Russia’s sanctions on Central European U. put Russian students and staff there at risk
Last fall, the Russian government designated Central European University an “undesirable” organization, accusing it of promoting an “anti-Russian agenda” and working to “discredit” the Russian government and its military operations in Ukraine.
The Vienna-based liberal-arts university joins some 116 human-rights groups, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and educational institutions on Russia’s blacklist, including the Wilson Center, in Washington, D.C., and Bard College, in New York.
The designation means that the university, also known as CEU, has had to shut down all operations and activity in Russia. It also makes associating with the institution illegal, exposing Russian citizens who study and work at CEU — who number about 100 — to penalties or even prosecution if they return to their home country.
“It’s the criminalization of studying at Central European University,” one doctoral student told me. She and other Russian students and staff members are disappointed that CEU, which has a reputation for standing up to authoritarian governments, has not done more to support or advocate for them.
You can read my story in full. (Registering for a free Chronicle account allows nonsubscribers to read two free articles a month, and your readership supports our journalism.) But here are a few key points:
The designation is a reminder of the Russian government’s political squeeze on higher education — including institutions outside its borders. President Vladimir Putin has sought to quiet dissent on college campuses, limiting academic freedom and restricting international scholarly outreach. The crackdown, which has accelerated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, is an about-face from an earlier period of academic openness and exchange. Not long ago, the western degrees that could now put them at risk would have been a plus factor for CEU graduates looking for jobs in Russian academe.
Observers worry that Russia’s growing academic isolation could damage its higher-education system, as foreign partnerships vanish and professors and scientists leave the country because of political repression and the war with Ukraine.
Russia’s sanctioning of a college outside its borders may be brazen. But around the globe, higher education has increasingly become polarized and politicized. I don’t need to remind American readers about the ways in which conservative lawmakers here have cast colleges in an adversarial light, criticizing campus leaders for their diversity efforts, positions on social issues, and, most recently, statements on the war in the Middle East.
Neither Russia nor the United States is an outlier. A recent book, Neo-nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education, catalogs how governments around the world have attacked higher education and sought to rein in institutional autonomy. “In a number of important national examples, the contemporary political environment poses a major challenge to the societal role of universities,” the book’s editor, John Aubrey Douglass, of the University of California at Berkeley, writes in the preface, concluding, “Something’s going on.” (Full disclosure, I contributed a chapter to the book, on China.)
A staff member at CEU, which draws students and professors from more than 100 countries, told me that one of her fears was that other authoritarian governments could adopt the Russian playbook and similarly blacklist the university, putting more students at risk.
In this political environment, college leaders face new pressures. This isn’t CEU’s first run-in with government leaders — the university was forced to relocate to Vienna after Hungarian lawmakers, displeased with its efforts to promote academic freedom and critical thinking, passed legislation that would have forced it to shut down.
But it’s that very track record that has left Russian students and staff members dismayed that CEU hasn’t more forcefully advocated for them. They would like the university to use its connections to help them get humanitarian visas to allow them to stay in Europe.
Amid the politics, people are affected. Those who associate with an undesirable organization — the term is vaguely defined — could face fines or imprisonment under Russian law. As a result, Russian citizens at CEU are avoiding returning to their home country.
Many of those interviewed said they feared that repression in Russia could worsen after the presidential election in March. “Just because nothing has happened as of now doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous,” one undergraduate said. Her fellow students, she said, are scared.
