The academy and the political in the cold war. The heritage of the OSS, the rise of the social sciences, and the formation of political knowledge in the United States after 1941

<p>What impact on the rise of the social sciences and on the formation of political knowledge (the power-knowledge-relationship) in Cold War America did the wartime cooperation of American and German-speaking émigré scholars in World War Two have? This project is focused on scholarly networks and institutions as well as on the formation and re-orientation of disciplinary fields within a political framework. Its methodical goal is a synthesis of approaches related to the history of science, cultural history and political history. It will be a contribution to recent comparative research into cultures of politico-scholarly knowledge. The 1940s are conceptualized as a transitional phase leading to important developments in the history of the social sciences. Interdisciplinary area studies was one of its consequences, a fact that is reflected in the multi-disciplinary range of this project. Its transnational perspective will take into account the influence of German-speaking émigrés, the role of the knowledge about Germany as one of the experimental areas of the new methods, and of the repercussions all this had on the academy in Germany after World War Two, with special regard to rémigrés.</p>
<p>This project endeavors to connect structural research into cultures of knowledge with case studies of specific scholars. Based on extensive archival research as well as on publications and personal writings of relevant scholars, this projects aims for at an account that is adequate to this decisive phase in the history of knowledge in the 20th century. In doing so it also hopes to shed some light on the complex interaction of scholarship/science, politics and society.</p>