 Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. I'm Betsy Peck-Learned, Dean of University Library Services at Roger Williams University, and I'd like to welcome you all to our Talking in the Library event. This program is our second library collaboration with the Scholars at Risk Network, and we're so grateful for their partnership. The Libraries Talking in the Library series is supported by an endowment to the library by an alumna of the university, Mary Teft-White. This timely program tonight is entitled Ukraine, Reflections from Home and Abroad, and will feature a panel of two scholars, Liz Shepantilnikova and Olena Tanchik, along with our moderator, Professor Adam Braver. Adam is the Library Program Director at RWU, a professor of creative writing, and also coordinator of student advocacy seminars with scholars at risk. I would be remiss if I didn't recognize Adam's great work with scholars at risk that has fostered student advocacy programs across the world, as well as programs such as this one tonight. Professor Braver will now introduce our speakers. Thank you, and please enjoy the program. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Betsy, and thank you all for coming. Let me just get our speakers up here as well. So I really want to just get started at this point, because we have a lot to talk about. I really want to thank Liz and Olena for being here. For most of us in the West, this is a horrifying story that we're trying to follow and understand. But of course, this is your life, and I'm incredibly grateful that you're willing to share your thoughts and perspectives and experiences and in particular, how you believe the higher education community can and perhaps should respond. For those of you who are attending, Liz and Olena will talk a little bit about themselves, present some of their experiences and their background and perspectives, talk a little bit about, again, what the higher education community can respond, and then we'll reserve at least a half an hour for questions from all of you for the second part of the program. We do ask that you put questions in the Q&A, and my colleague from Claire Robinson, the Director of Advocacy at Scholars at Risk, and I will monitor the questions and make sure that they get to Olena and Liz. With that in mind, Liz, would you like to start, again, some of your background and your perspectives on what's happening as well? Absolutely. Thank you very much, Adam and Betsy and Claire, for this opportunity to speak today on the topic that is, of course, particularly close to our hearts. We come from Ukraine and have been affected by war in a variety of different ways. I'm currently an early career researcher doing my PhD at the University of Hong Kong, where my research area is really focused on academic profession in post-Soviet states. So a lot of issues that we will be discussing today for me are not only personal, but also professional in a sense. I have been working with the academic community for over 10 years as I started basically as a student activist in 2008. And now since 2014, I have been fortunate to have an opportunity to engage with the Scholars at Risk Network because in 2014, after the Euro-Mind Unrevolution, when Russia first attacked Ukraine by annexing Crimea and attacking institutions in the eastern region of Ukraine, we have started working on gathering information about the tax on higher education and violations of academic freedom. This work now obviously continues as the conflict has moved into the direct confrontation that nobody has seen on the European continent for quite a long time. So these days, I'm also grateful to the Scholars at Risk because they are the ones who helped me to evacuate from the Ukraine when the war has started. As I've mentioned, post-Soviet academic profession is my area of research, so I was physically in Ukraine when the war broke out doing data collection. Unfortunately, we had to leave under these circumstances to find a safe place. I think what is important to understand about my background in addition to my professional experience is also my personal connection to what has been going on because I was originally born and raised in eastern Ukraine, a town which is now unfortunately under the Russian occupation. My parents had to flee it and it took them quite a while, of course, because of the shelling that has been continuously going on. So you could say that I guess, you know, in the general Russian narrative, I'm probably one of those that they came to rescue from Ukrainian government, although nobody has asked them to do this. And for over 15 years as I've lived in Kiev in the capital of Ukraine, my involvement with both Ukrainian academia and Ukrainian government at a variety of different levels has shown that there is a lot of courage and a lot of interest among Ukrainian people to develop, to engage with the West and to build our own democratic state. I think that one of the things that this war has now shown us is really that a lot of people will have to sacrifice themselves for their values. But we want to make sure that we're heard and that our voices are not silenced by force. Liz, can you talk a moment about your work that you did in 2014 as a student activist and maybe the line to where things are right now? Or did we lose you for a second, Liz? I think Liz is frozen for a second. Olena, do you want to jump in? Yeah, absolutely. So I hope that Liz will come back to us in a second. So yeah, so hi everyone. My name is Olena Tanchik. Thank you very much for inviting me today to be a panelist and to have an opportunity to voice my message and to share my experience, my thoughts, some of my ideas, how we can proceed with the war and what we can do as an academia and as a world scientific community. I have prepared a short presentation. Kind of a slide is not going to be a lecture, but I want to give a little bit of a background for everything that was going on and has been going on for the last eight years in Ukraine with universities. Yeah, we are not going to specifically speak about only conflict and military military things, but our goal for today is to focus on academia, to focus on universities, and for those of you who probably have not had a lot of experience with Ukrainian community scholars and scientists, I hope that you will have a bigger picture of everything what is going on and while we are waiting for this to join. So probably I will fill this gap while we are waiting on here. So once again, my name is Olena Tanchik. And first of all, I would say that I am Ukrainian. Yeah, so that's for me now an important identity. I hold my PhD in economics, but I use my minor as my source of income. My minor is in English. I can also add that's my identity now is an IDP. And before February 24, this stood for an internal displaced person. So this is such a category of people in Ukraine. But after February 24, I would consider myself internationally displaced person, because now I'm in Arizona, and they have been here since August, doing my research as a Fulbright scholar on special education. So that's why now IDP can be not only internally, but international displaced person. Literally, like I am homeless nowadays, settlers, but definitely not hopeless. And what I know for sure is that I am a Ukrainian educator, and they didn't call on anyone to liberate me, my land, neither in 2014, nor in 2022. So today, I'm working, or currently, I'm working as an English language teacher for about 10 years. And most people in my field get used to writing lesson plans, right? So probably educators will now understand me. So today, I would like to build a little bit my conversation, my presentation, if you wanted to call it as a lesson plan discussion, okay? And usually, a teacher starts your class with objectives. So today, during our conversation, yes, we will formulate some important historical questions for displaced universities in 2014. I would like to articulate for you some events of displaced universities in 2014 and employ multiple forms of evidence and historical argument in a more than setting. And usually, as I have already mentioned, yeah, we start with objectives and we transit to warm up activities. So you can see the map and just for you to understand that back in 2014, Lugansk and the Nets, so these are two regions. Peacefully, we're working. We educators, we're doing our activities. And then, in one day, everything changed. And 18 universities started thinking how to allocate their activities and how to continue their activities being under Ukrainian umbrella. So the map demonstrated the location of displaced universities. However, no single map can give us a sense of the risk taken and the drama involved in this accident from Eastern Europe. So as probably most of you know, that our armed conflict broke out in 2013-2014 academic year when students were preparing to their final exams. And we had lots of issues how to organize all those activities in the Nets and Lugansk regions. So you can see that after that events in 2014, local millies turned into full-scale hostilities. And because of the referendum that was held in the areas controlled by separatist forces and independence for the two self-proclaimed republics, the so-called the Nets People Republic and Lugansk People Republic were formed. And we may see that even nowadays and back in the day, so there was a lot of like Russian propaganda for Washington. I happened to be in this situation and this happened to be in this situation. So because we are both from Eastern part, this is from Sarabilsk and I'm from Donetsk. Yes, we experienced all these atrocities and we heard how propaganda worked. And we spoke to students and colleagues from both sides on the divide and many of them talked about increasing mutual intolerance and delineation among people living in the conflict zone. And most of them were poverty looting and the systematic degradation of the social and humanitarian institutions and propaganda from both sides, as I have mentioned. Moving on, a teacher usually from warming up activities goes to instruct and model. So I'm not going to speak a lot. Yeah, I'm not going to now give you the lecture about that. So and I'm not going to instruct you. But just for you to understand that during the unrest, sometimes referred to as the Russian Spring, supporters of independence of the so-called DPR and the LPR sees the administrative buildings and offices of not only the Ukrainian special services, but also civil establishments and universities. So that is why the universities have had to relocate their activities and they kind of split. Yeah, so some of them stayed in the Niesk and Lugansk, but other people were not supporting the new proclaimed regime. Ukrainian government arranged for university teachers to transfer to different places in Ukraine. But as we understand, some prefer to stay in the Niesk and Lugansk. And in November 2014, Ukraine's National Security Council decided to evacuate all the government bodies and banks out of Donbass. And by that point, the breakup of the universities was more or less complete. And the key positions were occupied by people loyal to the separatists and teaching staff who were divided along ideological lines, those who supported and didn't support the regime. And speaking about relocations, we are not going to cover like all these things. But just for you to understand, there are burdens, obstacles and problems that this place universities had to face. Yes, and these are only some of them, right? So like these are safety policies and people had to advocate for their rights. We had some problems with how to arrange our activities, whether it is online or hybrid or in person, funding and salaries were the big issues. And we still have some cases, I would say that separate professors and academic staff and administration haven't received their salaries for August, November 2014 for this month. Yes, so there are still open cases. We had to take care about our students, about our infrastructure because we definitely couldn't bring our laptops, most of our books, resources, not to mention laboratories and gym equipment. So this stayed in those territories. We had to think about our accreditation, so how we are going to accreditate now our certificates and diplomas. I will also put here, are we not in the same boat? Because yeah, we were not in the same boat with local universities and high educational establishments because we were kind of competitors for them. So there were now more and more burdened to the cities, yes, because we had to kind of spread the students and try to move them a little bit and also squeeze into that academy environment in some local places. And of course, emotional and physical conditions of many people were not very stable. So we understand that back in that days, in those days, many of us had poor housing conditions, lack of financial resources to satisfy basic needs, which influence, of course, our productivity and academic success for some certain period of time. So again, as a teacher, we always move our classes and our participants to, so to say, guided or individual instructions, right? So again, if you're interested more about how the processes were taking on, if you're interested in their Ministry of Education, I mean, DPR and LPR or their accreditation committee qualifications, so you can explore, yes, so you can search online or you can ask us during a session, okay, I can lead and help, but we will not go into detail right now. So yeah, you may see that propaganda worked a lot and we had to take care first of all of our diplomas because we understand that if we have my case, then it's State University of Management, like Split and part of it stayed in the Niesk and part moved to Mariupol. So we can't have like two universities, right? So we need to re-register our activities. We need to think about different uses, how we are going to issue our diplomas so that it will be eligible for our students. And of course, we had to always think about our next step, what are we going to do. And just for you to visualize how we relocated first to Mariupol and this is how our classrooms, yes, so our premises look like. And if you see in this picture, and you might think that these are the focus groups working on some issue, no, that's not focus groups. So these are students with their professors working on different classes, like a history class at the back and the math class. And this is like, you may see some of educators having their discussion because we literally, we didn't have rooms to work. That's why this is how the situation looked for us. However, with the time we submitted grants, we received support and sponsorship. And this is also a successful case for us now in 2022 about that we will speak later. But this is how we managed to end up by February 24. Yeah, so that was like a better thing for us. So again, coming back to our kind of a lesson plan, we educators very often give homework to our students, right? However, now, I even don't know how to call this, because in Ukraine, I will explain in Ukraine when we mean homework, right? So we literally mean home. So students used to do their assignments at home. And not many of them have now their apartments. So many of them have lost everything. And this is a teacher I'm confused. So I would probably call it like an independent practice. And as an independent practice for all of us, I want to think about how you can help displace universities, students, staff, and professors in 2022. So during today's short conversation from my side, yeah, we have touched upon some basics and the brief description from the events in 2014. But what are our lessons learned? And how can we apply this eight year experience now? We're sure that we need to act, we need to support each other, we need to support researchers and students from Ukraine and who are now in Ukraine. It is clear that this war will be over one day, very soon we hope. And the Ukrainian science, along with the whole country will require fresh start. So that's why we need to keep in mind our short, mid and long term programs of different scales. And we believe that Ukrainian science will be successfully preserved, reloaded and updated. Oh, and I almost forgot about assessment. Of course, as a good teacher, we need to assess it, right? So we need to do the assessment. And that is assessment is how we grade our students and check how they accomplish their materials. Probably not today. And not with this topic, it's difficult to assess who had more grief and who had more losses. But I believe it is like really hard to put grades in this case. So I assume it is better to leave it as a self reflection part. As a self reflection, I want everybody today during our conversation during this hour to think for a moment about what we all have done to support Ukrainian and Ukrainian, what each of us has done to support students from Ukraine with those you have had for the past months and with emotions we all have experienced. For our international audience, I want you to remember that we Ukrainians win and when we win, we will celebrate with the whole world. So at least everybody should learn today the phrase that is so important for us. And please remember it, drill this phrase, Slava Ukraini, repeated several times. So we will remember it well during our victory together. So Slava Ukraini. And I hope that now we will have broader perspectives and now we will have broader conversations about how we can support each other. Deku. Thank you, Elena and Liz. We have Liz back. That was really interesting, Elena, very helpful. Liz, before we move into questions, I want to ask you two things. I want to ask you about your brief, you know, the experience you had when the war broke out and how you left and perhaps why you left so, why you needed to leave because I know you had a specific reason you needed to leave. And then perhaps moving into this idea of what you think the international university community can be doing. Thank you, Adam. My apologies for the technological issues on my end. I hope that, you know, the audience that we're engaging with today can understand that when the world has been discussing, you know, for months, Russian troops at the Ukrainian border for many people, including myself, these conversations meant not only analyzing it, but also having an understanding of what is at stake for you. And because of my background, as a student activist, and because of my parents' location in eastern Ukraine, I did realize quite clearly that it is not safe to stay unless you have a very clear way of helping on the ground. And as a scholar, I don't know how to hold a gun, so I do not really think that I would be helpful to people on the ground. I don't want to be a burden, and because we all know that any civilian who is not fighting, who is a potential target, will obviously be a burden to the military and to the various services that are trying to help the soldiers to win their fights. So for those of us who are not able to help in any way on the ground, a decision to leave was the only choice that made sense at that point. And of course, for those of us who've been very active in pro-democracy movements, we have been always aware that we do have targets on our backs, because to say that we're not the most favorite people for Russian government is not to say anything. And we know from, well, also, you know, the media reports and the information that has been shared by the U.S. government that there were intentions by Russian military early on to make sure that people who are particularly active are killed. And we've seen, unfortunately, from the reports of the atrocities that have been happening in key of regions that those kill lists are real, and people were murdered for their pro-Ukrainian position. So I think that rationally balancing things out, leaving has made more sense and not being in the middle of the fight was a way for me personally to be helpful and not to be a burden. And I also think that it's very important to remember that this war is really not only about the military action that is happening on the ground. Elena has mentioned several times that Russian propaganda and Russian disinformation campaigns are very powerful and they're attempting to influence opinions around the world, not only in Ukraine or Russia. So we have to make sure that Ukrainians are not silenced and the world sees the truth. And one of the ways of doing exactly that is through helping Ukrainian students and scholars. And I will focus a little bit more on helping Ukrainian scholars because this is what the scholar's at risk has been involved with and this is what we've been working with several other scholarly groups around the world really. We have been very grateful because we saw an enormous support internationally for Ukrainian students and scholars. But there are some peculiarities of the war that is happening right now in Ukraine that we haven't really seen in other conflicts and we need to be aware of those. So I hope you can see my screen now. And just to give you a little bit of the sense of the current opportunities that are both out there and those opportunities that we really need. These are of course some of the traditional fellowships and positions that have been already open. As I've mentioned, some of the Ukrainian scholars have been able to relocate to leave the country to settle safely outside in European universities. However, what is different about this war compared to many other conflicts that we have seen is that most of the Ukrainian scholars will not leave Ukraine. This is not a classical people running away from the war zone situation. There are a number of reasons for it. Some of the most important reasons are of course the fact that there are a lot of scholars who are involved in activities that are ensuring security of the country. This is research related to defense, research that ensures that nuclear plants in Ukraine are secure because you have seen in the news reports that Russian troops have attacked nuclear plants. And of course, you cannot expect physicists or radiologists, scientists to leave because this is their job. There are a lot of scholars who are supporting other critical infrastructure objects and many who cannot leave because they're in the specific age range for men who are between 18 to 60, leaving is not mostly an option. So what Ukrainian scholars really need are more remote work opportunities. And we have seen some successful examples that I will share on the next slide. But we have to remember that over 80% of Ukrainian scholars are staying in Ukraine and a lot of them are people whose universities have been shelled who don't have labs or don't have classrooms to come back to. So they will really need this remote opportunities. Of course, there are also scholars like Olana herself who are in the United States who also will need hosting. And we should remember about this people as well. They're already in the US. Not all of their programs will be able to sustain them if the conflict continues for several more months. So this is another area that needs further engagement. And just like we're doing today, hosting webinars about Ukraine or lecture series would also help quite significantly because, as I've mentioned, there are a lot of stereotypes about Ukraine. There's a lot of disinformation. We know that for many people it's not that well known what is going on in the country and in the region more specifically. So these are of course incredibly important information events that need to take place in order for people to be able to learn about the work and what they can do to contribute to stopping it. Here are some examples of the resources that can help you to learn a little bit more. And we can answer questions as we go. But of course, scholars at risk has good resources to help guide you through creation of the opportunities for Ukrainian scholars. One of the example or non-residential fellowship that is already running was actually established by the Harvard Ukrainian Studies Institute and IWM which is a non-profit in Vienna. And they have created 17 non-residential fellowships which exactly will support scholars inside Ukraine with those remote opportunities that they so desperately need. Similarly, the Open Society University Network has both residential and non-residential fellowships. And you can also refer to the UA Science Reload Initiative which is a group of Ukrainian scholars that are working specifically to help establish remote opportunities, help mentor Ukrainian scholars about getting access to these opportunities and taking the most advantage of them. I think to wrap it up, I just want to highlight that I hope that we all learn today that we can do, we can bring a change by helping the scientists who unfortunately have been affected by war not to be silenced. That's the most important contribution and that's the most important request that they have right now. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. I think I've, do you know the numbers and how many academics currently are there? I think I've read upwards of 100,000 or in the higher education community. Yeah, the total number of academics in Ukraine is roughly 100,000 people and again, you know, we're talking about I can share a little bit later with you. We are working on a large study with the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences and from the current data, it looks like it's going to be roughly between 13 to 15 percent of scholars who will leave or who have left the country and we're talking about about 85 percent of scholars who will remain inside Ukraine. And before we get, we have some questions starting to come in, but can you give us a sense of the Ukrainian education, like the, you know, the system in terms of the where it placed, the history of it, the pride that goes in there as well? Well, the Ukrainian higher education system in particularly is very well integrated with the European higher education area. So it would look exactly what you would expect from a classic, as we like to call it, Bologna country. It's a three cycle system, which has a short cycle similar to associates degree in the United States. And then of course, when we're talking about scholars, scholars would have a research degree and equivalent to a PhD or a doctor of sciences, which is a degree that has been inherited by Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Actually, I think what is important to acknowledge is that Ukraine is the second largest higher education system in the post-Soviet space. So Russia would be the largest higher education system, but Ukraine is the second largest. So we're talking about a million and a half students, again, over a hundred thousand scholars and about 350 institutions of higher education, meaning universities. Traditionally, of course, similarly to many other Soviet states, Ukrainian researchers in STEM and natural sciences would be the most integrated into the global research community. And that's one of the things that we saw manifest itself, because many of the positions that have been already open are positioned in STEM, since those scholars have a lot of also connections globally. For the social sciences and humanities, the situation is more challenging because as many in the audience are probably well aware, the social sciences did not start developing in the Soviet Union until its very late years. And of course, there's a much smaller level of integration. However, I think one of the important aspects to highlight is that with the Ukraine's integration with the European Union more generally from 2015 through the association agreement, Ukrainian scholars also became increasingly integrated. And many of them have everything starting with sufficient language skill all the way to the previous experience working with Western academia, either through the North American projects or large European projects such as Erasmus class and Horizon 2020, which are the flagship European Union programs. I hope that answers your questions if it does not feel free to follow up at any point. Not very helpful. We have a question that asks if you know, are there any special forms of relationships between Ukrainian and Russian scientists at this point, both in exile and not? So I would say some generally and maybe Liz will adapt to my answer. So I would say that before the first wave of the world, like before the 2014, I would say that we had common projects. We worked together. I would speak for myself personally. So we had lots of collaborations and even exchange programs. So we had common publishing materials and we could submit an article together with the colleagues from universities in Moscow or St. Petersburg. So we had communication with them and we were open for like both sides were open for collaboration. Again, I would speak from my experience and what I saw around me. Again, I would review the time from Donetsk and we are like very close to the border to Russia. So that's why communication and the time zones and physically we were closer to each other. So we had this partnership. However, we understand for some certain reasons our common projects, our exchange programs and all kinds of collaborations after 2014, of course stopped. And I can't even imagine now organizing a conference together or submitting an article. So that would be hard because not always we have the same settings, not always we have the same perspectives and world views. So I think after 2014, the situation has changed radically. And now nowadays, yes, after February, of course, we understand that all kinds of partnerships would be for me personally, even morally. Yes, so from my beliefs, from my values, impossible. So far, I don't see any common grounds for us. And what we now advocating for is that Russian programs, Russian cooperation, cooperation with European universities, world universities with Russian professors would be terminated unless we finish the war and unless we understand their position. And if someone puts us in the same line and says that we have the same problems or we have the same world views, so I would probably ask those people not to do that for lots of people, especially Ukrainians now. It is something that we do not expect. Let me ask you, there's a follow question, which I think is right on track with what you're talking about, Elena, for both of you, from somebody in the audience that says, why do you think a lot of international, including US institutions, tend to put Ukrainian and Russian scholars under one umbrella, and she cites as an example, help to Ukrainian and Russian students, scholarships to Ukrainian and Russian students, etc. Do you think it somehow is connected to the fact of international communities not being able to accept the differences? I think I can probably start answering and then Elena would add what she feels is missing from my answer, but I would probably refer here to one of the recent discussions that has very timely happened in Lviv, in Western Ukraine, and this discussion involved a professor of Oxford, Federico Veresa, who I think has very clearly put it that, unfortunately, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow has not stopped being a center of the region to many scholars in the West. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Soviet Union has broke apart and there were 15 independent states, in many cases, the legacy or the narratives of the Soviet era persisted, and Moscow remained, in a sense, a metropolis that a lot of scholars were looking to hear about the post-Soviet space. Because of this increasingly developed ties between, I think, Western and Russian scholars, and, of course, much smaller ties between Ukrainian and Western scholars, because, first of all, Ukrainian higher education system is smaller, and secondly, it's important to understand that Ukraine has a periphery inside of the semi-periphery, because the post-Soviet space after 1991, which has been written by many scholars, has become sort of semi-periphery. Much less attention has been focused to it because the Cold War was over and it was no longer a significant threat. And inside of that semi-periphery, Ukraine is another peripheral area, which was not really in the focus of much research. So Russian scholars have much more engagement with the West, and, of course, a lot of Western colleagues, I think, have seen that academic freedom has been diminishing in Russia, and everybody have heard from the news about the extreme punishment that Russians will carry on if they call things for what they are, if they call out the war in Ukraine. And it has created, to me, a sense that, in academia at least, it has created a sense that Russian scholars are also under a threat, which I do not necessarily disagree with. I know there are Russian scholars who have been consistently critical of their government who are in threat, but I think that what has escaped the attention of many Western researchers and institutions is that the threat to Ukrainian scholars is not comparable to the threat that Russian scholars are facing at this point. And I think that because of this Soviet legacy and because of the narratives that are putting Moscow in the center of the region, a lot of institutions miss out on the fact that it is, unfortunately, quite discriminative, I think, to compare the challenging faced by Ukrainian people with those faced by Russians. So I guess that's a very complicated and maybe not quite straightforward answer to the question that we have received. But I do hope it gives a little bit of a sense of the background of the relationship that have been built for decades, that we have to be aware of when we are discussing situations that are happening right now. And for either of you, do you worry that when you hear that grouping that it is inadvertently playing into the propaganda of the Ukrainian and Russian people being the same and being part of the same system, so to speak? I think you're right that it definitely does play into the propaganda that is being spread by Russian government. But I think what is also important to acknowledge is that when that grouping happens, Ukrainians are automatically put in a disadvantaged position because for a Ukrainian scholar to take advantage of an opportunity abroad, if they're not already in abroad, they need to be applying for scholarships, fellowships, positions from bomb shelters. And this is not the same that what many Russian scholars do, and even those who are at threat, they are in a danger, but they're in their own apartment with their laptop, which essentially I think we have to admit the danger in this programs that put Ukrainians and Russian together is that there is a much higher chance that Russian scholars will take advantage of these opportunities. And unfortunately, we have been hearing of let's just, well, let's say people who are interested in speaking out against war for once so that they can move somewhere into the West, because there is a narrative inside the Russian federations that West is kind of foolish and you can just pretend to be against the war and take advantage of all of those opportunities that are being proposed to Russian dissidents. So I think everybody has to be also very careful with the fact that there are people who want to take advantage of the positive intentions of Western academia to support Russian scholars who are actually at risk. We should understand that education is what so when some people sometimes say that culture and education have nothing to do with politics and the regime of the government. So I think that people do not share with us all their ideas and they are not honest, because education is influenced by politics. While Ukrainian scholars, Ukrainian students somewhere in the bombshells trying to continue their activities, still trying to work, trying to support each other. So some Russian people from academia can benefit and can take advantage of these government-sponsored opportunities for the purpose of promoting Russian disinformation and enabling the Russian government to fuel the war, which is something that we definitely don't want with Ukrainians. And I hope that people around the world will support that. So that's why all these indifferences that we have and situations in which we are now, of course, only creates disbalance. And that's why not to probably give people more opportunities and for one people, for Russians, take more opportunities and take our opportunities for Ukrainian students and scholars participating in programs and even not to mention participation in the programs, just continue their everyday activities, working in labs, doing the research. So I think it's very unfair to provide now funding or support or any other kind of exchange programs to those who started the war and can spread the disinformation outside Russia to the world community, right, so around the world. So that's why for this purpose, I think those programs have to be terminated. We have a question from somebody who's saying that a university is considering starting a Ukrainian language program for the first time. However, they are concerned about garnering enough interest from students. What would you say to a university administrator about why a Ukrainian language program is worth their time, energy, and resources? And she says that some might argue, for example, that Russian language will get you far enough in Ukraine. How can you help this argument? What would you say? I think there are a couple of things that you could really argue in this situation because first of all, from an academic perspective, I think supporting the idea that Russian language, which has been weaponized by Russian government to inflict war on other countries, and this is not only Ukraine, right? Because in addition to the war that has been going on in Ukraine since 2014, where the narrative was about protecting some Russian speakers, very similar arguments have been used when Russian armies have invaded Georgia in 2008. Russian government is using the same narrative when they're keeping their military in Transnistria in Moldova, right? So we have to understand that promoting the idea that Russian is a regional language that will get you enough understanding is also supporting weaponization of the language. And it is really an imperial narrative that Russia has systematically invested into promoting, I think at this point for centuries probably, right? Because forceful Russification, as we call it, has been happening in the region since 1700s, basically. So people were forcefully deprived the opportunities to speak their local languages by Russian Empire and continuing to support this narrative is really a support for an imperial narrative. The second argument I think that you could make is that there are Ukrainian language programs in North American universities and they're quite successful. So for a university administration that wants to start a language program like that, I would suggest learning from the great experiences that there are. University of Kansas and Lawrence has a great Ukrainian language program. University of Washington is another example. I believe University of Pennsylvania is also has a language program. So look out to those fantastic examples that already exist in the United States and learn from their experiences because they have been obviously able to prove that there is enough sustainable interest to maintain programs like this. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to add very quick. So probably it's now high time to change the conditions and to have new reality. Yes, and to have new opportunities and to have new norms. So Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture and values can be the attribute to a good change and a good start for something new. We all know that after conflicts, after the wars, we have new humor, we have new culture, we have new music, we have new everything. Yes, it will affect all spheres and it already has been affecting. We already have new new intentions, new initiatives and Ukraine now is kind of a brand. I really like this, but we may understand. Yes, so like it's now something new wave and why not to change something that has been stable for a long time. So that's a good opportunity to turn it like a flipping point and I think that it's for a global perspective a good chance to update the context and agenda. Well said. Being mindful of the time, I want to just ask both of you one closing question. And when the three of us spoke before, you know, Elena, for example, you were telling me that your apartment doesn't really exist anymore in Mara Paul, your university doesn't exist. You've been through this Liz, I'm sure you're watching television or being in touch with people and seeing places that were once so familiar to you, having no resemblance to how you understand them or remember them. But my question is what I mean, Elena, you got to it a little bit in the last question, but what is giving you hope through this? Because it would seem so hopeless and so devastating. What when you do look at this and know all these, where is your hope and what inspire maybe us as well? So I would say that I may, yes, because I'm more like for emotional part today and this for more for academia, right, today, and she can probably give some more facts. But for me, the situation that is happening now and losing my apartment and my university is now relocating my second, university is now relocating again. It's not a new situation because of this scenario I remember from 2014, we already experienced that eight years ago when I lost my apartment where they had to move to another place that everything from scratch, it was completely new chapter in my life book and university was relocated and we start again from nothing. Almost, I mean, we only had our people resources, yes, so we only had our skills and then you saw the pictures, yes, so we moved from where to where. So that's why for me it's like kind of the review and familiar again past now. Of course, the scale of adversity is much bigger now and we can compare probably, but still we kind of understand that even in a desperate time, so education will be a key for us, education is something that will support us and will give us directions on how to act and to rebuild, restore, reunite people and if we as a team, as Ukrainians managed to do that, so we will be really a close-knit community which is happening now. So again, we managed to start the university, submit grants, invite speakers, raise the people's awareness around the world back in 2014, so what we are doing now is just we are adapting and working probably in a bigger scale, but we understand that it's not the end and we will never surrender, we will never give up. We know that when we win, we will continue our activities, yeah, that's a lot to do, a lot of things that we need to collect and start from again, start developing. So now for academia, it's a kind of a step back, we understand that we as scientists terminate sometimes our activities, we can't work fully immersed and dive into our projects and to our research, but we on another hand understand that in the nearest future, we will come back and we will have even more desire, more power, because we want the whole world community to understand that Ukraine is not part of Russia, Ukraine is not part of anything, Ukraine is an independent country with its mentality, with its values, with its academic spice, you know, like we have our activities and we available resource and the world community can benefit from collaboration with us and it's a mutual process of course, so we know that we can give the world lots of good ideas, projects and opportunities for cooperation and collaboration and of course our smart students who have experienced the war in their lives, so they will become a new breed of smart, intelligent, resilient and sustainable people. I don't want to take up too much time, but I think one thing that is worth mentioning is that as we've discussed throughout this hour, the war in Ukraine today is on a scale that hasn't been seen in Europe for so many decades, but what is happening in Ukraine today, I think we have to admit is a logical continuation of Russian policy towards the former Soviet states that has emerged in early 90s and continued throughout the last 30 years. What makes me hopeful about the situation in Ukraine is that when Russia attacked and didn't just face the Ukrainian army, what we see in Ukraine is a 40 million people resistance because every single person has started their own fight. There are soldiers who are fighting in front lines, there are volunteers who are fighting to help them to get the necessary resources. There are people who are protesting in Russian occupied cities every single day despite the very high risk of just being shot on the spot. I know that in the west we hear quite a bit about often very brave people protesting in Russia, but we might hear much less about people of Kherson who go out every single day on their squares and who literally stop Russian tanks with their bare hands. I think what we see right now is really a renaissance of Ukrainian nation because Ukrainians have been attempting to gain independence from Russia for several centuries and we finally got it 30 years ago, so we're not giving it back. Of course there is a danger that this is going to be another executed renaissance which is what happened during the Soviet Union when many of the Ukrainian scholars and artists have been murdered because of their opposition to the Soviet government. But I hope that the opposition of 40 million people is so much stronger than any army that Russian government could potentially put together. And I know that as long as we ensure that there is support, that there is platforms like the one that we're fortunate to have today where Ukrainian people can speak up and can be heard, I think that will ensure that we succeed. Thank you. Before I hand it to Claire to close out, I want to read it. There was a comment that came through the Q&A, it really is a reflection more than a question, it says an appeal. And she writes, I am from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. We have 70 students and 12 scholars from many cities to Ukraine and every day is more and more people in need. We help in continuation of study, pay the scholarships, care about dinners and accommodation. We need solidarity of international universities and schools to provide further long-term help for Ukrainian students and scholars. It is a huge problem. Maybe you can think, ask in your institutions for special scholarships funds directly for Ukrainian students, scholars, refugees at universities in Poland. It is very important. We need solidarity of international university environment. We need solidarity of the international university environment. We look from 50 days at the immensity of human tragedy. Thank you all the best for panelists and everyone. I'm certain you would both agree with that in all its points. So Claire, I will hand it to you. Thank you, Adam. And thank you, Liz and Elena. I just have to say that hearing your personal experiences, even those that I had heard previously just underlines for me the importance of our helping our higher education colleagues who are impacted by the war. So thank you for your powerful words. Thank you to Roger Williams as well for hosting this conversation and to all of you for joining us. My apologies as it seems we weren't able to make it through all of the questions in the Q&A, but we will pass those along to the panelists for a response and hopefully we'll get back to you. Scholars at risk has been mentioned throughout this conversation and I am advocacy director at Scholars at Risk. As many of you may know, Scholars at Risk is an international network of higher education institutions committed to protecting the freedom to think, question and share ideas. We do this in part through arranging temporary positions of academic refuge for scholars facing threats to their lives. And since the war in Ukraine began, we have seen a surge in applications from scholars impacted by the war. So to close, I would like to invite higher education community members who have joined us today to join Scholars at Risk in creating positions for scholars impacted by the war in Ukraine. I think Liz, you said it best earlier this evening when you said we can bring about change by helping scientists impacted by the war to not be silenced. Thank you all.