2025

The Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia Article Prize, established in 2024 and sponsored by the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) at the University of Michigan, is awarded annually for an outstanding English-language research article in the social sciences by a junior scholar published in a peer-reviewed journal in the previous calendar year. 

Honorable Mention: Monika Rice,“Dr. Arnold Mostowicz: ‘Not alone in space.’ Moral Injury and the Quest for extraterrestrial Redemption,” Jewish Culture and History 25,4 (2024): 601-631 

Taking up the life and work of Polish Dr. Arnold Mostowicz, Monika Rice’s spectacular article maps a series of insurmountable moral dilemmas as Mostowicz tends to the sick in the Łódź Ghetto. A privileged Jew, he was asked to select other Jews for deportation to death camps, as well as to treat a typhus epidemic with virtually no medication. After the war, he left medicine for journalism and later book writing, only coming to address his Jewish identity after the rise of Solidarity in 1981. The centerpiece of this essay is Mostowicz’s science fiction writing, specifically his works that link UFO visitation to human history and evolution. Mostowicz was one of the pioneers of theories that UFOs played a role in human history, retelling biblical stories through the lens of alien intervention and positing a role for intellectually superior alien beings in human development. Rice posits that these stories allowed Mostowicz to address his own injuries and recover an optimism rooted not in monotheism, but UFO deism. This is a spectacular and painful story, brilliantly told. 

Winner: Jessie Barton Hronešová

Prize Committee: Mitchell Orenstein (chair), Bruce Grant, and Amanda Gregg