BY HANK REICHMAN
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia today (June 21) recognized New York’s Bard College as an “undesirable organization.” According to the ministry, Bard’s activities in Russia “pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security” of Russia. The designation threatens, and may well guarantee, the termination of a longstanding collaboration between Bard and one of Russia’s oldest and most prestigious universities.
Since 1997, Bard has been collaborating with St. Petersburg State University, offering a program of open enrollment liberal arts courses for students of SPbU and other higher education institutions in St. Petersburg. In 1996, Bard was awarded a grant of $299,800 by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Information Agency to create the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint initiative sponsored by Bard and Saint Petersburg State. The grant enabled the two partner institutions to exchange more than thirty faculty and staff members over a three-year period.
Smolny College was the first institution to offer a liberal arts bachelor’s degree program in Russia. Its entering class of seventy-five students came primarily from Saint Petersburg, other parts of Russia, and the countries of East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan and Poland. Due to the significant interest shown by students and faculty in the innovative curriculum, an Arts and Humanities Program was launched in 1999 as a dual-degree program with Bard, in which graduates earn degrees from both institutions. Based on the joint work of the two higher ed institutions, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences was formed at the Russian university in 2011. The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences is currently undergoing reorganization into a separate university.
According to Bard’s website,
Today, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences has more than 550 undergraduate students and six master’s degree programs, two of which are dual-degree programs with Bard College (Curatorial Studies, Music Criticism). Undergraduates choose courses from among 12 academic programs, from computer science and artificial intelligence to music and art history. The teaching is student centered, focusing on interactive teaching methods and multidisciplinary approaches. Its curriculum combines general education, student choice, and rigorous program requirements for graduation.
Each year up to 45 students spend a semester at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences through Bard and an equal number of SPbU students attend courses at Bard through Bard’s Program in International Education. The Russian Summer Language Intensive brings U.S. students to St. Petersburg for the intensive study of Russian language and culture, while the Bard Summer Science Intensive held at Bard’s campus in the Hudson Valley focuses on scientific exploration in tandem with English instruction. Students from the dual-degree Master of Arts in Music Criticism program have the chance to take part in the Bard Summer Music Program, which is centered on the Bard Music Festival.
Additionally, students from both institutions are regularly involved in events at each location including conferences and debate tournaments. Faculty members regularly travel between St. Petersburg and Bard College, attending conferences and giving guest lectures. Each July, Bard College welcomes faculty from St. Petersburg to its campus for workshops on the methodology of liberal arts–style teaching led by Bard’s Institute for Writing and Thinking.
At the end of March 2021, the Coordinating Council of Non-Profit Organizations of Russia asked the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Presidential Administration and the Federation Council to check the newly forming University of Liberal Arts and Sciences, for a possible connection with foreign NGOs, including those “controlled by George Soros and leading destructive activity.” The organization asked that Bard be recognized as “undesirable” on the territory of Russia, “posing a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state.”
St. Petersburg State University
In May, St. Petersburg State University sent an official appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office with a request to assess the future cooperation of the university with Bard College. They noted that the history of the university’s partnership with Bard “goes back to the end of the last century,” and the university has never collaborated with “undesirable organizations.” Sergei Andryushin, Deputy Rector for International Affairs at St. Petersburg State University, also asked Bard to disclose whether it receives donations from organizations whose activities are recognized as undesirable in Russia.
In November 2019, a representative office of St. Petersburg State University was opened at Bard. In March 2021, officials said that the new university being created on the basis of the faculty of St. Petersburg State University would begin admitting students this year. They also noted that graduates of the faculty will receive two diplomas — from St. Petersburg State University and one from Bard College.
“In the course of our separation from St. Petersburg State University, students will be able to choose whether they want to study with us or continue their studies at St. Petersburg State University,” school dean Aleksey Kudrin said in an interview with Vedomosti. “But I think the majority will choose us. Firstly, due to the fact that our educational model differs from the one used at St. Petersburg State University. We have individual training tracks, they do not coincide with any specialty in a classical university. Secondly, we have a good image. Thirdly, our graduates receive a second diploma — from the American Bard College — and are very competitive in the market.”
The Prosecutor General’s decision renders it questionable at the least as to whether this project will continue. Under current Russian law, those who cooperate with an “undesirable organization” are liable to be prosecuted and, if convicted, punished first by fine and secondly by up to four years in prison. A previous target, the European University of St. Petersburg, so far appears to have survived a series of political attacks, but neither it nor any of its partners have yet been officially designated as “undesirable.” Barring unforeseen developments, it is likely not only that both the new university and any other joint programs with Bard will be shuttered. One faculty member of my acquaintance who has taught in the Smolny program for the past ten years (and also spent a year at Bard) informed me that for him this is personal; he expects to lose his job.
I hope that Bard will be able to initiate a successful international movement to protest this assault on international exchange and academic freedom.
Admittedly, I did not read this entire l-o-n-g essay. I stopped after reading that funding came from the “United States Information Agency.” Anyone who was familiar with the Cold War and especially the USIA’s role in propaganda in South and Latin America may begin to realize why Russians did not want to support or continue a program funded (even in part) by a longtime nemesis.
The Costa-Gavras film STATE OF SIEGE was a veritable documentary of how U.S. interests were promulgated around the world by the USIA, which was used as a front for training foreign police in counterinsurgency methods, especially against the leftist Tupamaro guerillas and unionists in Uruguay. The USIA-trained locals utilized kidnapping and torture to effectuate their goals.
My faculty once had the opportunity to get a USIA grant for an “educational” program — bringing Middle East journalists to the U.S. to show how we did “objective” journalism in the U.S. The faculty voted it down, because of the reputation of the USIA, but the Dean, who was Egyptian, OKed it. Instead of learning our ways, the Middle Easterners barged into classes and spouted pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian propaganda. They also took over several public events, including one that “starred” Hanan Ashrawi, the female Palestinian leader. The Israeli delegation of journalists left the program after they realized its direction and how outnumbered they were.
Our tax dollars at work!
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This article leaves out an important aspect: USIA has as its main goal furtherance of US government foreign policy objectives, which has for some years meant supporting “regime change” in Russia. One does not has to be a Putin-lover, which I am not, to question this source of funding, just as I question many of the activities of the AFL-CIO overseas funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (funded by both major parties and the US government). If the shoe we’re on the other foot, there would be big headlines about Russia meddling in our internal affairs.
JOEBERRY1493: Great minds think alike, especially when it comes to the USIA.
I and many others in the field of Russian studies share Joe’s skepticism about US policy toward Russia, as, for examples, my several posts to this blog defending Stephen F. Cohen demonstrate. That said it’s not at all clear that US policy toward Russia is, even now, one of “regime change.” And that certainly wasn’t US policy in 1996, three years before Putin first took office, when Bard received the USIA grant and when the Clinton administration was all but fawning over the disastrous government of Boris Yeltsin. Of course, the USIA furthers US policy objectives, as do most agencies of the government. Does Joe wish to suggest that colleges and universities reject all government support, or just that coming from agencies associated with policies of which he (and I) disapprove? Moreover, it is hard to fathom how a single grant of less than $300,000, awarded 25 years ago, no matter how questionable its source, would somehow even partly justify the Russian state decision to label Bard “undesirable” and thereby effectively terminate a longstanding academic partnership. And need it be said that many of those who teach at Smolny and whose livelihoods are now threatened are hardly acolytes of Putin.
While I appreciate Hank R’s (only slightly “spun”) summary of the facts in the Bard case, I would disagree with his conclusion: “I hope that Bard will be able to initiate a successful international movement to protest this assault on international exchange and academic freedom.”
Instead, I would hope that Bard and other colleges and universities would initiate a successful international movement to protest the assault on fair-minded, non-propagandistic “scholarship” funded by the USIA. That taxpayer organization.
From Wikipedia: Former USIA Director Alvin Snyder recalled in his 1995 memoir that “the U.S. government ran a full-service public relations organization, the largest in the world, about the size of the twenty biggest U.S. commercial PR firms combined. Its full-time professional staff of more than 10,000, spread out among some 150 countries, burnished America‘s image and TRASHED THE SOVIET UNION 2,500 hours a week with a ‘tower of babble’ comprised of more than 70 languages, to the tune of over $2 billion per year”. “The biggest branch of this propaganda machine” was the USIA.
Like Capt. Renaud in CASABLANCA, I am “SHOCKED, SHOCKED’ that Hank R. would minimize the use of HIGHLY questionable funds from the USIA. Sure, you can ask the obvious (and simplistic) Straw Person question/argument — “Does Joe wish to suggest that colleges and universities reject ALL government support, or just that coming from agencies associated with policies of which he (and I) disapprove?
Maybe the answer is “No, just the policies like training Third World governments and armies in torture, kidnapping, union-busting, and assassination and, less violently, propagandizing against America’s “enemies” during the Cold and Vietnam Wars.” I’d say, “BOYCOTT USIA!” but that acronym doesn’t exist anymore.
And it’s not a question of “policies of which he (and I disapprove)” as if it were a matter of how much aid to send to Israel or whether to allow the Russian-German pipeline construction to go through. We’re talking about an agency that, to quote its Director, “TRASHED THE SOVIET UNION 2,500 hours a week with a ‘tower of babble’ comprised of more than 70 languages, to the tune of over $2 billion per year.”
You think Russia and Putin & Co. would/should forget all that history?
Has Hank R. forgotten that history?
How come so many liberals want to defund Israeli investments and even speakers by U.S. colleges but seem to support Bard College receiving funds from a murderous spy/propaganda organization like USIA. For shame!
Frank Tomasulo has now devoted some 650 words to serial comments on a single sentence in a post of 1,056 words (which, he admits, he did not actually read in its entirety because it was “l-o-n-g”). He apparently hopes to use these comments to encourage an international movement against scholarship funded by the USIA. Whatever the merits of such an effort might be, it is odd, to say the least, to employ the comments feature in a post on an essentially different topic to promote it. Anyone who reads only Frank’s comments might be surprised to learn that not only was the involvement of the USIA in this effort limited solely to an initial grant in 1996 of less than $300,000, but that the real issue discussed in the post is the decision of the Russian government in 2021 to declare an American higher education institution “undesirable.” This means, to be clear, not only that the future of the independent Smolny College in which Bard and St. Petersburg University partnered is gravely endangered, but that ANY SCHOLAR IN RUSSIA IS NOW AT RISK OF BEING JAILED MERELY FOR HAVING CONTACT WITH ANYONE FROM BARD.
Moreover, to my knowledge neither Bard nor St. Petersburg State nor Smolny has received a dime from USIA since 1996. If Frank has information to the contrary, he should share it. Insofar as external funding is implicated in this matter it is not the U.S. government but the George Soros Foundation that may be at issue. In an interview in the June 23 Chronicle of Higher Education (https://www.chronicle.com/article/bard-president-is-heartbroken-about-russian-blacklisting) Bard president Leon Botstein explains:
“Bard is one of hundreds of institutions that benefit from the Open Society Foundation, 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 Foundation. 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 Foundation, but they knew that 20 years ago. It’s not like I took on a new identity. And Open Society Foundation money has not gone to Smolny since 2015 [when the foundation was classified as “undesirable” under the same Russian law]. Smolny is self-sustaining.”
“Smolny is self-sustaining.” Neither Soros nor USIA currently have anything to do with it. But, sure, let’s just throw around Casablanca references and rant and rave about how “Hank R. would minimize the use of HIGHLY questionable funds.” That’s clearly what’s important, not the assault on international scholarly cooperation and academic freedom that prompted me to write this post. Really?
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