Latitudes

Russian liberal-arts program, founded with Bard, will end

One of Russia’s most prominent liberal-arts programs is shutting down, two years after its key international partner, Bard College, was blacklisted and barred from working in the country.

Administrators at St. Petersburg State University announced they were replacing the liberal-studies curriculum at Smolny College with a narrower program of study without the same foundation in liberal-arts education. University officials said the changes were made to comply with federal accreditation standards.

But to many, Smolny is the latest casualty in the Russian government’s crackdown on dissent, and of growing anti-Western sentiment in the country, which has extended to higher education.

Bard, St. Petersburg State’s partner in expanding Smolny from a handful of interdisciplinary courses to a full-fledged liberal-arts program, was another target. In June 2021, the Russian government declared the New York college “undesirable,” saying its work “threatens the constitutional order and security of Russia.”

The designation immediately ended Bard’s dual-degree partnership, in which Smolny graduates received both St. Petersburg State and Bard degrees. It also halted the college’s other work in the country, including student exchanges and Russian-language training.

Jonathan Becker, Bard’s executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs, called the dismantling of Smolny’s liberal-arts program “inevitable” after ties with Bard were severed but said it was no less “personally and professionally devastating.” Because of the blacklisting, Bard officials risked endangering their Smolny colleagues, some of whom they had worked with for more than two decades, just by speaking with them.

Even before the recent announcement, Smolny, which had previously enrolled 600 to 650 students at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, had lost about a third of its faculty members, said Becker, who oversaw Bard’s international-education partnerships. Some had left, while others’ contracts were not renewed.

It wasn’t so long ago that liberal-arts education had been embraced in Russia, as a means to reinvigorate its higher-education system and to produce more economically competitive graduates. In fact, Smolny’s former dean had been the country’s finance minister. Other Russian institutions sought to adopt Smolny’s pedagogy.

The changes at Smolny are, in part, a result of worsening U.S.-Russia relations, which have chilled scholarly and research connections. But they also reflect growing hostility to liberal education, Becker, a Russian scholar, said. “It’s an education rooted in critical thinking and engaged citizenship, and none of that is welcome these days in Russia.”

The antagonistic view of the liberal arts isn’t limited to Russia, said Becker, pointing to New College of Florida, where the state’s conservative governor appointed like-minded trustees who then fired the president and have moved to shift the curriculum. (Bard recently announced it is working with former New College students and faculty members to establish an Alt New College.)

Central European University, a liberal-arts institution that, like Bard, gets some funds from George Soros, the financier and civil-society activist, was forced to relocate from Hungary to Austria in 2019 because of political pressure. Two of Bard’s other international partners, the American University of Afghanistan and Parami University, in Myanmar, have been pushed into exile by unfriendly governments.

That Bard’s global work should face such challenges is in many ways unsurprising. In its approach, the college eschewed partnerships in easy places, opting instead to focus on bringing the liberal arts to regions of the world dealing with authoritarianism and political strife. One of its most enduring relationships, for example, is with Al-Quds University, in the Palestinian West Bank.

“The real question” about the college’s global work, Becker said, “is how did it last so long?”

Becker is not waving the white flag on Bard’s international efforts, however. Through the Open Society University Network, a worldwide consortium of colleges supported by Soros’s foundation, students at Parami and American University of Afghanistan are able to take interactive online courses and earn degrees, said Becker, who is a vice chancellor and teaches a course on civic engagement for the consortium.

A nascent project is offering online courses to Smolny students, too. “We’re keeping more than embers alive of the dream,” Becker said.

WVU approves deep foreign-language cuts

Students at West Virginia University will no longer be able to major in any foreign language after the university’s Board of Governors finalized deep faculty and programmatic cuts.

A couple of language minors could continue to be offered, in Spanish and Chinese. Students will also be able to take elective courses in foreign languages.

The board amended university administrators’ recommended reductions in world-languages faculty, voting to retain seven professors instead of five — a small bright spot for supporters. Still, some 17 language positions were cut.

Professors will be notified by mid-October if they will lose their jobs, said Amy Thompson, chair of the department of world languages, literatures, and linguistics. Thompson doesn’t know if she could be among those out of work.

The seven positions that will be retained do not include the university’s English-language institute, which reports to the world-languages department. Administrators have agreed that WVU needs to continue to offer some English-language instruction for international students, Thompson said, but it’s unclear how many of the institute’s faculty members will be able to stay.

University leaders have framed the far-reaching cuts — which affect 143 faculty positions and 130 programs across the institution — as needed to right WVU financially. The plan “will help to keep WVU accessible and affordable and relevant,” Taunja Willis Miller, the board’s chair, said in a statement after Friday’s vote.

But the move alarmed many scholars who worried that it could be a harbinger of a dark future for language education. (WVU’s original plan would have cut all language faculty positions.) The Modern Language Association has in recent years documented a decrease in foreign-language programs, and there are fears that other college leaders in tough financial straits could follow WVU’s lead.

Thompson said she was moved by the support she and her colleagues received, including from more than 25,000 people who signed an online petition opposing the cuts. The university’s science faculty members wrote a letter about why language and cultural education are important to STEM fields.

And WVU students were some of the loudest voices against the reductions, interrupting Friday’s board vote in protest. “Those students are fire,” Thompson said.

Thompson said she is worried about the university’s ability to meet student demand for foreign-language instruction. Right now it’s uncertain which language courses will continue to be offered.

Much of Thompson’s energy is focused on helping her colleagues search for new jobs. Later this week an official from the National Security Agency will visit campus to talk about federal-government jobs that require foreign-language expertise.

Federal judge rules DACA is illegal

A federal judge in Texas has struck a new blow to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, ruling that the program that provides some legal protections to young people brought to the United States as children violates immigration law.

Judge Andrew S. Hanen rejected efforts by the Biden administration to codify the program, known as DACA, through regulation. The rule-making followed an earlier ruling by the same judge that President Barack Obama had exceeded his authority when he created DACA by executive order in 2012.

In his decision, Hanen wrote that “there are no material differences” in the program than when he first ruled. Still, he did not mandate an immediate end to DACA, and current recipients will be able to keep and renew their benefits. No new applications will be accepted.

In a statement, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the U.S. secretary of homeland security, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, which he said undermined the security and stability of DACA recipients.

The Biden administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

Around the globe

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would make some international graduates of American colleges who earn a master’s or doctoral degree in a science or technology field eligible for permanent residency.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group of Iranian students and academics over what they said were “unreasonable” delays by the U.S. Department of State in processing their visas.

A new national Homeland Threat Assessment lists among potential security risks attempts by foreign governments to steal intellectual property, and China’s efforts to suppress the speech of its students on American campuses.

A member of the Canadian Parliament testified at a recent congressional hearing about the Chinese government’s interference on overseas college campuses.

The National Institutes of Health has tweaked guidance that imposed greater oversight on the overseas partners of American grant recipients, in response to public comments raising concerns about the new policy.

Mexican students living near the border would be eligible for in-state tuition at California community colleges under a measure approved by state lawmakers.

Indian officials are calling for an investigation into the “deeply troubling” handling of the death of an Indian graduate student who was struck by a Seattle police car. An officer who is also a police-union official was caught on a body camera joking about her death.

A South Korean student charged with murder in the stabbing death of his Purdue University roommate has been found competent to stand trial.

Chicago State University has been caught in the middle of a Nigerian political dispute after a rival of the country’s newly elected president, Bola Tinubu, said the victory should be nullified because documents showing Tinubu graduated from Chicago State aren’t authentic. The college, however, said Tinubu really is a 1979 graduate.

New restrictions on researchers by the Iranian government are increasing their isolation from the larger scientific community.

One of Vladimir Putin’s daughters, a biologist, has continued to publish articles in Western academic journals even after the war in Ukraine. Some journals have said they would not run articles by researchers at Russian institutions because of the war.

A mainland-Chinese student in Hong Kong has been jailed for six months for plans to display a banner commemorating the 1989 government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

China’s largest academic database has been fined for privacy breaches, but some worry that the government action may be a pretext for censorship.

The South Korean government has proposed a large reduction in science spending, the first cut in more than three decades.

The Japanese government will provide support to universities to set up overseas branch campuses, but international expansion still faces substantial bureaucratic hurdles.

And finally …

As a schoolgirl in China, the writer of this essay cheered when the Twin Towers fell. Then she moved to New York: “It was only after I lived overseas that I found out about the censorship of the 9/11 coverage by Chinese state media, and discovered the shame and guilt that would gnaw on those who had a chance to unlearn what they were taught.”

While the anniversary of the attacks has passed, this meditative essay is still worth reading.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn or X. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.