Lars Erslev Andersen: Presentation
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Presentation

I am a historian of ideas, affiliated at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, as Senior Research Fellow and Head of Research Unit, Political Violence, Terrorism, and Radicalization..
My main professional interests are Terrorism and the Middle East in the context of international politics, with a particular focus on political developments in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East policy of the United States of America.

From Plato and Benjamin to Osama and Bush via Kierkegaard and Gadamer

When I started out in the Faculty of Science at the University of Copenhagen in 1977, where I took exams in botany, physics and chemistry, there was no indication that my fields of research would be the Middle East, U.S. foreign and security policy, and conceptual historical studies in terrorism and order.

Soon after these natural scientific studies, after a short stopover in Literary History, I ended up at the Department of the History of Ideas at the University of Aarhus. At this time (1980), the institute offered very little teaching and had very few students. This was ideal for me, as it offered me the opportunity to cultivate my interests at the time: the relationship between language, art and cognition as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics, alongside the obligatory reading of Das Kapital, the major work of Karl Marx, which I have actually never regretted having been forced to read over a span of two semesters. My own interests, however, were different from the Marxist studies into the miseries of late capitalist society. A grant from Carlsbergfonden for a project on antique and modern tragedy facilitated studies in Richard Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, and constituted the basis for my Master's thesis and my first book (Allegori og Mimesis) (Allegory and Mimesis) on Plato and Walter Benjamin.

I spent my two-year postgraduate fellowship at the University of Aarhus analyzing textual theory (Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man and Richard Rorty) in grappling with the work of Søren Kierkegaard and the publication of several books, among which were Tekst og Trope (Text and Trope) and Hinsides Ironi (Beyond Irony). While this scholarly work yielded a scholarship to the Department of the History of Ideas at the University of Oslo, it was also a sure path to unemployment. Rather than continue writing hopeless applications for various positions - from bookkeeper at a cultural venue in western Jutland to a clerks position in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs - I decided to proceed to Middle East studies with the Open University program at what was then called Odense University. This was exiting and interesting, and led first to a scholarship to an Arab language school in Tunis, then to a position as a kind of information associate at the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. The job title was 'Research Associate', but it contained more 'associate' than 'research'. It did, however, lead to another Arab language school, this time in Dubai, to six years of empirical acid pickling under the ruthless supervision of historian Søren Mørch, to the mapping of health conditions in Yemen and on the Arab Peninsula, and, in 1995, to the position of department head - which Mørch musingly referred to as the one who "heads the search for a department". Even so, my many trips to the Middle East and managing a center for the communication of knowledge about the Middle East further sharpened my interest in the region. So when, in 1996, the University of Southern Denmark advertised an associate professorship in Middle East Studies, I chose to apply. I did this in spite of the fact that the Center for Middle East Studies at this time was close to being shut down, with no staff and plenty of problems. The job primarily consisted in reconstructing the endangered center. In 1999, the center was once again on a right track, with a five-person faculty, and the time had come to catch up with some of the research time which had been wasted on the battlefields of administration.

I was therefore grateful to receive a research grant from the Danish National Commissioner, on the recommendation of the then leadership of the Danish Security Intelligence Service (PET). The backstory was that I, in connection with the so-called "Egyptian case" in Aarhus in which three Egyptians in the early 1990s were charged with intending to organize terrorism in Denmark, had been asked by the prosecuting authority to produce a report on militant Islamism in the Middle East in connection with the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The report was later re-written into a short book, Muslimske fundamentalister. Militante muslimer i Mellemøsten (Muslim Fundamentalists. Militant Muslims in the Middle East), which was published by the Danish Institute of International Affairs (DUPI) in 1997. The PET, who were of course involved in the investigation, and I remained in contact, and when I in 1999 announced that I was planning a research project on recent American terrorism theories, the PET was interested in supporting the project. This led to a three year research grant on terms identical with those which would have been offered by a Research Council, but of course involving an association with the PET. This was exciting, because it offered different angles within the field of research, as well as the opportunity to visit the CIA headquarters for an interesting briefing. In July of 2000 I packed my suitcases and left for Washington, D.C., accompanied by my family. Here, I was associated with the Center for Non-proliferation Studies, a research program with the Monterey Institute. A small research center on the 9th floor of a building on Dupont Circle, close to all the major think tanks, became the base for my meeting with Washington's political cauldron. This was an amazing time, during which I was able to follow the discussion over U.S. Middle East policy up close, as well as taking part in analyzing theories on new terrorism with some of the most insightful scholars in the field. Back home with the PET, I contributed to the preparation of threat assessments, analyses of global terrorism and to the creation of new analytical methods and strategies for the collection of intelligence. This exciting work met with the sudden interruption of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which drew me (as it did everything else) into a turbulent media frenzy which meant that combining my position as an independent scholar and my affiliation with a secret service became untenable. Consequently, connections between me and the PET were broken off with the conclusion of my grant at the end of 2002.

Back at the university, in 2003 I resumed the work of teaching, presentation and communication and research, and presented my studies on U.S. Middle East policy in the book Den Amerikanske Orden (The American Order). From September of 2004 through August of 2005, I was associated with the Danish Research Center for the Humanities (Danmarks Humanistiske Forskningscenter, DHF) in Copenhagen. This provided a sound scholarly environment in which I worked on the dissertation Verdensorden og Terrorisme (World Order and Terrorism, which is yet to be completed. The time at DHF, however, facilitated the writing of the first part, which consists of a theoretical and philosophical foundation for my contemporary history studies, based on the philosophical hermeneutics founded by Hans-Georg Gadamer with his major work Truth and Method, 1960. My work on the thesis continued in London in January and February of 2007, in housing provided by BG Fonden (Bikuben Foundation). I expect to complete the dissertation by the end of 2007.

In 2007, my association with the university was transferred from the Center for Middle East Studies to the Department of History, where I can more constructively balance research, teaching, presentation and communication.

History as a discipline is at an upset, as the dogma that historical scholarship deals with objective knowledge of the past has long since been abandoned in favor of the notion that history is concerned with interpreting the past with a view to understanding the present and construing the future. This presently finds expression in a somewhat paradoxical state of affairs: while, on the one hand, interest in historical presentations on the book marked and in the media has likely never been more acute, on the other hand discussions concerning the scholarly basis for the discipline is characterized by a searching, but undecided, testing of new theories, methods, and analytical strategies. These paradoxical circumstances are epitomized in the field of contemporary history research, where a massive general public interest in e.g. global terrorism, political development in the Middle East, U.S. security and Middle East policy and the global battle over values coincides with a perfect clarity that scholars can contribute only interpretations of the issues. Furthermore, they have to reconcile themselves to the fact that a large part of the primary source material is inaccessible simply because it is classified, and because conditions persist in a state of flux.

As a case in point, U.S. Middle East policy has changed significantly at least three times since George W. Bush took over the presidency from Bill Clinton. The first time was when, upon his commencement of the presidency, Bush changed Clinton's strategy, moving the focus away from the Palestinian conflict and onto the Persian Gulf. The second time was after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, 2001, which led to a new, activist, regime-change-oriented strategy, emphasizing preventive warfare and the spreading of democracy. The third time was after the war in Lebanon in July 2006, when the U.S. toned down the ambition to spread democracy and instead chose to resume the Cold War strategy, only now with Iran as adversary. This brings an increased focus on military strength in the Gulf, attempts at building alliances against Iran and the basis of these also confront Iran within various diplomatic contexts, e.g. the U.N. Security Council (the recent U.S. strategy is discussed in depth in the book Nye Kolde Krige i Mellemøsten (New Cold Wars in the Middle East)).

The lack of primary source material and the constant changes in the realities of contemporary history challenge the contemporary history scholar in ways which cannot be dealt with in the terms of the theory and method of traditional historical scholarship, but presuppose that the indeterminacy and insecurity themselves are taken into account in research as well as in teaching and in the presentation of research. These are the challenges with which I attempt to grapple in my recent research in connection with the book on World Order and Terrorism (Verdensorden og Terrorisme), which to this effect contains both analyses of global battle over values, the confrontation between Islamism and Jihadism versus the proliferation of the American order based on liberal values and individual civic rights. The aim, then, is to narrate an important current issue in the field of international politics as well as to suggest how philosophical hermeneutics and conceptual history can be applied fruitfully to the contemporary historical study of international relations. My book Den Tabte Uskyld. Verdensorden. Værdikamp. Islamisme, which is now being published in English as Innocence Lost, can be seen as a primer, but it is the book Verdensorden og Terrorisme (World Order and Terrorism) in which the greater narrative as well as the philosophical foundation will hopefully be able to unfold.