contributors

Articles by Edward Kasinec and Nathaniel Knight

1. Theme: Universities in times of crisis and transformation POLITICAL MATERIALITIES OF STATUS-MAKING AND UNMAKING UNIVERSITIES IN THE IMPERIAL CITYSCAPE OF ST. PETERSBURG

   This article argues for the relevance of new materialist theories and onto-epistemologies in understanding the workings of political status. The issue of political status is interrogated at the confluence of the university’s status, the status of the Russian state through references to its “glorious” and “rich” history, and the materialities of the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg. More specifically, I analyze how the spatio-temporal position of universities within the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg plays out as a status-enhancing or undermining mechanism. The analysis in this article traverses three sites: St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture, and European University in St. Petersburg. The universities appear to be embedded within the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg, which speaks to both the universities’ status and, more importantly, the idea of the state that lives in and through them, through the effects of beauty, glory, and rich history. However, while material durability allows the past to be actualized in the present, materialities are also subject to decay over time, leading to physical processes of deterioration and downgrading. This decay acts as a status undermining mechanism.

2. Theme: Universities in times of crisis and transformation Hegemony over higher education. The case of Albania

   In 2015, the Albanian government enacted a higher education reform accompanied by intense public disputes. This article employs the concept of hegemony to question: What political articulation became hegemonic in Albania’s higher education policy between 2010 and 2015, and what elements constituted such an articulation? It argues that the government’s articulation became hegemonic through its claim of establishing a regulated higher education market where all participants would compete as equals, thereby addressing all the challenges facing the sector that arose from the chaotic and tumultuous governance of the political opponent.

3. Theme: Universities in times of crisis and transformation The economic role of higher education, science, and technology in late socialist Yugoslavia

   As the economic crisis in socialist Yugoslavia escalated in the late 1970s, the role of education, science, and technology in revitalizing self-management socialism and the economy became a hotly debated issue. Just as the number of universities more than doubled during the 1970s, they started to be criticized for producing unemployable graduates who burdened the economy instead of contributing to it, and for curtailing the upward social mobility of working-class youth. The paper examines the contemporary discussions of the economic purpose of higher education and presents “technocratic” and “anti-technocratic” positions in the debate which occasionally depicted the universities as responsible for the crisis, but also as potentially uniquely suited for resolving it– and thus reversing what many commentators saw as the country’s slide towards scientific, technological, and economic dependency and peripheralization.

4. Theme Section: Universities in times of crisis and transformation Introduction. (Re)Thinking the University from, in, and beyond (Post-)Socialist Europe

   This special theme focuses on a regional context, whose academic history has so far been viewed primarily from a “Western” perspective. We argue, however, that the universities in the area that was supposed to be “integrated” after 1989 under the banner of Europeanisation have a history of their own. This history is shaped not only by different layers of imperial and national history, but above all by the shared experience of decades of socialist rule with its own ideas about the function of the university under socialism. The authors of this special theme present case studies from different universities in the socialist countries of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe and their successor states. It aims to critically assess concepts and practices of “university” within the scientific systems of these (post-)socialist countries on the one hand, and the reciprocal effects that have occurred in the exchange with political or economic discourses on the other.

5. THE INTERTWINING OF INFORMATION WARFARE AND PEACE

   Conference name: Secure Horizons: Ukraine’s Peace & Infosecurity Confluence Date and location: Symposium arranged February 6, 2024, at Södertörn University/hybrid […]

6. A MULTIPOLAR WORLD? On the ideological conflict between the individual and the collective in our time

   There are many things Vladimir Putin can be faulted for, but lacking a geopolitical vision is not one. A “new world system” is to come, he declared in a programmatic speech at the Valdai Club in Moscow in October 2023. The world will be divided up between “civilization-states” with an age-old identity, “large spaces, communities identifying as such”, for example Russia, China and India. Based on equality and diversity, this new world system will replace the “soulless universalism of a new globalization” that the West has been trying to impose through “dictatorship and violence”. Then “a multipolar world will be established”, a “synergy of civilization-states”, leading to “lasting peace” that will benefit all, he proclaimed in his speech. This was not the first time Putin has promoted this vision of multipolarity. Nor is it only his vision.

7. Serhii Plokhy, professor in Ukrainian history: “Land doesn’t buy peace in the case of Ukraine”

   Serhii Plokhy, professor in Ukrainian history at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, in a conversation on the history of Ukraine, knowledge production, decolonization, the role of the Church and the ongoing war, with Professor Barbara Törnquist-Plewa.

8. DEPOLITICIZATION OF ART A STRATEGY FOR NORMALIZATION OF THE CURRENT REGIME IN RUSSIA 2022–2024

   The article examines the deliberate process of depoliticizing contemporary art in Russia. The repressive laws introduced also target art, especially certain themes, and there is heightened censorship: furthermore, law enforcement exerts direct pressure on individual art institutions and artists. Simultaneously, the state is implementing large-scale programs to support (state-approved) contemporary art: constructing new museums, organizing street art competitions, and supporting the art market. At times, the authorities employ a form of “agenda hijacking,” adopting globally relevant themes in the art world, such as decolonization. For the average citizen, an illusion of a vibrant contemporary art scene is created. Meanwhile, over the two years of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the ideological component of art, built on propaganda or stylistic canons, has not become central.

9. THE WARSAW UPRISING OF 1944 IN THE EYES OF CONTEMPORARY SWEDISH INTELLECTUALS

   The revolt that lasted 63 days was a desperate attempt to push back the German enemy before the Red Army crossed the Vistula River. Once it was quashed, the Poles counted their losses in hundreds of thousands: It is estimated that roughly 15 000 Polish soldiers who followed orders from the government-in-exile in London perished, hundreds of whom had already fought during the April 1943 uprising of the Warsaw ghetto. 150 000—170 000 civilians lost their lives, 65 000 of them in organized massacres. A contemporary Swedish reaction to the Warsaw uprising was published in September 1944 in Warszawa! [Warsaw!]. The editor of the anti-Nazi newspaper Trots allt! [In spite of everything!] and left-wing politician Ture Nerman wrote: "In the history of this time and age, Warsaw stands as one of the most heroic in humanity’s struggle for freedom."

10. MEMORY FOR SALE: ETHICAL DILEMMAS AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST

    The thematic bookstalls, on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Italian city of Turin, January 2025, show a range of covers, some only rather vaguely connected with the traumatic past in the context that they are displayed in. The Storyteller of Auschwitz is just one of many in the same vein, blending real events with fictionalized narratives. The Italian version sold at Milan airport as an on-the-plane read has a title that literally translates as “a girl who wrote love stories in Auschwitz”, and the cover shows the image of a malnourished child in bedraggled clothes with the eerie Birkenau gate contour as background. This leads to reflections on the many layers of Holocaust portrayal, 80 years after the end of WWII, and its implications.

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