Intellectual Trends, Institutional Changes and Scholarly Needs in Eastern Europe. A New Agenda for the Social Sciences

In the countries of East Central Europe academia is the place where independence and dissent, as well as a theoretical justification for and an apology of the regime, were fostered in the past. Both these trends continue in academia today with the same protagonists playing the same conflicting roles. The conflict that is most fundamental and hardest to overcome is not that among different ideologies, political affiliations, and preferences, but between the two very different understandings of the role of intellectuals, especially social scientists, in a society and their relationship with the state. [...]