In his talk, Yascha Mounk - Political Scientist and author, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Washington D.C., USA and Visiting Professor at Sciences-Po Paris - explores how the assumptions of the early 2000s - about the stability of democracies, the declining role of nationalism, and the spread of international institutions - have rapidly unraveled over the past quarter century. He traced this change through a series of global shocks, including 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, the refugee crisis, and the rise of social media, all of which have fueled new waves of populism, social division, and disillusionment with traditional political narratives. Reflecting on these upheavals, Mounk argues that the optimistic consensus of the past has grown outdated, and societies must confront the profound uncertainties and shifting dynamics of the present.

Three key messages emerge from his remarks. First, Mounk stresses the necessity of unlearning false certainties and confronting past assumptions with humility and critical reflection. Second, he emphasizes that history should not be taught as a series of unchanging lessons, but as a way to equip citizens with the skills to identify and navigate paradigm shifts in politics and society. Finally, he calls for a renewed approach to history teaching and public debate - one that openly grapples with ambiguity and complexity, resists both nostalgia and pessimism, and helps forge a constructive, adaptive vision for the future.

Kristina Spohr, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, focuses her OHTE Talk to the manipulation of history for political ends.

In this context, she defines history as a form of conscious reflection and an effort to extract meaning from the past for the present, highlighting that our experience of the past can help us understand the roots of certain patterns of human behaviour and prepare for the unknown future. However, according to her, we should not focus our attention exclusively on the 20th century or examine historical episodes assuming that the dilemmas in which they are embedded will necessarily be repeated in the present.

Following this perspective, a second key point of her talk concerns the increased reliance on history as a guiding tool in times of crisis. Throughout her talk, Kristina Spohr underscores the importance of history to stabilise the perspective from which we face the present challenges.

Finally, an additional takeaway is her perspective on the dual transitions that emerged from the end of the Cold War in Europe and Asia. Europe moved towards freedom, democracy, and integration through institutions like the EU and NATO. This process involved political and economic transformations towards capitalist democracies in Eastern Europe and the spread of the idea of building a better world, along with so-called common universal values among leaders.

In contrast, authoritarianism and repression accompanied the introduction of capitalism and China's entry into the global market, beginning with a reinvention of communism that excluded pluralism and freedom. According to her, this divergence underscores the complexities and instabilities of the post-Cold War world, with no clear "victory" of a Western liberal order, as global power has shifted towards a multipolar reality dominated by competing visions of governance and influence.

In this OHTE Talk, Luuk van Middelaar, founding director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics and Professor at Leiden University was in dialogue with the Ambassador Pap Ndiaye, Permanent Representative of France to the Council of Europe, in a conversation focused on the role of history in understanding the present and shaping the future.

During this discussion, Luuk van Middelaar emphasizes the need to have a sense of history to compensate for temporal disorientation, describing it as “anchoring us and carrying us forward as a compass in time”.

While making a distinction between history as a discipline, a narrative, and a stream of events, he illustrates the inherently political nature of history. Indeed, it starts by the political act of defining a 'we' before placing the chosen protagonists in time and constructing a story about the present we live in, between which past and future.

Following this perspective, Ambassador Pap Ndiaye calls for moving away from a Eurocentric approach to examine other chronologies and continents. He highlights the importance of viewing history through the prism of globalization, as it has left a deep mark on our society through the acceleration of migration and economic exchanges.

Throughout an OHTE Talk dedicated to history education, Arthur Chapman, Professor of History Education at the Institute of Education of the University College London, gives key reflections on ways to approach history teaching and the underlying challenges.

To this end, he states that history education should adopt a pluralistic approach, encompassing multiple perspectives and ways of relating to the past, including political, epistemic, moral, and aesthetic dimensions. Following this argument, he explains that school is only one way in which our thinking about the past is formed and how history appears in our society.

Arthur Chapman also discusses the existence of a tension between the Enlightenment aims of history education (developing critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning) and the romantic/identity-based aims (fostering a sense of belonging and loyalty to traditions). Historians themselves are not immune to biases and often switch between Enlightenment and romantic modes when engaging with historical narratives. Effective history education needs to balance these different functions.

A third key point is the role of history education in equipping students with the tools to understand the different functions narratives can serve, the ways narratives can simplify and distort, and how they can enable pluralistic and open responses to the world, rather than closed and destructive ones.

Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, focuses his OHTE Talk on the challenge and importance of learning from the past to navigate a present that we have not yet experienced.

Through his talk, he states that the turning point, shaped by a 'cascade of crises' starting with the financial crisis in 2008 and culminating in the war in 2022, is a result of our failure to learn certain lessons from history and recurring phenomena. For instance, considering Europe's long-declining empires that clung to their colonies until the mid-1970s, we should not have assumed that the rapid collapse of the USSR would have ended the same way. Following this statement, he suggests that a stronger response to the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 might have prevented the war in Ukraine.

Secondly, while skeptical about the ability of historians to bring peace through teaching, Timothy Garton Ash highlights how “bad history” can materially contribute to starting a war.

Lastly, regarding the concept of 'multiperspectivity', he emphasizes the need to balance unity and diversity, objecting to the harmonization of our versions of history. Building on this idea, he argues that understanding the diversity of our past can help us harmonize our futures toward a better place.

In his OHTE Talk, Georgiy Kasianov, Head of the Laboratory of International Memory Studies, at the Maria Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland discusses Putin’s outlook on Ukraine and its roots to explain how Russia misused history in the context of the war in Ukraine.

One of the main arguments is that the view of Ukraine as an artificial state created by Bolsheviks and Ukrainians as an integral part of a larger Russian people is not just the product of ideological manipulation, but is an outlook rooted in 19th-century Russian imperial identity.

A second takeaway is the view of Ukraine as an entity that has no agency and can only exist as part of Russia’s historical body. Building on this belief, the Ukrainian fight for independence is nothing other than a battle against the 'evil West' from the Russian point of view.

Finally, according to Georgiy Kasianov, this worldview is combined with elements of manipulation. These efforts are, for instance, present through textbooks insofar as Russia tries to “harmonize interpretations” of such topics as the origin of Kievan Rus, Russian-Ukrainian controversies in the 17th century, controversial figures, the Ukrainian nationalist movement, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the Holodomor.

During her OHTE Talk, Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics, explores the role of historical narratives in shaping contemporary approaches to war, peace and democratic values in Europe.

In this context, she underscores that talking about history is telling a story based on evidence, as what we choose to emphasize makes a huge difference. Therefore, history is always partial and can be dangerous depending on how it is taught.

A second key point, building on the first one, is the importance of telling a story from below, involving ordinary people and social movements. To illustrate this, she presents an alternative story of the Cold War, as a “joint venture in which fear of the other legitimized governments on both sides” regarding brutality and repression in Eastern Europe, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons. This contrasts with the dominant view of a contest between the West and the Soviet Union resulting in a winner and a loser.

At last, Mary Kaldor draws our attention to the anachronistic nature of war and its danger, emphasizing that we should study these past stories along with the risks of war and peace. Following this perspective, she underlines the importance of looking at different versions of history, especially those applied by those resisting war and the story of peace and human rights groups.

Niall Ferguson, Professor at Stanford University, at the Hoover Institution in the USA, dedicates his talk to explaining the importance of history for modern society and its decline in academic education.

He presents history as pattern recognition, using Mark Twain’s analogy of history as a kaleidoscope, where the pattern is always changing. In this regard, Niall Ferguson highlights the lack of historical perspective, mentioning COVID-19 as a relatively modest disaster compared to other pandemics, such as the Black Death in the mid-14th century.

A second takeaway is the danger of historical ignorance and the importance of historical education. Better understanding the malign role that conspiracy theories have played over time can encourage people to refute them. Similarly, being historically ignorant can cause technocrats working in fields such as artificial intelligence to be blind to the potential dangers of their work.

Niall Ferguson also argues that there has been a noticeable shift in the focus of historical research and teaching, moving away from traditional fields like political, diplomatic, military, and economic history, toward topics like gender, race, and identity. According to him, professors and subject matter have move to the left over the past 40 years. As a consequence, many people are not educated in useful history, historical ignorance has become more prevalent, as history has become less attractive to students, particularly those in STEM disciplines, and academic history may eventually vanish.