POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN As I have previously posted on this blog, Russian sociologist and professor Boris Kagarlitsky is serving a 5-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on the fabricated charge of “justifying terrorism.” Kagarlitsky, whose dissident activity dates back to an earlier imprisonment under the Soviet regime of Leonid Brezhnev, has become a…
BY TAMARA JACKA Since October 2023, students on campuses across Australia have been protesting in large numbers in solidarity with Palestine and against universities’ complicity in Israeli occupation and genocidal violence in Palestine. In April and May of this year, Palestine solidarity encampments were set up at eleven campuses. These were peaceful protest encampments, whose…
BY HANK REICHMAN Sociologist, antiwar activist, and internationally renowned Marxist thinker Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics and head of the Moscow think tank The Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, who was convicted of “justifying terrorism” for remarks he made about Russia’s war against Ukraine and sentenced to…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH This open letter to the world from Gaza academics and university administrators was published yesterday by Al Jazeera here. On May 6, Israel’s cabinet voted to ban Al Jazeera and shut down its local offices. Among the many things American academics might do in response to help, one would be to…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m a historian of Russia by training, but I guess I didn’t realize that there’s apparently no double jeopardy rule, at least with respect to sentencing, in Russia. Turns out that I—and many others—celebrated too soon when back in December we learned of the release of renowned Marxist sociologist and university professor…
BY HANK REICHMAN Sociologist, antiwar activist, and internationally renowned Marxist thinker Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics and head of the Moscow think tank The Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, has been released after paying a fine of 600,000 rubles ($6,600) for “justifying terrorism” in comments he made…
BY HANK REICHMAN A bit over two years ago I posted to this blog a piece about a decision by Russia’s prosecutor general to designate New York’s Bard College as an “undesirable organization.” Since 1997, Bard had been collaborating with St. Petersburg State University, offering a program of open enrollment liberal arts courses for students…
BY HANK REICHMAN Sociologist and internationally renowned Marxist thinker Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics and head of the Moscow think tank The Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) on July 25. He stands accused of “justifying terrorism” under Part…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN This blog has regularly posted items in support of faculty and students resisting attacks on academic freedom at universities in Turkey (see, for examples, here, here, and here; see also from Academe magazine, Fall 2019, here). Now Turkish universities are facing another crisis: the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes that hit…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of an address delivered remotely, via Zoom, to the concluding session of a conference, “Universities at the Crossroads: Academic Freedom in a Changing World,” at GAU-Georgian American University, Tbilisi, Georgia, on October 1. Let me begin by thanking the organizers of this most important and interesting conference…