Protesting Putin or protecting rights? Media reflections on reflective student activism

ABSTRACT

This paper considers new challenges for Russian universities and the state, including flourishing and widespread corruption, politicization and state pressure, and student activism, and hypothesizes on how these three may be linked. To do so, this paper uses systematic research of media accounts from 2007 to 2012 in order to investigate student activism and its possible links with corruption and university politicization. This paper develops a theoretical extension that explains the corruption and coercion mechanism as applied to student activism, and places emphasis on higher education corruption and state pressure applied to universities. This study concludes that students are more interested in fighting for their economic rights and fulfilment of contractual obligations by the universities, while remaining politically inactive. This is normal for modern Russian society, where market reforms in higher education gain momentum, while democratic changes in the country remain very slow.

KEYWORDS:

• Corruption
• coercion
• student activism
• university
• Russia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ararat L. Osipian is a Ph.D. in Education and Human Development. Presently, he conducts fieldwork on corruption, hybrid war, and the failed state in Ukraine. His research interests include corruption, corporate raiding, and comparative education.