Stanford University is joining in the efforts to transform Ukraine into a modern European democracy.
Through its newly launched “Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program,” it will give three successful applicants from Ukraine the chance to undertake a 10-month fellowship starting in fall 2017. The initiative is being funded by the Western NIS Enterprise Fund and the founders of the Centre for Economic Strategy, Thomas Fiala and Svyatoslav Vakarchuk: all expenses are paid and a $7,000 monthly stipend is provided. The program is aimed at “mid-career practitioners working actively as policy-makers, legal professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders of civil society organizations.”
Outside assistance
One of the program’s chief architects is Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, who is now a senior fellow at Stanford. He has long been an advocate of more Western support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s war.
Oleksandr Akymenko, a Ukrainian media entrepreneur and former Stanford fellow who helped initiate the program, told the Kyiv Post that McFaul had been very supportive.
“We went to a public meeting with McFaul. He wanted to know how we could help Ukraine,” Akymenko said. “He wanted us to be successful. He strongly believes in change in the post-Soviet space.”
Akymenko and his wife drew up a concept before handing it over to McFaul, who developed the idea further and enlisted the help of university colleagues. Among the faculty on the program is Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist who, in his celebrated 1989 essay “The End of History?” suggested Western liberal democracy had triumphed as the world’s supreme ideology.
In a video address released to mark the start of the fellowship, Fukuyama says: “It is particularly important that we launch this fellowship at this moment of Ukraine’s national development… Ukraine is an emerging democracy that needs leadership.”
Public dissatisfaction
Such words ring all too true with many Ukrainians. A recent survey conducted nationwide by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows just 9.5 percent of respondents trust the government. The corresponding figure for the opposition is 13 percent, a trust level roughly equal to that of President Petro Poroshenko, the man who emerged as the country’s leader following the 2013–2014 EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled kleptocratic former president and Kremlin ally Viktor Yanukovych.
For many Ukrainians the promises of the EuroMaidan – closer integration to the European Union and an end to corruption – have yet to be fulfilled.
Poroshenko’s record on enacting reform, meanwhile, has been patchy. The 51-year-old, who is one of Ukraine’s richest men, is often classed among the oligarchs who have dominated politics and business since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
One of the few major anti-corruption achievements on his watch has been the establishment of a publicly available electronic register of officials’ assets. On his own “e-declaration” filed earlier this year, Poroshenko said he has some $26.3 million in the bank and an income in 2015 of $2.5 million.
Looking ahead
It is against this backdrop of an incomplete European project and the continued dominance of a wealthy elite that the Stanford “Emerging Leaders” program has appeared. Fukuyama’s professional interest in seeing which forces ultimately prevail in Ukraine seems to have played an important role in its formulation.
“Ukraine is a country that has been seeking to establish viable democratic institutions and to fight corruption,” he is quoted as saying in a press release. “It is also at the center of a geopolitical struggle. Stanford can play a very important role in helping to build intellectual capital there.”
The fellowship envisions students spending time with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. It is hoped that upon graduation they will emerge ready “to make a greater contribution to democratic, political and social development in Ukraine and the broader region.”
Stanford has, in fact, already played a role in Ukraine’s transition to democracy. Two men who have spent time at the institution, Mustafa Nayyem and Sergii Leshchenko, are among a small group of young reformers who entered parliament for the first time after the EuroMaidan Revolution.
A future Ukrainian leader could emerge from among this new generation of politicians. For now, they must content themselves with spearheading efforts to overcome the old system and bring Ukraine closer to the West.
The time horizon for their work is likely to be long. But it’s not clear if, after the first year of the “Ukrainian Emerging Leaders” program, Stanford’s interest will persist. The university fellowship, though backed financially by high profile donors, has yet to secure long-term funding.
