Why does the tax haven even have a university? There seem to be two answers. First, before 1997 (when the university’s doors opened), locals who wanted a university education had to go abroad. Most went to France, – including the prime minister where he proceeded to plagiarize his thesis – some went to Germany – including a good friend who went to Heidelberg – or Belgium, – another went to the Univesité Libre de Bruxelles – while some, like Michèle, went further abroad to places like London. Many of these talented and multilingual students found themselves in a bigger pond and chose to stay. Why go back to a semi-feudal microstate whose politics are still controlled by the Catholic church? But the Catholic church does not control the tax haven’s politics anymore (I have been trying to get Michèle to write about it for us to no avail), and Luxonians are now richer than ever. Expensive drinks for eurocrats, it turns out, pays off.
The other reason to found a university was to promote the tax haven’s international reputation. All self-respecting nations have a national university, why can’t the tax haven? To that end, the university’s purpose – and our purpose in it – is to promote the state. This isn’t the tax haven’s only foray into pretending to be a “real country.” There is a national airline (that abandoned me in a Parisian airport) that flies to all kinds of wonderful destinations like Dubai and Abu Dhabi (it appears that the tax haven is making only the most humane of friends). They are also in the process of creating a national space agency. I’m sure it’s much easier to avoid taxes on Mars.
But the university is what I can see the best from my student job in the PR department. The sciences do the university well, providing it with “expertise” in COVID decisions and free press whenever a new study is released. The economics and law faculty also do the state well, providing young local bankers who are cheaper and more linguistically competent than ones that banks have to ship in to do the same job. Most of the university’s energy seems directed at these two faculties. This is normal for any university, and it is also normal for the history department to receive almost no attention.
But not in the tax haven. We do get some attention from the state, and in return, we are of service to it. The history we practice at the tax haven is suffocatingly traditional. The tax haven is a nation, and every nation needs a history, therefore, we are tasked with creating that triumphant national history for the state. The minuscule number of books about the country are all readily available, especially those who celebrate the succession of Catholic prime ministers and grand dukes who each strove to improve the country. Even the gusano Grand Duchesse has an autobiography about her love of the poor! But (unfortunately) the tax haven is not a Stalinist dictatorship, and, being run by guilty liberals, talk about how blemishes like how the tax haven participated in King Leopold II’s Congo Free State is welcomed, because, well, they aren’t doing it anymore! Our topics are limited to the types of history that are of interest to the enthusiast. We are on a healthy diet of World War I and II, we can even have the history of the European Union as dessert. Our research has to be immediately relevant for the state, otherwise, we are not heard from.
As an aside, discourse about labor and socialism is stifled, not by force, but by a lack of interest. The tax haven has a few amateur historians who guard the history of the left close to their hearts, the most important of which is a man named Henri Wehenkel who is a good leftist that impotently rails against the state in every book that he writes. It even seems like at least 20 people read his books. A classmate knows him, I would like to reach out and talk to him sooner rather than later, he sounds like a good comrade.
The traditional historical interests of the university are, ironically, a problem for the liberal leaders of Luxembourg who are consciously trying to brand the country as modern – to that end everything, for better or worse, is now digital – that is something that traditional history cannot do! The university’s focus, therefore, is on digital history, an extremely tiresome way to say that we are putting documents online. Despite being a good thing – I will not stop the state from dumping my tax dollars into digitization – it becomes extremely tiresome when overpaid faculty try to channel the same energy that went into the 1960s university explosion into digitization. The 1960s university explosion created so many new historical fields that opened up a world of possibilities, labor history and woman’s history gained mainstream acceptance, but hitting “ctrl +f” on a keyboard does not make you Eric Hobsbawm, despite what some of the faculty might say.
What we are doing at the history department of Tax Haven U is serving the state. To that end, we do not write things that are too critical of our saviors and we certainly do not reveal the secret – that digital history is not groundbreaking, nor is it deserving of this kind of money. We don’t want our overlords to find out, not because they might change it, or because a critical comment will be our end, no, we don’t want to admit it because admitting that the university is just another tool to prop up the tax haven forces us to look in the mirror and ask why the hell are any of us here?
Signed,
Andrew (Pfannkuche)
Normal Thoughts 