OP-ED

Iuliia Mendel: Aftermath of a university bribe

By Iuliia Mendel.

Published Oct. 12, 2016. Updated Oct. 12 at 12:38 pm

Ukrainian university students hold placards reading "We demand scholarship indexing", "Hands off of student unions", "We demand quality education" and the others during a rally in front of Taras Shevchenko National University in Kiev on April 7, 2016. (AFP)

Photo by AFP

When you go after bribe takers in Ukraine, they will fight back.

I know because I am being taken to court for an op-ed I wrote for POLITICO about the corruption of my country’s higher education system. After I described how I had paid a $200 bribe to my university professor in order to get him to consider my dissertation, he accused me of slander and of making “an attack on his honor and dignity.”