The case of the dismissed professor: the rector got confused in the testimony

Ivan Petrovsky

In his channel, Bely said that Boris Kostishko, rector of the USU, told a Kommersant journalist that he was “showed this post in the ministry with fake references to the channel, where there are outright nasty things”, and asked to pay attention to the employee’s activities. However, the press service of the ministry in its response to the publication reported that “the Russian Ministry of Education and Science has no claims against E.M. Bely and his content in the telegram channel "Science and Universities".

“The first question naturally arises: does the Ministry of Education and Science have claims against the channel and its author, as the rector claims, or there are no claims, as follows from the press service? Which one of them is lying? writes the professor.

He also said that about an hour after the release of the post about the dismissal, he received a call from the Deputy Director of the Department of Information Policy and Integrated Security Viktor Murai, who said that he knew about “liberation from university shackles”, once again offering Bely to cooperate.

“Unfortunately, Viktor Aleksandrovich [Murai - editor's note] in this conversation did not determine the attitude of the Department to what is happening. During the past week, the position of the Department has not been announced. But the rector of USU, again for Kommersant, formulated his position quite clearly: “I suggested to him (Bely E.M. - Ed.) Not to make such mistakes again. Either stop, or, if the channel is more important, do it on free bread.

In this regard, Professor Bely writes, a second question arises: “Does the Ministry really believe that the public expression of an opinion by an employee working in the higher education system about the events and problems of this system should automatically lead to the transition to “free bread”? In other words, is forcing me to quit really normal for the industry and a natural result of my activity as the author of the telegram channel?

Earlier, four deputies of the State Duma spoke in defense of Yevgeny Bely. So, the head of the Duma committee for labor and social policy, Yaroslav Nilov, called the dismissal of the professor "an egregious case", sending a corresponding request to the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Valery Falkov.

Artyom Kiryanov, deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Economic Policy, also called the current situation abnormal. He also sent inquiries to Valery Falkov, as well as to Rosoobrnadzor and the Prosecutor General's Office. - the deputy considers it necessary to conduct a comprehensive audit of Ulyanovsk State University and personally its rector Boris Kostishko.

Deputy Vitaly Milonov pointed out in his telegram channel: “Opinion and position are not a reason for repression. All science is made up of different opinions, which, taken together, are the fuel of progress”.

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Oleg Matveychev, in an interview with reporters, said that “this incident testifies to the unprofessionalism of either the rector or those people from the Ministry of Education and Science who gave him the command to “solve the situation”.

“As they say in the famous film “Station for Two”: “I told you, fool, what did you do? I told you to protect the melons, and what have you done? Here the situation is exactly the same. In the ministry, apparently, they instructed the rector to make sure that the channel, which caused some kind of slight allergy in them, was more careful. Instead, the rector, not only forced the resignation of a professor who had worked at this university for many years, enjoyed a well-deserved authority among colleagues and students, but also drew attention to the channel, which, according to the officials’ plan, should, on the contrary, “calm down”. We got exactly the opposite result”, - Matveychev said.

A source of Novye Izvestia in the Ministry of Education and Science said that in the near future, the rector of the Ural State University, Boris Kostishko, is waiting for a large-scale check. According to the insider, the controllers will check the financial and economic activities of the university, as well as spending the allocated earlier budget funds.

As Novye Izvestiya previously reported, the author of the popular Science and Universities channel, the ex-director of the Institute of Economics and Business of Ulyanovsk State University, Yevgeny Bely, left his post after a conversation with the rector. The management put the professor before a choice: close the channel for 20,000 subscribers, stop writing about the Ministry of Education in it, or quit. The 67-year-old scientist chose the third option because he valued his media. He spoke about the situation in his own TG channel, the post became viral and has already gained more than 120 thousand views.