BY HANK REICHMAN
Today, February 24, marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In a powerful extended essay, with striking visuals by Ukrainian photographer New York Times columnist M. Gessen reflects on the impact of the conflict, whose duration now matches that of the epic Soviet war with the Nazi invaders.
“It is probably fair to say that there isn’t a place or a person left in Ukraine who can forget about the war for even a few minutes,” Gessen writes. The impact has been both devastating and transformative. Tymofii Brik, a sociologist and the rector of the Kyiv School of Economics, tells Gessen that six million people have been displaced inside a country of some 36 million and about four million — mostly women and children — have left Ukraine. More than 100,000 Ukrainians, troops and civilians, are estimated to have been killed. Millions live under occupation in areas Russia controls.
Brik was a contributor to a theme issue of Academe devoted to “higher education in wartime” published a year ago that I guest-edited. Brik’s contribution — published online-only for space reasons — told a powerful story of how his institution was transformed by the conflict. That transformation continues, as Gessen reports:
Underground schools have become symbols of Ukrainian unbreakability, along with warming tents set up in the shadow of unheated high rises. I visited the Kyiv School of Economics, a small, ambitious private university that has managed to draw some outstanding academic talent from both Ukraine and the West. Brik, the rector, excitedly led me to the basement, where the university has created several classrooms, complete with whiteboards. The school schedules only as many classes as can simultaneously convene in the bunker, so that whenever the air-raid alarm sounds, as it does on most days, classes can move down below. Then Brik showed me something else he was proud of: a classroom equipped for a vocational training program, this one in soldering — a skill newly in demand in the growing drone industry.
Most recently, Brik told me, the university had moved dozens of students out of apartment buildings that had lost power and heat and into hotel rooms. I wondered what, with his ingenuity and energy, he would be capable of in peacetime. Russia’s war — a war for the return to an imperial past — has always been a war against Ukraine’s future.
Writing for Academe, Brik recounted the devastation of Ukraine’s higher education system. “According to one study,” he wrote, “in 2023, documented damages caused by the destruction of educational institutions amounted to $8.94 billion. . . Preliminary estimates indicate that property from thirty-four institutions of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine have been destroyed or damaged by Russian attacks or seized for the needs of Ukraine’s armed forces. The preliminary total assessment of damages for the academy’s scientific institutions alone is $7.8 million.” By fall 2022, some 18.5 percent of Ukrainian scientists had left the country.
Gessen also tells us more about Lena Samoilenko, who earned a Ph.D in Mathematics before Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and about whom she had written in 2022, on the eve of the full-scale invasion.
In 2022, Samoilenko started to help out in Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that spent more than six months under occupation. After Russian troops retreated, remaining residents — a disproportionate number of them poor, older, disabled — needed basic supplies, medicine and care. Samoilenko raised money, recruited volunteers, bought a car and set up shop in a working-class neighborhood of the city. In June 2023, Russian forces apparently blew up the nearby Kakhovka dam, unleashing a deadly flood, which created even more need for Samoilenko’s work. . . .
The drones made it harder for Samoilenko to continue working in Kherson. She could no longer use the car, because drones would follow the few vehicles traveling the city’s largely deserted back roads, and the distances she needed to cover were too great to travel by foot regularly. So she, too, joined the military. The day we met up, she had been promoted to staff sergeant. “Let’s drink to that,” she said, in a way that made it clear this wasn’t a milestone she’d ever hoped to celebrate.
In her past life, Samoilenko was a prominent figure in Kyiv’s cultural scene. She organized a poetry festival, and she loved to dress up for events. “And I’m spending the last years of my youth in a dimly lit office space with people I wouldn’t ordinarily choose to socialize with.” Like other service members, Samoilenko can’t tell me exactly what she does, but she is based in Kyiv, a couple of hundred miles from the active fighting, which means that she doesn’t get supplemental frontline pay. From her old life, she still has her remote jobs as a consultant, which allow her to rent an apartment near her base, and some floor-length velvet dresses that she keeps in a closet there as something like a talisman. Someday she hopes to wear them again, to travel and to walk by the sea — these are the things she needs to feel happy.
Last Winter’s Academe issue also called attention to the impact of war on universities in Gaza, which many have called a “scholasticide.” In my guest editor’s introduction to the issue, I wrote, “According to the United Nations, as of April 2024, 80 percent of schools in Gaza, including many UN-sponsored ones, had been destroyed or damaged since October 7. In the first hundred days of the war, all twelve universities in Gaza were bombed and wholly or partly destroyed. The Palestinian Ministry of Education was also bombed, and numerous libraries, archives, publishing houses, museums, and bookstores were ruined.”
This week the journal Jewish Currents published an account by Palestinian writer Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), of that institution’s return to in-person classes on November 29, 2025. She writes that the Gaza war resulted in “the erasure of an entire academic ecosystem.”
The Israeli army killed students, professors, researchers, and university administrators. Among the dead were three university presidents, including Sufyan Tayeh, president of the IUG, who was killed in December 2023 along with his family when his home in northern Gaza was bombed. Israeli airstrikes also destroyed campuses, archives, research centers and laboratories. According to official figures, virtually all of Gaza’s universities and colleges were completely leveled, while others sustained partial damage. According to the Gaza Government Media Office, losses to the education sector exceeded $4 billion.
Human rights watchers have argued that educational institutions didn’t just suffer collateral damage: They were an explicit target. “These attacks are not isolated incidents. They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society,” a panel of UN experts wrote in early 2024, after universities were struck repeatedly despite surrounding neighborhoods already being razed. In some cases, entire faculties were wiped out; in others, buildings remained standing but unusable—gutted, burned, or structurally unsafe. Al-Azhar University, for instance, endured repeated bombardment throughout late 2023. Satellite images revealed the near-total destruction of key buildings, including faculties of science and agriculture. Similarly, on January 17th, 2024, Israeli forces released a video showing an explosion at the campus of Al-Israa University in Gaza City after the area had already fallen under military control. The once-green campus of the IUG—one of the most architecturally distinguished in Palestine, and a winner of awards for sustainability and design—was also decimated: More than 80% of its buildings and assets now lie in ruins.
Yet, as in Ukraine, “education cannot wait,” to employ the title of Al-Wawi’s piece.
Despite the scale of destruction, universities like IUG quickly took steps to resume educational activity, starting with restoring institutional servers and academic databases in order to enable online learning. . . .
Since August 2024, these structures have enabled thousands of students at the IUG to complete four academic semesters online. “At times we risked our lives to log in,” Dania, a third-year translation student who requested that only her first name be used, told me. “I remember walking long distances just to find a signal so I wouldn’t miss a class.” According to the Workers’ Union of the IUG, more than 350 faculty members worked to make this learning possible. One lecturer, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, described teaching “while searching for water, while grieving, while being bombed.” “That struggle became an act of resistance,” said Asil, another third-year translation student who also requested partial anonymity. “Education was our weapon; it gave us strength when everything else was falling apart.”
After the ceasefire in late 2025, efforts shifted to restoring in-person learning. In the months that have followed, students have been distributed across partially restored campuses, temporary halls in central Gaza, and newly prepared locations in the south. The initial return has prioritized faculties that cannot function remotely—medicine, health sciences, and engineering—as well as disciplines requiring laboratories, equipment, and clinical training. “Medicine is practical, and we strive to attend classes physically,” Malak Al-Moqayyad, a medical student, told the Anadolu Agency. Other students’ return has been more gradual, retaining hybrid options alongside in-person classes.
The experiences of our Ukrainian and Palestinian colleagues validates a crucial point that Rector Brik made in Academe:
Ultimately, a university is more than a sanctuary for talent; it is an agent of societal change. In wartime, societies often prioritize national security and centralized governance, raising important questions: How should governance be structured? How can economic needs be balanced with military recruitment? What is the role of freedom of speech amid misinformation? These complex questions find their ideal forum within universities, where data and open debate help temper polarization and ground discussion.
Unlike universities in authoritarian regions, our universities envision a future for Ukraine rooted in democratic values. Our mission is to create a truly global university that fosters growth for the next generation, an idealistic goal that sustains our commitment in challenging times.
The war has tested us in unimaginable ways, yet it has also revealed the profound resilience and adaptability of our institutions and people. The Kyiv School of Economics, once a specialized institution, has evolved to meet the pressing needs of a nation under siege, demonstrating that relevance and responsiveness are crucial in times of crisis. Our experience shows that universities are not just centers of learning; they are also vital agents of change, capable of leading society through its most challenging moments. As we continue to navigate the uncertainties of war, we remain committed to our mission—nurturing talent, fostering innovation, and upholding the democratic values that will shape the future of Ukraine. In these dark times, our vision of a new, global university is not just a dream but a beacon of hope for us and for the generations to come.
In this light, don’t all those strident calls for “institutional neutrality” sound a bit off-key?
Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom was published in October, 2021; a second edition came out in March 2025. He is a member of AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance and President of the At-Large Chapter.
