Scholars' conference sought to inspire thinking at universities
Looking to shape up the ivory towe of academia ,Fulbright Ukraine hosted a seminar at the Academy of Sciences earlier this month titled “Do We Still Need a University?”
At a time of rapid development in education institutions and organizations in Ukraine – and to coincide with the sixth-annual Conference of Fulbright Alumni in Ukraine – the Kyiv office of the Fulbright Academic Exchange Program decided, it said, to invite Ukrainian academics to share their university experience and to describe what changes they would like to see in the way universities in Ukraine function today.
“The whole idea of the conference is to shake up Ukrainian academia and start thinking about what a university really is,” said Fulbright Ukraine Director Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak. “The speakers are not Fulbright scholars, but the deans and administrators who make and implement policy in Ukraine.”
Among the policy-makers who weighed in with their opinions during the Oct. 10-12 conference was Vilen Horsky, a philosophy professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He cited the complaint that universities these days stress practical subjects, opening law and business schools and moving toward becoming “vocational schools.”
“There is an idea of the university as a corporation, on its way to incorporating all the trends demanded by the market,” Horsky said, addressing an assembly of 200 people in the Great Conference Hall of the Academy of Sciences on Oct. 10.
Horsky said that whereas when 18th-century Ukrainian philosopher Hrihory Skovoroda referred to globalization, he spoke of transparent borders and the possibility for all nations to enrich themselves, reality can be something else entirely. Horsky said globalization at its worst could produce mediocrity in the nation and in the university.
For his part, Miroslav Popovich, director of the Institute of Philosophy, said Ukraine is currently caught in the middle between East and West while it undergoes Westernization. Then there remains the lingering influence of Russia, a country he said has interfered in the development of the Ukrainian university.
“Russia has sought to take over [Ukraine’s] development efforts in a military fashion,” Popovich said. ”Have you noticed how in St. Petersburg the military barracks resemble university buildings, and the university buildings resemble military barracks?”
Still, Popovich said he isn’t sure how much American universities can serve as an example for Ukraine either, since before Ukrainian universities can successfully embrace American “critical thinking,” they must first ensure their students know the basics.
“We must change, but ‘how’ remains the question,” Popovich said. ”We don’t even yet know the normative requirements.”
Generating such thought and discussion was, however, one purpose of the Fulbright conference, and is an ongoing goal of the Fulbright program in Ukraine. Founded by U.S. Senator William Fulbright in 1946, the Fulbright Academic Exchange Program sends American academics and community activists to some 140 countries around the world, and facilitates visits by their foreign counterparts to the United States. Bohachevsky-Chomiak said 10 American graduate students study in Ukraine at a time, along with two to three scholars, persons holding doctoral degrees who are teaching or doing research.
“We focus on the humanities and environmental science,” Bohachevsky-Chomiak said. “There is one guy whose specialty is forest conservation, but who is also trying to expand the topic to address the market: What to do with Ukrainian forests both as a conservation resource and also as an economic resource? How to strike a balance?”
Economically speaking, San Diego businesswoman Lenel Fromm said she’s working out of the Donetsk State Academy of Management in a win-win situation. She said her companies help local governments in the United States apply for and secure grants, as well as evaluate governmental and institutional effectiveness. She said that the international experience she is gaining in Ukraine will allow her to expand her business at home. She provides practical training for staff and students in Donetsk, where she consults on grant writing and grant systems, and teachers classes in grant writing and global leadership.
Bohachevsky-Chomiak said areas of Ukrainian studies that have traditionally been neglected include sociology, psychology, women’s studies and literary criticism. But at least one woman is doing her part to change that.
Nancy Eyl is a Fulbright fellow attached to the University of Pittsburgh who is currently working in Lviv on the themes of eroticism, nationalism and feminism in contemporary Ukrainian literature. There are little-explored themes that were subject to suppression under the Soviet system.
“There is a particular difference in the tradition of feminism in Ukraine. For so long in the Soviet system, there was no real independence. The first questions to be addressed were nationalism and independence. At times, feminist writers felt like traitors, thinking what right did they have pressing for women’s rights when the whole nation was being oppressed,” Eyl said. “As for as eroticism in Ukrainian and Russian literature, such writing was also oppressed under Soviet rule and, when the Iron Curtain fell, it was the first things some writers rushed toward: erotic works.”
Eyl said while all three of her topics can raise eyebrows, they are contemporary topics in Ukraine. As with universities as a whole, Eyl said Ukrainian literature is evolving at an exciting rate.
