Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 2, No. 4 | Centers of Education in Russia: The Case for CASEs, page 5 (low bandwidth)

To Voronezh, and Then Home
Voronezh State University—one of my starting points for this story, though in reality, one of the last stops on our Russian journey—is located in the old, picturesque city of Voronezh, about 350 miles south of Moscow. The university was one of the first institutions selected by the Corporation to develop a CASE and is far along in the connection business, having sponsored those 66 conferences Mary Popova had told us about in her presentation—and a number that I knew Kortunov was worried might represent what he termed “action but little substance.”

Since I was still struggling with the concept of each CASE having an organizing theme aimed at attracting scholars from many disciplines, I was anxious to attend a university-sponsored, theme-oriented conference, and at Voronezh, I got my chance. The conference, which was in its last day when we Corporation travelers sat in on the proceedings, was being held in a room so small and hot that there were droplets of water and steam on the windows. About 50 scholars were crammed into the room and there was as much energy in the debate over the subject of language as was coming from the overworked heating system. The discussion centered on the “dumbing down” of Russian words as German and American phrases invaded everyday Russian discourse. Some thought it was the end of civilization as Russians know it; others thought it was proof that Russia is no longer isolated.

Although a few university students attended, most of the participants were professors from smaller universities in the region, a fact that confirmed for Deana Arsenian and Andrei Kortunov that the CASE had become a magnet for intellectuals from the provinces and had succeeded in making connections. And in the age of Internet connectivity, intellectual discussions don’t have to end with the conferences—they can go on indefinitely, even with international colleagues. As an example, a young professor named Inna Ananievskaia, who studies Germanic and Romance languages, told us about meeting a Scottish professor at an earlier conference, a specialist in the same field who challenged everything Ananievskaia believed about her subject. “I never expected to be able to discuss my interests with a colleague at such a high level,” she said, beaming as she told us the story. The debate
didn’t end with the conference: she and the Scottish professor are still happily arguing by e-mail.

On the flight home, I sat with Arsenian and discussed our experiences at the CASEs we had just visited. She was in a mood to be both philosophical and analytical about the program and its objectives. “Because of Russia’s geography, its human resources and its relationships with other countries,” she said, “as well as its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons status, Russia is poised to become either a major partner with the U.S. in dealing with global challenges or a major problem. How do you ensure that Russia becomes a reliable ally? We’re betting that one way is to change the mentality of the upcoming Russian elite. If education is important for the cultivation of new thinking in Russia, then you can make a direct correlation between the Corporation’s goals for the CASEs and larger U.S. goals. So the CASE program benefits both countries.”

For myself, beyond the overarching ideals everyone hopes that the CASEs are striving to embody, I still wanted to sum up what a ten-day tour of a selection of the CASE institutions really revealed to a group of non-Russian-speaking philanthropists who have played a part in developing the program’s strategies for reform. We came to see what the Corporation had wrought and to reinforce for the leaders of the Russian regional universities we were working with that the Corporation and its partners had high expectations and high demands.

During the course of our trip, we had met a handful of politicians who had proved to us that politicians share a certain style of optimism and confidence all over the world. We had dined with four university presidents—all men—who clearly wanted the prestige of having their institution chosen to create a CASE but were not uniformly putting their office’s clout behind the initiative, facts duly noted by Arsenian, who has a strong voice in whether the individual CASE projects will receive renewed support.

We had heard—and participated in—the traditional and seemingly endless vodka toasts to everything from Western friends to innovation. We had met ambitious young students who wanted financial and intellectual rewards, and mid-level professors who had survived the lean post-Soviet years and now wanted desperately to attract financial and intellectual support.

“Generally, my expectations were met,” Neil Grabois told me on the plane as the reality of the Russian experience became past tense and conclusions started forming in his mind. “It’s one thing to read proposals, designs and strategies, but another to see them put into practice at universities in foreign cultures.” A former college president, Grabois knows what it takes to remain competitive in terms of academics, infrastructure and finances, so he is well aware of how important it is for regional Russian universities to win U.S. financial support. Though he was convinced that the Corporation-supported strategies were working in terms of building infrastructure and encouraging academic mobility, he was less sure that CASEs would be equally effective in reforming the bureaucratic and moribund Russian humanities field. “The social sciences have to examine a country’s political and economic structures,” he said, “so scholars working in that field are usually seen as hostile to the party in power. We’ll just have to wait and see how that dynamic plays out in Russia,” he concluded.

Before coming to the Corporation, Ed Sermier had spent many years working in high-level administrative positions for New York City, so bureaucracies are not unfamiliar to him, and he knows from experience how difficult it is for bureaucracy-bound institutions to change. “The more I saw of the CASEs, the more I realized how complicated what we are trying to do really is,” he told me. “Maybe I’m just an unrepentant pragmatist, but I think there is too much going on in a university for the program to be the real lever for change that we want.” Still, Sermier has no doubt that numerous individual Russian scholars are benefiting from their involvement with the CASE program, that strong investments are being made, and that the Corporation has the right people to lead the program, particularly in Andrei Kortunov. “I’ve rarely met any one person as honest, thoughtful and capable as Andrei,” Sermier told me. “I hope that in the long term, he will become a key advisor to someone in Russia who can bring about real change.”

And what were my reactions? Well, I had come to Russia to find out, through interviews and conversation, about the progress of scholarship in the country, but also about the aspirations and achievements of individuals, because for me, that’s the real story of the CASEs. But in the larger sense, had the Corporation’s work helped to change, even in some small way, how university leaders think, how the humanities are taught and how a research university should operate? As I said at the beginning of this article, I’m probably not the right person to make those judgments. But what I do now know with crystal clarity is how incredibly ambitious the CASE program is: on the one hand, it can be seen as a straightforward educational project, but on the other, it is a subversive partnership aimed at transforming the way Russian social sciences and scholarship will develop in the future.

“In terms of individual destinies, we have already accomplished something,” Kortunov had told me. “We know we can make a difference in scholars’ professional lives. But on the institutional level, we still must wait and see if the system of linking research and education is adopted by the higher education system at large. We would like the CASEs to become the backbone of the university system, flagships of the new research universities that will emerge in Russia.”

There are thousands of colleges and universities across the 12 time zones of Russia, with thousands of students and professors, but overall, the Russian population is on the decline. The life expectancy for a man in Russia is just 57, and only 145 million people live in this massive, sprawling country that touches Europe on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. In the years to come, many universities will not survive the harsh economic realities facing the nation. Only the best will get the financial and institutional support to become world-class universities. Deana Arsenian and Andrei Kortunov are betting that CASEs will be the model for what will become the excellent Russian university of the 21st century.

I found it hard to bet against them.

Susan King is Vice President, Public Affairs of Carnegie Corporation of New York. She spent twenty years as a journalist covering national and international issues and, before joining the foundation, served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Labor.