To the employees of the European University at St. Petersburg
from the Center for Urban Anthropology at Strelka KB
Dear colleagues,
Like many other scholars of the humanities, we are extremely concerned by the news that on March 20, 2017 the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region has decided to revoke the European University's license to conduct educational activities. Despite the fact that the university has the right to continue teaching for the next one month (pending the appeal), its future is threatened and that causes great concern for all those who know how important this university is for modern education in the field of humanities.
Every department and research center operating within the EUSP needs support and protection, but we would like to emphasize the importance of the educational and research activities of the Anthropology Department. We have long been enjoying fruitful cooperation with the faculty, alumni and graduate students of that department. It is no exaggeration to admit that the European University has laid the foundation of modern anthropological education in Russia and is now one of the undisputed leaders in this field.
Every year since 1995 the EUSP Anthropology Department (Ethnology Department until 2008) enrolls talented young researchers from all over Russia at its various MA programs ("Cultural Anthropology", "Sociolinguistics", "Folklore Studies", "Arctic Social Studies"), carefully cultivating world-class professional scholars. If one could apply an imaginary eraser to remove all EUSP faculty and alumni from the field of anthropology in contemporary Russia, it would result in a completely different level of science, throwing it back several years.
That imaginary eraser is now brought over the future of Russian anthropology. We believe it is essential to do everything possible to prevent the closing of the European University at St. Petersburg, one of the best social sciences and humanities universities in Russia. We, at the Center for Urban Anthropology at Strelka KB, unanimously express our support for our colleagues from the European University at St. Petersburg and call upon all concerned people to support this university in a difficult moment.
Original letter in Russian (pdf)
March 21, 2017
Head of the Center for Urban Anthropology, Candidate of Philological Sciences
Mikhail Alekseevsky
Deputy Head of the Center of Urban Anthropology, Candidate of Cultural Studies
Darya Radchenko
Senior anthropologist Anastasia Eremina
Junior anthropologist Elena Chernets
Junior anthropologist Elizaveta Golovina
Digital projects manager Ksenia Babich