Contact:	Suzanne Trimel					For immediate release
		(212) 854-5573					September 22, 1997
		smt4@columbia.edu


(Editors: A complete schedule of the conference is available)

Top Historians Gather at Columbia Sept. 26-27
For Conference on Vichy France


	New research on Vichy France will be presented by leading international 
historians of the period during a conference in New York Sept. 26-27 to honor 
historian Robert Paxton, a professor at Columbia University whose book "Vichy 
France: Old Guard and New Order" 25 years ago challenged the myth of French 
resistance under Nazi occupation.
	The two-day conference at Maison FranÙaise on the Columbia University 
campus at Broadway and 116th Street in Manhattan will bring together scholars 
and writers from France, America and elsewhere, whose research has been 
spurred by "l'Úre paxtonienne."
 	"When we think of Vichy it is pre- and post-Paxton," says historian Sarah 
Fishman, author of a book on the wives of French prisoners of war, "We Will 
Wait" (1992).  "Before Paxton's book there was a myth that helped the French feel 
better about themselves and served its political purposes.  Paxton essentially 
exploded that myth."
 	Ioannis Sinanoglou, executive director of the Council for European Studies 
at Columbia, joins a group of former students of Professor Paxton's who 
organized the conference.  The Sterling Currier Fund, an endowment of Reid 
Hall, Columbia's French studies program in Paris, is supporting the conference. 
"Professor Paxton held up a mirror and, though many in France did not like what 
they saw, scholars both there and in the United States have rigorously pursued 
the inquiry that he began," said  Dr. Sinanoglou.
	Many leading scholars of the period will participate in the conference.  The 
opening program from 9:30 A.M. to noon Friday will feature Jean-Pierre AzÚma 
speaking on "The Paxton Revolution 30 Years Later" and Professor Stanley 
Hoffmann of Harvard University on "Vichy Studies in France Before and After 
Paxton."
	The conference will feature lectures on the social, cultural and political 
experiences of France during the Vichy years, including "Vichy and the Jews" by 
Michael Marrus of the University of Toronto; "Youth in Vichy France" by 
Professor Fishman of the University of Houston and "Some Modest Proposals to 
Cure the Vichy Syndrome" by Pascal Ory of the UniversitÚ de Versailles.
	Though controversial when first published, "Vichy France" opened the 
French toward a more nuanced and accurate picture of the German occupation 
years in France from 1940 to 1944.  Today, the book is regarded as a canonical 
work on both sides of the Atlantic and Professor Paxton is an esteemed figure in 
France.  The French government has bestowed upon him two honorary 
distinctions: the National Order of Merit, with the rank of officer, and the Order of 
Arts and Letters, with the rank of commander.  The French Consul General in 
New York, Patrick Gautrat, and the Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, 
Pierre Buhler, will present the insignia at the close of the conference at 6 P.M. 
Saturday, September 27.
	Professor Paxton, author of two other books on the Vichy period, retired 
from the Columbia faculty as Mellon Professor of the Social Sciences in June after 
a 40-year academic career, although he is teaching a course in the History 
Department this fall.
	By examining German and American diplomatic records and some French 
materials published at the time, Professor Paxton discredited the accepted notion 
developed after World War II that the Vichy government has sought to protect a 
nation of "40 million resisters" from the worst cruelties of the German occupiers.  
Instead, he showed that the Vichy regime had sought real collaboration with 
Germany -- consistently offering more than the Germans asked, particularly in 
the area of anti-Semitic policies -- to carve out a role for France under Hitler in a 
future New European Order.  Further, Professor Paxton found that among the 
French population the Vichy government remained popular until it became clear 
that Germany would likely lose the war.
	His findings were attacked when the French edition of the book was 
published in 1973 but "Vichy France" has spurred French historians to reexamine 
the image of a brave-victim France during the war.  The book is now considered 
the benchmark for historical research on France during the occupation years.
	 French scholarship on the Vichy period has been re-oriented as younger 
scholars, particularly those associated with the Institut d'Histoire du Temps 
PrÚsent in Paris, have come to grips with issues largely evaded by their elders.
	Professor Paxton, who was educated at Washington and Lee University, 
Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and at Harvard, where he 
earned the Ph.D., has written four other books: Parades and Politics at Vichy 
(1966); Europe in the 20th Century (1975); Vichy France and the Jews, with 
Michael R. Marrus, (1981) and Le Temps de Chemises Vertes: rÚvolte paysanne et 
fascisme rural, 1929-1939.

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