Request for support for National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy!

Tue Jan 18 21:48:16 UTC 2011

Dear SEELANGS Community,

I have attached below a message from the 2009-10 Stanford CREEES Chopivsky Fellow Andriy Meleshevykh, the Dean of the Law School at the National University Kyiv-Moyla Academy (NaUKMA).  He describes the political pressures that have been applied to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy since the recent change in government in Ukraine.  Kyiv-Mohyla has emerged as the beacon of quality higher education in Ukraine since national independence, and an important academic partner of Stanford's CREEES since 2004.

Please sign online petitions (links below) to voice your support:

Petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open_letter_from_serhiy_kvit/

Letter from NaUKMA President asking for public support. This site also contains our analysis of the new Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education"  made by NaUKMA  http://ukma.kiev.ua/eng_site/news/news_detailed.php?id=218

Best wishes,

Robert Wessling, PhD
Associate Director
Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES)
Stanford University
417 Galvez - 203A Encina West
Stanford, CA 94305

rwess at stanford.edu
Tel. 650-725-6852
http://CREEES.stanford.edu

=================================

Before assuming his position, the current Minister of Education Dmytro Tabachnyk published a number of books and articles which contain xenophobic statements against the Ukrainian nation. In Spring 2010, NaUKMA as well as several other universities issued a statement condemning the appointment of Mr.Tabachnyk on the post of the Minister of Education. Soon after NaUKMA President Serhiy Kvit made his statement public, the Ministry of Education launched an attack against KMA. There are three things going on:

(1) New NaUKMA Statute: before Tabachnyk took office NaUKMA was directly subordinated to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The new government subordinated KMA to the Ministry of Education (ME). It means that KMA had to adopt a new university statute. In October 2010, the KMA academic conference approved a new statute. It was based on our old statute with some revisions in the spirit of the Bologna documents approved by the ME in the past. However, the ME refused to approve our new statute. They want us to remove from our new statute: (a) English as one of two working languages at KMA, (b) our Ph.D. program which was modeled after a typical Western PH.D. program - no other Ukrainian university has a western-type Ph.D. program, (3) de facto all elements of university autonomy from the Ministry. In other words, the ME wants to establish a near-total control over all Ukrainian universities including NaUKMA, etc.

(2) Admission Rules: every year the ME approves admission regulations for all Ukrainian universities. We submitted our regulations for 2011 which in fact were no different from similar regulations that ME approved in the past. This year the ME refused to approve our rules arguing that we are not permitted to require from applicants to demonstrate proficiency in English. According to the ME NaUKMA discriminated against applicants who did not study English. After unsuccessful attempts to defend our position,  NaUKMA was forced to comply with directions from the ME - we had to make these rules public.

(3) New Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education": here is a quote from a letter from NaUKMA President: " ... through efforts aimed at adopting a new Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” which negates the principle of university autonomy (including academic, financial, organizational), and is therefore antithetical to the principles of the European Higher Education Area. For example, according to the draft law, the Soviet-era “candidate of sciences” is simply renamed into the PhD with no introduction of structured programming; interdisciplinary education becomes a legal impossibility at the program level; the needs of the national economy and employers are ignored. The draft law makes no mention of the European Credit Transfer System, no national strategy for life-long learning is proposed. According to this law, the status of a university is to be determined not according to quality level, but rather exclusively according to quantitative measures. Thus, only an instituti!
 on with no less than 10 thousand full-time students may be a “classical university”. Kyiv-Mohyla Academy has a student body of just over 3500; we are likely therefore to lose our “university” status soon."
In the past several days the ME pushes very hard to approve this law in the parliament. Our supporters in the national legislature are trying to obstruct these attempts. However, it looks like the majority in the parliament will approve this law rather soon. Yesterday the parliament went on a  break, they will reopen in about ten days. If NaUKMA loses it's "university" status it would have many negative consequences for us. 

The bottom line is that (as I wrote in one of my emails): It is our deep conviction here at NaUKMA that the current Ukrainian government tries to retaliate against KMA for its important role during the Orange Revolution and the critical stand that Kyiv-Mohyla Academy took against policies of Mr. Tabachnyk.

I'd like also to refer you to several important publications on our web page which describe the situation in detail:

Letter from NaUKMA President asking for public support. This site also contains our analysis of the new Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education"  made by NaUKMA  http://ukma.kiev.ua/eng_site/news/news_detailed.php?id=218

Petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open_letter_from_serhiy_kvit/

Article by Mychailo Wynnyckyj: http://ukma.kiev.ua/eng_site/news/news_detailed.php?id=223

Article by Alexander J. Motyl: http://ukma.kiev.ua/eng_site/news/news_detailed.php?id=231

Interview by NaUKMA Honorable President Vyacheslav Briukhovetsky: http://ukma.kiev.ua/eng_site/news/news_detailed.php?id=243

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