Aliaksandr Milinkevich: EHU will no longer serve Belarus

Privatization of a public project took place, EHU is no longer controlled by the Belarusan civil society, the leader of “For Freedom” movement believes.

Election of EHU head ended; however, Belarusan civil society is still agitated about it. The fate of the Belarusan university in exile and change in its educational policy are becoming the subject of lively discussions among the representatives of academic community and NGO sphere.

One of the main candidates at the position of EHU’s head Tatsiana Sshytsova believes that the first elections of the head of the university tainted the reputation of the university, not even because of the elected candidate, but because of the non-transparent mechanism of these elections. According to the EHU professor, the most sad and negative consequence of this appointment is that EHU will no longer be perceived as a project related to the Belarus’ civil society.

Civil society representatives, cultural workers, dismissed EHU teachers and acting staff, as well as EHU students expressed distrust to the Selection Committee due to the non-transparency of its work. Besides, according to them, the university should be headed by a Belarusan citizen in order to preserve Belarusan direction, not become similar to a private Lithuanian university.

EHU is substantially integrated into European system of higher education, in the bigger degree than any other Belarusan university. Thus, EHU is really important for our education system. However, if we consider the stream of Belarusans, who study abroad, EHU part in it is comparably low, Pavel Tserashkovich, ex-head of the EHU Senate told.

As the “EuroBelarus” Information Service earlier informed, short-list of applicants to the position of the university’s head consisted of six people: three Belarusan citizens – EHU’s professor Tatsiana Shchytsova, the leader of “For Freedom” movement Aliaksandr Milinkevich, and historian Ales Krautsevich, as well as three US citizens – professor David Pollick, head of EHU’s development and communication Darius Udris, and the head of the Office for the Institute of International Education in Moscow Edward Roslaf.

It was Aliaksandr Milinkevich together with Tatsiana Shchytsova that were the main competitors to David Pollick.

His opinion on the results of the elections and vision of further EHU perspectives with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service shared Aliaksandr Milinkevich, the leader of “For Freedom” movement, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences.

- These elections demonstrate that EHU will no longer serve Belarus. Whatever are the statements made by the university, it will lead to even less “Belarusanness” in it, since a lot depends on the leader.

I think that such membership of leaders cannot fully collaborate with the Belarusan civil society, Belarusan media, and serve Belarus.

Newly appointed head will experience hard times, as he doesn’t understand Belarusan context required for continuation of such important for all of us direction.

Privatization of a public project took place. And this project, the EHU, is no longer controlled by the Belarusan civil society. And the fact that the appointment of the university’s head happened without consideration of the students’ and academic communities’ opinion and without Belarusan civil society is obvious.

I think that the elections of the EHU head demonstrated us that the ship goes into free-swimming, and it’s hard to say what WHU will look like. I can’t imagine that it will become the university we have all dreamt about. All the fuss around EHU elections in the Internet is just because Belarusans care about the fate of this university.

I have never met David Pollick in person, so I can’t tell anything about him. Whereas I have known the EHU President and the former EHU head Anatoly Mihailau for a long time. We used to discuss what the university should be like. We had different visions on that, but I couldn’t insist on anything as I am just a person from the Belarusan civil society.

If we consider the candidates to the position of EHU’s head, Tatsiana Sshytsova is much closer to understanding the situation in Belarus. Well, now it is hard to talk about other variants of situation’s development, as everything already happened. There was very little information about the mechanism of elections.