Baltic Scholars and Leaders Express Solidarity at Yale

On June 13-16, Yale hosted the 2024 conference of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), the world’s largest scholarly association for study of the Baltic region.  Approximately 325 participants joined from more than twenty countries; over 60 percent of participants who presented papers were from Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. Co-sponsored by the University of New Haven, the conference demonstrated a significant expansion in the scope of the Baltic Studies Program within the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.

“The conference brought to Yale hundreds of distinguished scholars and leaders to discuss the Baltic region’s history, culture, and pressing contemporary issues,” said Edyta Bojanowska, professor of Slavic languages and literatures and chair of the European Studies Council.

“It demonstrated the vibrancy of Baltic studies as an academic field, and the growing profile of our Baltic Program as a global hub connecting researchers and leaders. We look forward to building on this momentum.”

“For a number of conference participants, this was their third or even fourth visit to Yale in the past several years,” said Bradley Woodworth, who leads the Baltic Studies Program at Yale. “This conference helps solidify Yale University’s position as a global center for study of the Baltic region.”

The Baltic Way: Unity and Giving Aid

The conference took its theme from history: the “Baltic Way” refers to the August 23, 1989 peaceful political demonstration in which approximately two million Balts joined hands, forming an unbroken chain across the three Baltic countries to declare their wish for independence from the Soviet Union. Using this incredible show of solidarity as a launching point, the symposium’s plenary sessions focused on the current need for collective action among the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe to stand against Russian aggression and to uphold the democracies they hold dear.

“This is an important time for the lands and peoples of the Baltic region given the violence that the Russian state is currently carrying out against another part of the former USSR,” explained Woodworth, who is also Associate Professor of History at the University of New Haven. “The aid given to Ukraine by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania has put those countries among the leading states in the world in aid per capita. They are an example that resonates throughout Europe and the world.”

Woodworth emphasized that academic fora like the AABS conference and centers such as Yale’s Baltic Studies Program are places where ties are strengthened between academics in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as scholars of the broader region. “With our work in the Baltic Studies Program, Yale is contributing to cross-national community building,” said Woodworth.

“It was a real pleasure to host the Baltic Studies conference at Yale, given the energy of our program here,” said Steven Wilkinson, Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center and Vice Provost for Global Strategy at Yale University. “It was an especial pleasure for me to have the opportunity to meet several of the university heads who attended and give them a personal tour around the campus.

Four university rectors from Lithuania, Latvia, and their neighbor, Ukraine, discussed the current state of education in the Baltic countries during a panel discussion on June 13. Several rectors mentioned the challenges of attracting talent and preventing “brain drain” from their small countries, as well as the challenge that artificial intelligence (AI) presents to the educational model as we know it, particularly the development of critical thinking skills and of wisdom.

One of the most poignant perspectives shared was from Rector Mykola Trofymenko of Ukraine’s Mariupol State University, which was established in 1991 to educate the industrial Donetsk region and to teach European values to former Soviet subjects. When Russia attacked Mariupol in 2022, killing more than 1,000 civilians and reducing the university’s campus to rubble, Trofymenko said, Vytautas Magnus University of Lithuania helped immediately, creating a Mariupol State University Centre within its own institution to serve the Ukrainian refugee community in Lithuania. Trofymenko expressed that for the people of Ukraine, Balts are like family.

With a grant from the European Union, a new building for Mariupol State University has already been built and opened in Kyiv. “We are trying to imagine the university of the future,” Trofymenko said. “Who will better teach resilience than us?”

On June 14, Egils Levits, the former President of Latvia (2019-2023), tackled the topic of “Geopolitics and the Baltic States.” Western states after World War II built a global economic system that they thought would ensure peace but now risks failure, he said. In the case of Russia, the West failed to address the rise of a new ideology: russkiy mir, the Russian world, which is existentially opposed to a Western-led global order. And the rise of China is next.

To counter China, the West must revert to a balance of powers through credible military deterrence, societal resilience, and self-defending democracies, Levits argued, and the Baltic states are well suited to this task. Together, just as with the Baltic Way years ago, he said, “we can succeed.”

The three current ambassadors to the United States from Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia — Audra Plepytė, Kristjan Prikk, and Māris Selga — gathered with conference participants in the conference’s closing plenary on June 15 in a roundtable discussion. In his welcoming remarks, University of New Haven President Jens Frederiksen said that the Baltic countries are essential for our collective future. In these complicated, perilous times, we all have a stake, Frederiksen said. The roundtable moderator, Olena Lennon of the University of New Haven, drew attention to the response of the Baltic countries to Russia’s war in Ukraine, providing military aid and taking in refugees. It is precisely because of Russia’s brutal war of aggression that “the work of diplomats is critical and urgent,” Lennon said.

Ambassador from Lithuania Audra Plepytė told conference participants that diplomacy facilitated the quick and coordinated response by the democratic world to Russia’s 2022 intensified invasion of Ukraine. “We are on the frontline,” she said. Diplomacy will be critical for making a global democratic alliance to counter Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, Plepytė argued.

Ambassador Prikk stressed the long-term global impact of the eventual settlement at the end of the war with Russia: “It will define the rules of the game for a long time.”

Ambassador Selga emphasized the centrality of the transatlantic community in ensuring a victory for Ukraine. It is also a priority to engage with countries of the Global South. The entire Baltic region is now unified in defense, with Finland and Sweden joining NATO. “The Baltic countries are very much aligned going forward,” said Ambassador Selga.

The Baltic “Family” at Yale

Fourteen past Yale Baltic Studies post-doctoral students attended the conference, not only to present and discuss their research, but also to reconnect with their community. As Woodworth explained, “Our aim is for our post-docs to see themselves as part of a growing group of scholars who share an identity as part of a Yale Baltic network, and even family.”

Ksenija Iljina returned to Yale for the conference after visiting in the spring of 2021 as part of a University College London-Yale exchange to work on her Ph.D. dissertation, “Soviet Mythologies in Commemorative and Ritual Practices in Contemporary Latvia.” She expressed gratitude in returning to an important place in her academic journey as part of “a vibrant community coming together to explore, challenge, and inspire.”

“My previous visit was crucial in shaping my research and being back felt like a homecoming to a place that significantly contributed to my academic growth,” said Iljina. “I appreciated the dynamic interactions, the sharing of diverse perspectives, and the collaborative spirit that makes AABS conferences so special.”

Woodworth thanked the staff and faculty for their support of Baltic Studies at Yale and the AABS and Yale teams in successfully hosting the conference at Yale, especially the European Studies Council’s senior program manager Carly Koebel. “A conference like this requires expert administration, a comprehensive and clear vision of all the various parts of the whole, and patient and consistent follow-through,” said Woodworth at the conference’s final plenary. “In her work for this conference, Carly has excelled at all of these.”

What’s next?

Organizing this year’s AABS conference comprised one part of a significant expansion in the scope of activities of Yale’s Baltic Studies Program in recent years.

“There’s a big drive with our students and our faculty to study the Baltic region, obviously for geopolitical reasons now, but it always has been one of our priorities at the European Studies Council,” said Asia Neupane, program director of the European Studies Council and director of programs and institutional partnerships for Europe and Latin America at Yale. Neupane explained that with additional staff and faculty support, the Baltic Studies Program’s capacity was able to grow.

In addition to continuing its post-doctoral program and accepting a student from the Baltics into Yale’s MA program in European and Russian Studies, Yale will also host this fall its first visiting professor of Baltic Studies: the historian Mart Kuldkepp from University College London, who will also teach a course. Continuing in its programming, in spring 2025, Yale will also hold a two-day symposium on the role of Baltic Germans in the tsarist Russian Empire.

View the conference photo gallery.

Watch coverage of the conference on the Estonian evening news.