. Ouch! He now jokes that he has no memory of this incident and insists I must be mistaken. Who knows? Memory is fallible. But it is how I remember it. I wasn’t discouraged, mind, only more resolved. Moreover, this experience toughened me up for good. When Prague’s primitive anti-communist cockwombles try to insult me these days, it makes me laugh.
Pomian had been a communist and understood the Stalinist mindset intimately. His father had been a communist, too, but the entire family had been deported by Stalin. He had lived through the Polish communist regime of the 1950s and, more importantly, had played a role in the destalinization of 1956. He was a former dissident and had gone into exile. He had firsthand experience of all the complexities I was studying and personally knew many of the key figures in my research. But he wasn’t impressed by people only because they were famous. Moreover, being Polish and not Czech, he brought an outsider’s perspective—a more detached and critical lens—to his analysis.
The reason I struggled with my thesis was that practically every single source on 1950s Czechoslovakia I consulted—25 pages of my bibliography—was flawed. Contrary to what was universally claimed, Czechoslovakia did not experience more terror than all other communist countries combined, nor was its paralysis in 1956 during the Hungarian revolution and the Polish events due to its democratic heritage. I found myself stuck because the narrative didn’t align with the archival evidence I had uncovered, yet I wanted to echo these prevailing views, I thought it was impossible to do otherwise, so I forced myself to draft my own version of this flawed narrative. Pomian’s response was blunt: “I don’t believe a word of it, regardless of how renowned the sources are. If you want to keep this in your thesis, prove it to me.” This moment of clarity is what pushed me to reevaluate and ultimately overturn the entirety of the literature. Only then did I demonstrate that it was not Czechoslovakia’s democratic heritage but rather a relatively stable economy and a measure of social support for the regime—despite significant repression—that explained why nothing happened in 1956.
From Pomian, I learned a crucial lesson: never adopt ideas or narratives simply because they are endorsed by prominent figures, even if they are his acquaintances and friends (or mine), and especially don’t trust any narrative just because it is what everyone else says. Despite his intimidating demeanor, he imparted his intellectual brilliance and humor, and I absorbed his teaching like a sponge. Over time, as my initial fear faded, I also came to see his strict exterior as part of his endearing nature and realized he’s a gentle and considerate person. I also valued Jacques Rupnik, my first professor of Czech history at Sciences Po, but our intellectual relationship was not comparable. My formative encounter with Pomian is the reason why I became brusque, direct, and unswayed by intellectual authority or tribal narratives myself, I guess. And I did my best to develop my critical mind after all.
From the EHESS lecturers who visited Prague, on the other hand, I gained an appreciation for the boundless depth of intellectual curiosity. Every topic, country, and approach was valuable, offering fresh perspectives. I also discovered a crucial lesson that books alone cannot teach you: you learn just as much, if not more, from meeting the author as you do from reading their work. For instance, when historian Jean-Pierre Vernant recounted his surreal experiences with Jacques Lacan during their 1970s tour of American universities, I laughed so hard it made it impossible for me to ever take Lacan, and many other intellectuals, seriously. For an eye-opening exploration of the hubris among some prominent French intellectuals, I recommend Impostures intellectuelles (Fashionable Nonsense in the English edition) by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont—one of my all-time favorite books.
During my conversations with sociologist Pierre Grémion, who, though not from EHESS himself, shared a similar intellectual spirit and was a frequent visitor to CEFRES, I also had a significant realization. We corresponded quite a bit in the 1990s, he was a kind and engaging thinker who enjoyed debating with students. Grémion had a project to analyze the work philosophies of three renowned French sociologists, including Alain Touraine, via their biographies, i.e. by examining their personal biographies to understand their intellectual perspectives. For instance, Touraine’s marriage to a Chilean woman deeply shaped his views on inequality and the developing world. Similarly, Jacques Derrida, who married a Czech woman, gave a riveting lecture at CEFRES about his harrowing experience being arrested by the StB in Prague during the early 1980s while speaking at a dissident seminar. This lecture left a profound impact on me, far more than if I had merely read Derrida’s impressive scholarship. Grémion taught me that conveying your message effectively requires not just what you say but also explaining who you are and what background you are speaking from. To ensure your message is understood and remembered, it must be framed within its proper context.
R.S.: When one follows (not only?) your online presence on Twitter, it becomes evident that Covid-19 is a prominent topic for you, especially regarding its societal reception and the responses from the scientific and academic communities (your attachment to which you have just described and for the “sanity” of which you, apparently, very much care). Could you please elaborate on your perspective regarding this subject? I would appreciate an explanation of the key points you’re making. Additionally, feel free to provide illustrative examples, anecdotes, or any relevant details to enrich your explanation.
M.B.: My stance on Covid is a direct extension of the concerns I have just outlined. In the academic circles I am part of, particularly among intellectuals and historians of twentieth-century Europe, the prevailing narrative was that Covid could be overcome through civic virtue. If only everyone adhered to the rules—rules set by those who were least affected by them, I might add—such as masks, lockdowns, and refraining from criticizing official policies, we would prevail, or so they believed. Criticizing the policies was deemed as aligning with alt-right views, being a dangerous conspiracy theorist, or, worse yet, as being a supporter of Donald Trump.
To my astonishment, many of my colleagues, including historians of life under dictatorship, began endorsing censorship, repression, and propaganda under the guise of necessary solidarity against the perceived threat. Over time, I am also observing a troubling shift: a significant portion of the liberal left is now succumbing to its old historical demons and has seamlessly moved from public-shaming others during Covid to adopting frankly illiberal stances. They insist that if ordinary people, the so-called “deplorables” as Hillary Clinton called them in 2016, are too stupid to understand the wise policy intellectual elites have in store for them, then they must be forced – and democracy be damned.
You come from the Czech Republic, so I don’t have to explain to you that intellectuals can be very deluded at times, and are quite prone to supporting inhumane policies in the name of a better future that requires momentary sacrifices. However, I was surprised to witness this phenomenon firsthand. I hadn’t anticipated seasoned social scientists making statements like “I believe in science” (showing they might believe in science, but they certainly have not understood what science is), all the while endorsing an egregious increase of the inequalities they are supposed to stand against. Intellectuals who virtuously flaunt their anti-racism by supporting Kamala Harris today should take a closer look at the devastation caused in the developing world by the Covid lockdowns they championed. These policies have contributed to tens, if not hundreds, of millions of deaths, and have set back economies, women’s rights, and children’s education by decades.
These intellectuals should also reflect on the blatant industrial interests around the Covid vaccine they have promoted. I never tire of reminding that the NIH from where the famous Dr Fauci led the Covid response is a co-owner of the Covid vaccine patent, has already received $400 million from Moderna, and is suing it to get even more money – much more, it claims. This is what we call an independent expert recommendation to the public these days. The US is practically the last country in the world, with Canada, to keep recommending the vaccine to children while other countries long refuse to vaccinate under the age of 30 or 40, but American intellectuals still harbor no doubt and are convinced their children are at risk from Covid. And never mind that people are catching Covid for the third or fourth time despite being vaxxed and boosted x number of times: they are still “grateful to be vaccinated”, otherwise their case would be “so much worse.” At some point, shouldn’t rationality and critical thinking return to the discussion?
This situation is troubling enough on its own, but endorsing censorship to prevent any public debate about the capture of public agencies by the industry makes it even worse. We are at a critical juncture. It is possible that Twitter, one of the last platforms still resisting this “dictatorship by civic virtue”, should disappear within months or in the coming years. The fact that its future also hinges on the unpredictable Elon Musk adds another layer of concern.
Freedom of speech is under dramatic threat, yet many of my colleagues are celebrating this suppression, convinced that those they deem enemies of free speech should not be granted any freedom of speech. For one thing, by their scornful behavior towards the masses liberal intellectuals are greatly helping the extreme right get into power. And for another thing, they don’t have the foresight to realize that once the extreme right really settles in, it will turn their own weapons against them. Since the enemies of freedom of speech cannot have freedom of speech, and since liberals are conveniently putting in place all the necessary instruments to censor hateful speech, all the extreme right will have to do will be to censor liberals with the claim that they, the liberals, are now the enemy. If you doubt this, watch the video of a Rassemblement national ideologue and lawyer, Pierre Gentillet, who explains that Covid was an eye-opener for the party, as it realized the rule of law can be easily bypassed under the pretext of an emergency. The only obstacle standing between the party and total control in France will be the Constitutional Court, he claims. But “no worries”, the RN will either dissolve the Court, or staff it with more members in the name of a better representation of the people until they have a majority.
Why liberals are so blind to this is beyond me.
To clarify, there are two important caveats to consider: first, we cannot determine how many intellectuals genuinely believe the Covid narrative versus those who merely align themselves with it to avoid controversy. Genuine censorship around Covid remains evident, as highlighted by findings from US Congressional inquiry commissions and Mark Zuckerberg’s confession in August 2024 that the Biden White House indeed pressured Facebook to censor content. Despite initial resistance, Zuckerberg eventually capitulated and now regrets it. Furthermore, the conservative Supreme Court has even asserted in June 2024 the US government’s right to influence social media content and regulate what people are allowed to say and not say.
In fact, an intriguing legal battle about this right of the federal government to censor users via social media is currently unfolding thanks to a lawsuit initially filed by Missouri, but now joined by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., against the White House. We shall see if the American justice system and constitutional rights will prevail, but there is no guarantee. Unfortunately, the US Constitution now faces threats from both the left and the right, and I am tempted to say: equally from the left and the right. For instance, the New York Times publishes one article after the other suggesting that the constitution itself could be a threat to the country (see here, here, and here, for instance.)
Indeed, there is not only censorship but also pervasive self-censorship. American mainstream media are paralyzed by the belief that criticizing any aspect of Biden’s policies equates supporting Trump. This has led to ludicrous outcomes, such as their unwavering endorsement of Biden’s reelection campaign despite signs that he might be unfit for office, let alone for a second term. Biden was the “best possible candidate”, until he suddenly wasn’t and literally overnight it is Kamala Harris who was the “best possible candidate.” This shift was nothing short of absurd and reminded me of the best days of the communist cult of personality. Mainstream media are also selfishly, and between us, foolishly, gloating about the threat hanging over social media, their competitor. Such short-sightedness is mind-boggling. Once social media are tamed, mainstream media are obviously next in line as the target of censorship. But they are incapable of thinking ahead even by a few months.
My second caveat is that we will eventually emerge from this momentary relinquishing of critical faculties by the intellectuals, I am sure of it. Once freedom of speech is fully restored, many of them will emerge claiming they never supported the Covid narrative as they knew it was flawed, but were simply too afraid to speak up. I’m even willing to bet that they will be the majority. The real irony will be that the true heroes won’t be those who resisted the Covid orthodoxy from the start at great personal and professional cost, but rather the Covid zealots who will then stage themselves as “courageous” for admitting they were afraid to dissent. It is these individuals who will likely be lauded for their supposed honesty.
The pressing question is, will we collectively, moderate left and moderate right together, get a grip before the extreme right gets to power, and maybe manage to prevent it, or come to our senses only after it does. If it is after, I fear many of our countries may face a period of semi- or full dictatorship. The best-case scenario might resemble the Hungarian or Polish models, but the situation could potentially be much worse.
Feeling a strong urge to counter this troubling trend, I wrote a short book entitled Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy aimed at awakening the liberal left to the dangers of the regime it is advocating, and highlighting its potentially disastrous consequences. The fact that CEU Press agreed to publish it, and in fact even encouraged me to write it, gives me some hope. It is remarkable that, to my knowledge, no American university press has published a social science analysis that would be critical of the Covid response yet. In contrast, British academic publishers like Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, and Hurst, as well as French publishers, have already released numerous such works. The American branch of Oxford University Press does distribute Toby Green and Thomas Fazi’s brilliant book, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor. A Critique from the Left, originally published in the UK, but that’s more or less the extent of it. I consider this silence of American intellectual (apart from the editor of Compact Magazine Geoff Shullenberger) and American mainstream media a genuine dereliction of duty. I really hope they wake up from their slumber soon. I trust they will, but the question is when.
Ironically, after being labeled a communist, a salon communist, or a typical French intellectual by Czech primitive anticommunists for decades, I have now found myself accused of being an alt-right supremacist or a Trump supporter by my own intellectual tribe. Unfortunately, this has led to the end of some friendships. Anyone who seriously believes I support Trump cannot be a true friend in my view, and being accused of such is deeply insulting to me—even though I respect the Trump voters who greatly suffered under Biden’s Covid policies and have not only gained no sympathy for their plight, but on the contrary have faced harsh criticism and contempt for their perceived lack of civic responsibility.
Given this tense atmosphere, I felt compelled to clarify my political position, even though I had successfully avoided to do so in the past thirty years, and thus I subtitled my book A Liberal Critique. I am neither a communist nor an alt-right supremacist. I believe in a strong state, but one that upholds solid social policies rather than one misusing its power to implement censorship.
R.S.: When the Covid era “ended“, a score of topics emerged in reaction to them. The way society has tackled them reminds of the irrationality, lack of logic, resignation at fact, lack of pluralism, tribalism rather than expertise, etc., with which the Covid debate itself was treated. Some of these debates are taking the upper hand not only over the mundane world, but, worryingly, also the academy. What are your observations – and what will be your take – on this?
M.B.: As I mentioned, the Covid era set a dangerous precedent marked by the elites’ hubris. They now seem to believe they have the authority to dictate what is best for the public and they feel justified in silencing dissent through censorship, and this now permeates every major social and political issue. Again, I sincerely hope we can regain control of the situation quickly, as the current trajectory is deeply troubling and unlikely to end well.
Muriel Blaive is a socio-political historian of the communist and post-communist period in Czechoslovakia/Czechia in its Central European context. She is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris and of Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. She is currently an Elise Richter Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Graz.
