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Foto: Stella Vrijmoed
international

Daniel Kontowski resigned from a Russian university: 'The space for freedom quickly started to shrink'

Stella Vrijmoed,
22 juni 2022 - 17:24

Daniel Kontowski quit his job at the University of Tyumen in Siberia, Russia, a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is now the new Head of Studies Social Sciences at the Amsterdam University College. ‘All my stuff is still on a friend’s balcony in Russia.’

Daniel Kontowski, originally from Poland, looks sad. ‘I ám sad’, he says. He abandoned his colleagues and students when he decided he no longer wanted to contribute to the course of business at the Russian university. ‘I am still grieving that. But it felt like I had no choice.’

 

Two and a half year ago, he started as Head of Education of the School of Advanced Studies at the University of Tyumen (UTMN), to later be promoted to Associate Director. According to Kontowski, the liberal arts – the internationally and broadly orientated kind of  education that university colleges offer – had been starting to thrive in Russia. Universities were still internationally oriented: there were plans to get five Russian universities in the international top 100. Former rector of the University of Tyumen Valery Falkov became Minister of Higher Education and Science. ‘He was partly responsible for creating my institution in 2017 and supportive of things as teaching in English and a more flexible educational system. There were a lot of reasons to be hopeful’, Kontowski says.

 

Change

But slowly things started to change within liberal arts education and higher education in general. The international focus became more regional, and new federal state standards changed for liberal arts and sciences. Certain programs were prosecuted and multiple universities were being investigated to see if the courses were not breaking the law, a rector from Shaninka School of Social and Economic Sciences in Moscow was even put in jail, Kontowski says. ‘That was already in the fall of last year, actually since Bard college was put on a list of undesirable universities by Russia.

‘I knew that sooner or later I would had to explain to teachers that they could not speak about the war with students’

This is why his former institution in Tyumen ceased to use the words “liberal arts”. ‘Including in my bio, even though my PhD was on this exact topic. It is because liberal means being free, which means being fifth column, which means being a foreign agent for the US. I think it is fair to say that liberal arts became the enemy, in some ways.’

 

Restrictions

The space for freedom then quickly started to shrink, Kontowski says. The university got ‘extremely sensitive’ for thesis subjects. ‘They could not be about gender studies, Russian politics or the history of the Soviet-Union.’ A student who wanted to research Navalny and his smart voting campaign for instance, was told to find another topic. According to Kontowski, this subject might have been approved three years ago. ‘Ever since Navalny’s poisoning, it became more dangerous. You could see the system becoming more rigid, screw by screw.’

 

The Monday before the Russian invasion, Kontowski was watching Putin’s speech in which he recognized the independence of Ukranian regions Donetsk and Lugansk. ‘I thought: this is problematic, this is not gonna end well. But still no one believed it would lead to a war, that he would actually start bombing.’ It was certainly unreal when on Thursday the Russia troops did invade Ukraine, he says. Soon after he received emails from external faculties saying they no longer wanted to work together. ‘One person wrote to me: “game over”.’

Foto: Stella Vrijmoed
Daniel Kontowski

'No choice'

On Friday, Kontowski already knew he was going to quit. He called his boss on Sunday to tell him the news. ‘He told me to wait and think, said that it might be over soon.’ But the next day Kontowski still announced that he would be leaving the faculty. He explains: ‘It felt as if the decision was made for me, like I did not have any choice. You have to remember that you could not show your disapproval of the government publicly in Russia. Ever since the invasion, you could not call it a war, that was dangerous for a teacher. Students were encouraged to snitch. Some of them got arrested for attending protests. They risked being sent to the front when they were expelled. There are cases where this happened, but not at my university. Also I knew that as an administrator, I would be asked sooner or later to explain to teachers that they could not speak about the war with students. That did not feel right, because they had to know that there was a world collapsing. I didn’t want to sign any documents to expel students.’

 

When this happened, Kontowski was in Berlin for the winter break; he never returned to Russia. ‘My apartment was emptied by friends through Zoom, all my stuff is still at a friend’s balcony. I can’t come and get it, because my visa got cancelled. They also can’t easily send it to me, because DHL is not shipping anything from Russia and I do not trust the Russian Post.’

 

Close community

From his colleagues Kontowski received a lot of support and admiration for his decision through e-mail and by phone, he says. ‘Four people quit in March, some with immediate effect and some effective summer, out of maybe fifteen people working full time at the faculty.’ Some only resigned from their administrative posts and stayed on elsewhere at the faculty. The rest stayed or went abroad and now work online. ‘Those will have to be back by September or will likely lose their jobs’, he says.

‘When it becomes difficult to express your opinions about certain matters, you can imagine it has a chilling effect on an outspoken community’

Kontowski can’t say if there were people who did not agree with his point of view. ‘From some of them I knew their private opinions before’, he says. ‘But after the invasion there was no time to talk about this. I also did not want to ask about details. It was an unusual community. Very close and outspoken. I believe most of them did not support the war. When it becomes difficult to express your opinions about certain matters, you can imagine it has a chilling effect on this type of community.’

 

Going back

While he has not been back in Tyumen, he has heard from students that the vibe has changed. Instead of hanging around at the university building like they used to do, some now want to leave as soon as possible after class. ‘Imagine your country goes to war and the political restrictions go as far as to make it impossible to talk about the most important current problem of your country. What would you do then? I don’t think we can have meaningful conversations about what matters in life, what values we want to hold on to and what type of life is worth living. And I think these are examples of valuable questions for liberal arts education.’

 

Would Kontowski himself ever be willing to go back to a Russian university, when the war is over? ‘I would like to rephrase this question. How much change would have to happen for me to cooperate again? I don’t have a Russian visa now, and if I wanted to have it, this would be difficult. Because Polish citizens cannot get regular visas, and more importantly I am now a person that left the position, saying that I am leaving for political reasons. It is a tremendous amount of political change that would have to happen. I feel sorry, because I wanted to be at the graduation of my students, seeing them reach the finish line.’