This paper explores integrity dilemmas experienced by Russian academics in the context of building a world-class university. Interviews with professors and managers of major research universities in Moscow provide critical insights into the organisational and attitudinal incongruities generated by a coercive state--a challenge that Russia has been…

In Georgia, the question of academic freedom emerged only after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its universities could begin reckoning with a heavy past of ideological pressure, censorship, governmental control and top-down management. Despite official declarations of the right to academic freedom and its…

This is a personal narrative about my transformative journey as an educator through the calamities of the failed perestroika in the Soviet Union and cultural shocks of living in the United States and Canada. I analyze the factors contributing to my academic abilities that allowed me to graduate with a PhD in mathematics from a university in Russia…

We studied the population of articles on higher education published in academic journals by researchers from post-Soviet countries in the last three decades. We found that post-Soviet countries contribute differently to the overall publication output, with only Russia, Lithuania, and Estonia having more than 100 articles in journals indexed in…

The legacy of totalitarianism thwarts discourse and practice of academic freedom in post-Soviet universities. For legacy-holders, "academic freedom" causes disorientation, irresponsibility, demoralization and inequity. They see more threats than benefits from empowering decision-makers who are non-compliant with local bureaucracy. For…

Despite the growing complexity and multidimensionality of the system of international research collaborations, the colonial discourse casting the collaborative relationships in terms of polarized North--South antitheses persists and continues to exert influence on the nature of power distribution in the relationships, as well as on the…

University partnerships have been a key dimension of higher education development. Based on documentary analysis and empirical data, this study compares two distinctive models of university partnership experienced by China, first as a "recipient" with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and later as a "provider" with African…

Three professors of education reflected on education in their countries of origin, and compare their education with learning, teaching and the education in the United States. The three countries represented are China prior to the political and economical reforms starting from 1979, Iran prior to the Islamic Republic of 1979, and the Russian…