The Ukraine Crisis

March 2, 2022

UMS Community -

We're all sadly aware of the still unfolding and horrific news from Eastern Europe as Russia continues its aggressive invasion into Ukraine, apparently seeking to swallow the country back into some semblance of the old Soviet Union.

Higher education leaders here and abroad are speaking out, and loudly, not just because we have a responsibility to do so, but also because we are inextricably connected to the global community and in some ways even on the front lines of the battle. We must and will support anyone we can who is directly impacted by this crisis.

In Ukraine this week, Serhiy Kvit, a former national education minister, professor, university president, and head of Ukraine's National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance, has spoken out about how university campuses are becoming centers of resistance. In Russia itself, academics are speaking out against Vladimir Putin despite great personal risk to themselves. The head of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities is calling for European universities and states to do more to help displaced Ukrainian students and scholars. Closer to home, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it would be ending a controversial decade-long partnership aimed at creating a Silicon Valley-scale industrial-academic development near Moscow.

Here in Maine in our university system, our direct connections to the conflict at the moment are relatively few. Currently, we have no students, faculty, or staff traveling or working in Ukraine at present. Nevertheless, though only a handful of our students and faculty hail from Ukraine or Russia, they are directly connected to the crisis through many more friends and family still in the region. We also have faculty and students (both current and former) who study the region, and its languages and cultural, and maintain many academic and personal connections there, including, for example, through a former academic exchange partnership the University of Maine had with Kharkiv National University in Ukraine. This aggression is deeply personal to all of them, too, and deserves our attention, our empathy, and our ongoing engagement and concern, as you can see typified in just this one story about one of our colleagues at UMA. I'm calling on our UMS community now to support these students and colleagues. Check in with them. Speak out for them to amplify their voices and concern.

You can learn more about the geopolitical dynamics in the crisis by joining an online panel discussion, "The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Implications for the U.S. and the World," which will take place this Thursday, March 3, from noon-1:30 p.m., hosted by the UMaine's Alumni Association, with experts from the William S. Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service, School of Policy and International Affairs, and Department of Political Science. Register for the discussion online here.

Finally, it's particularly important to me that we stand ready to assist anyone, anywhere, who is displaced by this crisis. It was a passionate issue for me in my time as Governor of Connecticut, when I personally helped settle Syrian refugees there, so I'm keenly aware now that a Ukrainian refugee crisis is building, too. The Washington Post reports this week that a wave of more than 520,000 Ukrainian refugees are already fleeing west, and no doubt scores of them will come to the United States. We will stand at the ready to assist them as a core tenet of our public service mission.

While refugees have far more basic needs, higher education nevertheless must be accessible to them. The non-political United Nations Office of the Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that just 5 percent of refugees worldwide have meaningful access to higher education. This is far below the global average higher education enrollment among non-refugees, which stands at 39 percent. To tackle this humanitarian challenge, UNHCR has set a goal of increasing refugee enrollment in higher education to at least 15 percent by 2030. Here within UMS and in Maine, we will play our part however we can to contribute toward meeting that goal.

We don't know what the future holds in this international crisis. We stand in awe of the bravery and resilience of the Ukrainian people in the face of such authoritarian aggression. We cheer on and add our voices to those speaking out for democracy in the world. And we will be open and accessible to any refugee displaced by the conflict.

Regards,

Chancellor

University of Maine System