Bard College, which has worked to spread liberal-arts education around the globe, has been designated as an “undesirable” organization by the Russian government, prevented from all activity and operations in the country.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office announced the blacklisting on Monday, saying that Bard’s work “threatens the constitutional order and security of Russia.” Anyone in the country who is affiliated with the college could face fines or imprisonment.
Bard collaborated with St. Petersburg State University to create Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which began admitting students in 1999. Graduates receive two degrees, one from Bard and the other from its Russian partner. The college, which typically enrolls 600 to 650 students at the bachelor’s and master’s level, has served as a template for other Bard joint programs worldwide, in places like Kyrgyzstan and the Palestinian territories.
In Russia, Bard also runs student exchanges and Russian-language training.
Bard’s model, of working closely with an overseas partner to craft a curriculum and offer degrees, is distinct, but its experience in Russia underscores how geopolitical tensions can complicate colleges’ international engagement. Bard may also have been a target because of its ties to George Soros, the progressive philanthropist, and his Open Society Foundations.
The Chronicle spoke on Tuesday with Bard’s longtime president, Leon Botstein, about the designation. “I’m heartbroken,” he said. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What’s your response to the Russian government’s action barring Bard from working there?
It’s shocking, and it’s wildly wrongheaded. We’re been there for 25 years. The program has been appraised by Russian and American observers. We hope the Russian government will reconsider. It’s a terrible blow against cultural and human exchange between our two peoples.
What happens next?
I don’t know. We’re cut off in communications from our colleagues in Russia. This law puts individuals at risk of being jailed for just having contact with us. We have alerted the secretary of state in hopes of including this in dialogue with Russia, to help put this flagship program of Russian-American cooperation back on the table.
Just to clarify: You are not in touch with your colleagues in Russia?
We’re not communicating. We’ve got nothing to hide, but we don’t want to put anyone at risk. We’re a dual-degree program, and I just signed diplomas and we shipped them in Russia in time for graduation, in late June, early July. I don’t know if the students will get their diplomas.
Why do you think Bard was singled out?
Why now? The program hasn’t changed. We just got good news about expansion of our programs in February. We have students in the middle of academic programs, and we hope it can continue.
It seems that we are collateral damage of international politics. It’s reminiscent of the Cold War — and at least then, there were efforts to keep cultural and educational exchange going. The idea that we’re subversive or anticonstitutional, it’s just wrong. There is obviously in the Anglo-American tradition a connection between what academic freedom in the university is about and the political system. When we go to different cultures and societies, we have to be flexible and adaptive without sacrificing our principles.
Bard is one of hundreds of institutions that benefit from the Open Society Foundations, and there’s a conspiracy about George Soros. Of the top-ranked universities in the U.S., 33 of them received support from the Open Society Foundations. That itself cannot be enough [to explain the Russian action], and I don’t know what the cause is. I sat, and I sit, on the board of the Open Society Foundations, but they knew that 20 years ago. It’s not like I took on a new identity. And Open Society Foundations money has not gone to Smolny since 2015 [when the foundation was classified as “undesirable” under the same Russian law]. Smolny is self-sustaining.
Why do you think it has become more difficult for colleges to engage internationally?
The last bastion of universal cooperation is learning, but there’s been a rise of a kind of exclusionary nationalism, and not just here in America. There are great concerns about “foreign influence.” There’s a sort of an anticosmopolitan sensibility.
You have articulated a particular vision for international engagement, of using the liberal arts to go to difficult places to be a force for free expression and democracy. Does what’s happened in Russia lead you to reassess that approach?
It doesn’t shake my faith. It does make it all that more important. The whole purpose of university education is to let people speak, to think, for themselves. And that’s true of the impressive intellectual tradition of Russia; we saw ourselves continuing that tradition.
It’s like having a death in the family. No, I don’t think of it as a death. It’s more like a coma, and we hope the patient wakes up.
