[MSN] Russian Court Shuts Down University That Offered Politically Sensitive Courses

[MSN]

Russian Court Shuts Down University That Offered Politically Sensitive
Courses

By ANNA NEMTSOVA

Moscow

A Russian court has ordered a university that receives support from Western
organizations and had offered courses in election monitoring to shut down
immediately, in what professors said was the first time an entire university
had been closed for political reasons under President Vladimir V. Putin.

The ruling, issued by a court in St. Petersburg on Friday, shut down the
European University of St. Petersburg just as a new semester was about to
start and after many of the 170 students who were scheduled to attend had
arrived in the city.

Mr. Putin had criticized the university last fall, accusing it of meddling
in Russian politics, according to news reports, and a highly placed
government official raised similar concerns in late December, a professor
told The Chronicle.

The order to close came despite the university's recent decision to shut
down a major program on election monitoring as too political, with Russia's
presidential election coming up on March 2.

Buildings Blamed

The court's ruling did not mention politics. Instead, it upheld a decision
by the city's fire department, also issued on Friday, that the university's
historic buildings were unsafe for students because of fire hazards.

The institution's president, Nikolai Vakhtin, disputed that finding. "We
were totally shocked on Friday when the fire inspector announced their
verdict to us," Mr. Vakhtin said by telephone on Monday.

"Our university had never had even any complaints from fire or any other
inspections since 1996, when it began its work," Mr. Vakhtin said. "There is
a dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over our university. I keep hoping and
telling our students that we will solve our problems and reopen our
university."

While denying the fire-safety accusations, Mr. Vakhtin declined to say
whether he believed the closing was political.

The university, which was supported in part by grants from the Ford,
MacArthur, and Soros foundations, offered master's degrees in economics,
ethnology, history, and political science/sociology. Its diplomas were
issued in conjunction with the University of Helsinki, in Finland. It also
provided programs in the humanities, including an art-history program that
offered special access to the treasures of the State Hermitage Museum, which
holds one of the world's largest repositories of art (The Chronicle, June
19, 1998).

Liberal politicians in St. Petersburg, journalists, and professors familiar
with the European University described it as a well-known island of liberal
ideas for its offering of courses on human rights and democratic
institutions.

Research on Elections

Its political troubles started last year, when the university won a European
Commission grant worth about $900,000 for a project intended to improve the
monitoring of elections in Russia. The political-science faculty created a
regional network to provide research materials on regional and federal
elections and prepared a course for political-party workers on election law.

"If we saw violations of election law, we openly talked about," said Grigory
Golosov, a professor of sociology and political science who led the project.
Mr. Golosov said the university was closed because of his project, even
though the program had already shut down.

Another professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing
his job, told The Chronicle that the university had received a threat in
late December from a high-ranking government official who said that the
project should end or the whole university would be shut down.

The university closed the project on January 31. Mr. Golosov said no formal
explanation was provided for the closure, and Mr. Vakhtin, the president,
declined to discuss it.

Mr. Golosov suggested that the closure might have unintended consequences
for elected officials. "Authorities do not understand what a big mistake
they are making," he said. "Now they are supported by the majority of
Russians, but very soon, depending on the country's state of economy, the
majority might change their mind and say the election was fake."

"Our project was needed to avoid such outcomes," he said.

During Mr. Putin's eight years in office, his government has shut down a
number of human-rights groups, nongovernmental organizations, and political
parties, usually citing technical reasons but often with suggestions that
the organizations were interfering in Russian politics. Most recently, two
English-language schools operated by the British Council were closed in
January. Authorities said the schools, in Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg,
were closed for lacking licenses, but some politicians accused the council
of using the schools to recruit spies.

"The totalitarian system has once again shown that it has no tolerance of
criticism," said Maxim Reznik, a leader of the opposition Yabloko party in
St. Petersburg. "Opposition candidates have no chance to register," he said,
adding that Western-supported organizations "get on the Kremlin's
blacklists, and now the whole university is being closed for its fair and
genuine research about elections." 

http://chronicle.com/