Gender studies, the state and the problem of academic autonomy in postsocialism

A Discussion with Andrea Peto and Elena Gapova. Moderated by Benjamin Cope

Abstract

In the academic year 2016-17, two academic institutions,
which are important for the development of gender studies in the
region – the European University in St. Petersburg and the Central
European University in Budapest, – concurrently came under the
threat of closure. In both cases, gender studies constituted one of
the key sources of controversy. In the case of the European University, the impulse to intensified attention on the part of the state
was a complaint by a Member of the Legal Council of St. Petersburg
(now – a Member of the Russian Parliament – State Duma),
Vitali Milonov, who explained his appeal to the state prosecutor
in the following terms, “Students of the university have sent me
a written petition, in which they complained that they are being
forced to write works on themes inappropriate for Russians: on
the defence of LGBT rights, gender topics and other filthy things.”
In the case of CEU, gender studies was, if not a direct impulse to,
at least a rhetorical trope in the Hungarian Government’s declarations
seeking to deprive the university of its educational license.
If, notwithstanding the pressure on them, CEU and EU are for the
moment still operating in Hungary and Russia, then EHU, a university
of the same generation and working in close cooperation
with both institutions in the sphere of gender studies, has already
been through the experience of being closed and exiled beyond
the borders of Belarus, the country in which it was founded. It
seems to us not simply a coincidence that, in the case of all three institutions, gender studies was, and is, amongst the strongest and most highly visible
academic disciplines. Why, both at the beginning of the 2000s, and today, does
gender studies provoke such hostile reactions on the part of governments of countries
of Central and Eastern Europe, how is it connected with the crisis of democratic transformations
in the region and what does this say about the status of gender studies in
the countries of CEE? It was these questions that we discussed with Elena Gapova, a
founder of the Centre of Gender Studies at EHU and Associate Professor at Western
Michigan University, and Andrea Peto, Professor of Gender Studies at CEU.