Lecturers dismissed from the HSE opened the Free University

According to Novaya Gazeta, since September 1, the HSE leadership has refused to renew contracts with a number of teachers. Some of them have not received an official explanation of the reasons for the incident.

However, many noted that in recent months, an attack on freedom of speech has begun in a number of the country's leading public universities. The teachers began to restrict the right to express their point of view on various topics in rubles. First of all, charismatic teachers who were not afraid to openly express their own opinions were on the lists for dismissal. Experts called the wave of dismissals of freedom-loving teachers another "political purge".

The initiators of the new university project were the teachers of the School of Philosophy Viktor and Yulia Gorbatov, Kirill Martynov, as well as Elena Lukyanova, professor at the HSE Faculty of Law.

“If the university can no longer be free, then a new free university is needed. Here the paths of the university and the state diverge”, - they said.

As the founders of the Free University expect, in the near future, their team will include teachers from other Russian and foreign universities. The work of the new educational organization will be structured in such a way as to “rid teachers of any administrative dictate”.

“We are not a state educational institution that competes with state ones. We don't have a campus. We will teach from home, we will teach from libraries, we will teach in summer schools. We will not stop defending freedom of knowledge and will not abandon our students. We cannot be expelled from the university, because the university is us, ”the organizers said on the Free University website.

The start of the project is scheduled for September 1.