Why Bard? Why now? No specific charges were adduced. Smolny has operated for 25 years without major incident. I asked Leon Botstein, Bard’s president, whether the philanthropist George Soros’s association with Bard — his Open Society Institute recently gave the college hundreds of millions of dollars — could have been to blame. Botstein didn’t think so. He pointed out that although Soros was an important early donor to Smolny, “no Soros money has gone to this project since 2015.”
But the forces of reactionary nationalism for which Soros is anathema may not be so different from the forces behind Bard’s expulsion, as Botstein acknowledged. He speculated that anti-academic sentiment may be motivated by a desire to appeal to the far right: “You have to count on the fact that the pressure, as in the United States, is from the right, and Putin may be in the same position as Liz Cheney is in. There’s a massive right wing, a real right wing. QAnon is a huge attraction to that kind of Russophilic nationalism. I think [Putin] is playing to his right.”
Grim as all this is for Smolny, its global implications might be even more alarming. “Autocrats, single-party regimes, think they have a reason to fear universities,” Botstein said. There is every reason to think that Russia’s actions could embolden analogous crackdowns in Poland, in Hungary, in Brazil — anywhere the university is a charged symbolic target for political invective.
“It’s a tragedy,” Botstein said. “I loved working on the program, I feel very badly for our Russian colleagues. I’m very grateful to them. I’m in a state of shock.”
"Review" - Google News
June 23, 2021 at 11:07PM
https://ift.tt/3h5HG6m
The Review: Russia Gives Bard the Boot - The Chronicle of Higher Education
"Review" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YqLwiz
https://ift.tt/3c9nRHD
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "The Review: Russia Gives Bard the Boot - The Chronicle of Higher Education"
Post a Comment