Timothy Garton Ash | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Garton Ash in 2019 | |
| Born | (1955-07-12)12 July 1955 (age 70) London, England |
| Occupations | Historian, author |
| Title | Professor of European Studies |
| Children | 2, includingAlec |
| Awards | Charlemagne Prize (2017) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | St Edmund's School Sherborne School |
| Alma mater | Exeter College, Oxford St Antony's College, Oxford Free University of Berlin University of Berlin |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
| Sub-discipline | |
| Institutions | St Antony's College, Oxford Hoover Institution |
| Doctoral students | Timothy Snyder |
| Website | timothygartonash |
Timothy Garton AshCMG FRSA FRHistS FRSL (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies emeritus at theUniversity of Oxford and a Senior Fellow ofStanford University'sHoover Institution.[1] Most of his work has been concerned with thecontemporary history of Europe, with a special focus onCentral and Eastern Europe. In 1989,George Kennan described him as a 'historian of the present'.[2]
He has written about the formerCommunist regimes of that region, their experience with the secret police, theRevolutions of 1989, and the transformation of the formerEastern Bloc states into member states of theEuropean Union. He has also examined the role of Europe in the world and the challenge of combiningpolitical freedom anddiversity, especially in relation tofree speech.
Garton Ash was born to John and Lorna Garton Ash. His father was educated atTrinity Hall, Cambridge and was adecoratedRoyal Artillery officer in theBritish Army during theSecond World War.[3]
Garton Ash was educated atSt Edmund's School, Hindhead,Sherborne School, Dorset andExeter College, Oxford, where he studiedModern History.[4]
For postgraduate study he went toSt Antony's College, Oxford, and then, in the still dividedBerlin, to theFree University inWest Berlin on aGerman Academic Exchange Service scholarship in 1978 and to theHumboldt University inEast Berlin in 1980 as the first GDR–UK exchange student.[5] In West Berlin, he shared a flat withJames Fenton.[6] He abandoned his OxfordDPhil on Berlin during theNazi rule to write about theGerman Democratic Republic.[6][7] During his studies in East Berlin, he was under surveillance from theStasi, which served as the basis for his 1997 bookThe File.[8] Garton Ash cut a suspect figure to the Stasi, who regarded him as a "bourgeois-liberal" and potential British spy.[9] Although he denies being or having been a British intelligence operative, Garton Ash described himself as a "soldier behind enemy lines" and described the German Democratic Republic as a "very nasty regime indeed".[9]
In the 1980s Garton Ash was Foreign Editor ofThe Spectator, editorial writer on Germany and Central Europe forThe Times and a columnist forThe Independent. He was among the first Western journalists to report from theLenin Shipyard strike inGdańsk,Poland in August 1980 that led to theGdańsk Agreement, and met withLech Wałęsa there.[10][6][11] In January 1981, he covered theRural Solidarity strike inRzeszów andUstrzyki Dolne, which resulted in theRzeszów–Ustrzyki Agreement [pl], and attended theNational Coordinating Commission's internal discussions featuring Wałęsa.[12] He interviewed Polish opposition leadersBronisław Geremek,Jerzy Turowicz,Bohdan Cywiński [pl],Jan Kielanowski [pl] andJerzy Milewski [pl], as well as the Deputy Minister of AgricultureZdzisław Grochowski [pl].[13] Eventually expelled from the country, he also visited theCzechoslovak Socialist Republic, theHungarian People's Republic, thePeople's Socialist Republic of Albania and theSocialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at key moments of their late history.[6] In 1986/1987, he was a fellow at theWoodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars inWashington, D.C.[14] In his much-quoted essay "Does Central Europe Exist?" of 1986, he welcomed the resurgence of the former German notion ofCentral Europe as an anti-Soviet regional identity among the dissidents inPrague andBudapest.[15][16][17][18] He was present atViktor Orbán's speech on 16 June 1989 in theHeroes' Square inBudapest,[19] and at theFall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.[11] In March 1990, he was summoned by the Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher as an authority on Germany and one of "her favourite British historians" alongsideNorman Stone andHugh Trevor-Roper to answer her concerns aboutGerman reunification during a confidential seminar atChequers that was later leaked out to the press.[20][6][21][22]
He became a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1989,[23] a Senior Fellow ofStanford University'sHoover Institution[1] in 2000,[14] and Professor of European Studies at theUniversity of Oxford[24] in 2004.[25] He directed the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford, from 2000 to 2006,[26]
He subsequently founded the Dahrendorf Programme at the European Studies Centre, and directed it from 2010 to 2024. He now chairs its Academic Steering Committee.[27][28]
He has written a column on European and international affairs inThe Guardian since 2004[25] and is a long-time contributor to theNew York Review of Books.[29] His column was also translated in the Turkish dailyRadikal[30] and in the Spanish dailyEl País, as well as other newspapers. He is a member of theReuters Institute for the Study of Journalism steering committee.[26]
In 2005, Garton Ash was listed inTime magazine as one of the 100 most influential people.[31] The article says that "shelves are where most works of history spend their lives. But the kind of history Garton Ash writes is more likely to lie on the desks of the world's decision makers."
Garton Ash describes himself as aliberal internationalist.[32] He is a supporter of what he calls thefree world andliberal democracy, represented in his view by theEuropean Union, theUnited States as a superpower, andAngela Merkel's leadership of Germany. Garton Ash opposedScottish independence and argued forBritishness, writing inThe Guardian: "being British has changed into something worth preserving, especially in a world of migration where peoples are going to become ever more mixed up together. As men and women from different parts of the former British empire have come to live here in ever larger numbers, the post-imperial identity has become, ironically but not accidentally, the most liberal, civic, inclusive one."[33]
Garton Ash first came to prominence during theCold War as a supporter offree speech andhuman rights within countries which were part of theSoviet Union andEastern Bloc, paying particular attention to Poland and Germany. In more recent times he has represented a British liberal pro-EU viewpoint, nervous at the rise ofVladimir Putin,Donald Trump andBrexit. He is strongly opposed to conservative and populist leaders of EU nations, such asViktor Orbán ofHungary, arguing that Merkel should "freeze him out", evoking "appeasement".[34] Garton Ash was particularly upset about Orbán's move againstGeorge Soros'Central European University.[34] Anti-Soviet themes and Poland remain topics of interest for Garton Ash; once a promoter of the anti-Eastern Bloc movement in Poland, he notes with regret the move away fromliberalism and globalism towardspopulism andauthoritarianism under socially conservative political and religious leaders such asJarosław Kaczyński, in a similar manner to his criticisms of Hungary's Orbán.[35]
In reviewing his book,Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, veteranNewsweek journalistAndrew Nagorski wrote: "It bluntly describes the harsh political repression and monstrous economic failures that characterized the countries behind what was known as the Iron Curtain, while also evocatively capturing the 'abnormal normality' of a system that ruthlessly quashed all hopes for change, yet inspired people to 'make the best' of their seemingly hopeless situation." In that book, Garton Ash describes his meeting withWładysław Bartoszewski and having been "struck not only by the loud, rapid-fire voice of this senior member of the opposition, but also by his confident prediction that the Russian empire would collapse by the end of the century. This was at a time when the Cold War division of Europe appeared to be an unalterable fact of life."[36]
Garton Ash and his Polish-born wife Danuta, whom he met in West Berlin,[6] live in Oxford, England. Most summers they spend atStanford University, California as part of his work with theHoover Institution.[37] They have two sons, Tom Ash, a web developer based in Canada, andAlec Ash, editor of theChina Books Review and author of two books aboutChina.
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