Western scholars must not let the war black out Ukrainian higher education

When all the lights went out just before the start of the film night that I had arranged in a dormitory at Ukraine’s Precarpathian National University earlier this year, the 20 or so people in the audience hardly uttered a sigh. It was just par for the course.

The university is in Ivano-Frankivsk, in the country’s relatively safe south-west, but classes are interrupted on a near daily basis by air raid sirens, bomb scares and, as in this case, power cuts.

Still, this is nothing compared with what other Ukrainian institutions have been through. As a visiting academic, I was living in a dormitory shared not only with students but also, I had heard, with employees of Kherson State University, who were housed there after fleeing their own city when the Russians occupied it soon after launching their invasion in March 2022. A film night seemed like an ideal opportunity to meet some of them.

But then came the blackout. There was no knowing how long it would last, I was told. But just as I was about to call it a day, a man in the audience told us to hold on and left the room. He returned several minutes later with a hand-held generator, which provided enough electricity for the computer and projector.

This was not the limit of the audience’s ingenuity, however. The wi-fi was also down, but the students managed to stream the film – in line with our original intentions – via their phones, often switching quickly between them when one person’s signal grew weak.

I ought not to have been so surprised by this lesson in improvisation. The man with the generator, I learned afterwards, had been living in a dormitory room with his wife and teenage daughter for the last two years. The former assistant to the president of Kherson National University (KNU), Oleksandr Soloveyko had fled Kherson with his family and many of his colleagues when my host university generously agreed to provide KNU with an administrative building to allow it to continue functioning in exile.

Pre-invasion, KNU had been thriving. Around $10 million (£7.6 million) had been invested over the previous four years in a campus accommodating 3,400 students and about 300 teachers but, in April, the Ministry of Education approved its temporary relocation – shortly before the Russians imposed a new president, for whom most KNU staff refused to work.

“The evacuation took place under fire, without ‘green corridors’, through dozens of enemy block posts,” the university’s legitimate president, Oleksandr Spivakovskiy, recalls. “These are terrible memories, when a masked soldier points a gun at you and starts asking questions.”

Some staff did not escape in time and were arrested, including the vice-president of the university, Maksym Vinnyk, who was held in a tiny room for three days before being released. Two female students are still missing.

The Russians’ withdrawal was accompanied by extensive looting and destruction of university equipment and furniture, most of which had had to be left behind. Luckily, however, staff had smuggled out some of the more sensitive information (both electronic and paper), which was proudly shown to me when I visited their building in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Kherson remains the target of regular Russian shelling and less than a quarter of its population remains. Nevertheless, its exiled university continues to thrive, enrolling approximately 1,100 new students this year, at all levels, for its almost exclusively online classes.

The story of KNU may be dramatic, but it is not unique. More than two dozen Ukrainian higher education institutions were relocated in the early months of the invasion, including the well-known case of Kharkiv Karazin University, many of whose buildings have been partially destroyed by regular Russian shelling of the city (the university has established a foundation to which supporters can contribute, employing the catchy motto “Unbreakable University”). The temporary home of Donetsk National Technical University in Pokrovsk was shelled only a few days ago.

Arguably even more problematic than the loss of buildings and equipment for exiled Ukrainian universities is their loss of contact with students, many of whom are either stuck in occupied territory, living elsewhere in Ukraine or abroad. Those abroad face language barriers, financial difficulties and problems accessing services. Those still in Ukraine are in constant danger and experience regular blackouts, including loss of connectivity to online classes. Brain drain is an ongoing issue as students and sometimes teachers decide to move to other universities or even abandon academia. 

We in the West should do all we can to help exiled Ukrainian universities endure as the war rages on. During my stay in Ukraine, I visited eight in person and gave guest online lectures for another four. Everyone I met was eager to develop cooperation with institutions and scholars in the West – not just around teaching but also around research; I am currently co-authoring several academic articles with Ukrainian colleagues. And academic exchanges of students and staff provide much-needed respite and inspiration for exhausted scholars.

A number of grants are available to facilitate such interactions. And even if the power goes off, Ukrainian colleagues will find a way. As a Kherson State University press release put it: “We cannot be broken.”

David Livingstone is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czechia. He can be contacted for additional information on how to get involved. To contact Kherson National University, email Alla Tsapiv, vice-rector for international, social and humanitarian research and education affairs.