LIVE FROM KYIV, Part III: Reforming Education in Ukraine

Saturday, May 6, 10:00 am US Eastern Time (5:00 p.m. in Kyiv)

Join us Saturday, May 6, 10 am US EDT, 5:00 p.m. in Kyiv as Refounding Democracy continues its 4-part series on Ukraine's new social covenant.

Part III: Reforming Education in Ukraine

Russia's relentless assault has delivered hammer blows to Ukraine's schools and universities. Millions of children, students, and teachers have gone abroad, seeking safety and calm to continue their studies. Millions more have stayed in Ukraine, working in person and online, improvising in basements, metro stations, unfamiliar buildings, even battlefront trenches.

The war's end will mark only the start of a new stage of challenges for Ukraine's education system. How will the millions of returning students and scholars be reintegrated, in a landscape where many structures have been reduced to rubble?

More fundamentally, what vision will national leaders bring to bear, as they build a new system upon these shaken foundations?

We are pleased to be joined this week on Refounding Democracy by Ukrainian voices with powerful ideas about how Ukraine's education system must be reformed, in order to connect the nation's past, present, and future.

TYMOFII BRIK is Rector (Provost) at the Kyiv School of Economics. A sociologist, he serves as Ukrainian national coordinator of the European Social Survey.

TARAS TSYMBAL is Associate Professor of Sociology and Vice-Dean for Science and International Relations at the Faculty of Sociology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara (2013-2014) and currently conducts research at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

TETIANA PERESUNKO is a sociology student from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine she has studied at the University of Helsinki.

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LIVE FROM KYIV: A Refounding Democracy conversation

Ukraine's New Social Covenant: A 4-part series

Refounding Democracy is a sustained examination of the current authoritarian assault on liberal democracy in the US and worldwide, through the lenses of political philosophy, history, and economics. A central theme is the concept of a «social covenant» -- the compact, both secular and spiritual, that articulates the commitments members of a polity make to one another, and that thereby binds a nation together.

In a time of crisis, a nation's social covenant can evolve rapidly. Nowhere today shows this process unfolding more vividly than in Ukraine. As the Ukrainian people organize themselves to defend democracy and repel Russia's brutal invasion, a new nation is emerging.

Refounding Democracy is pleased to host a four-part series in which we examine this evolution. Streaming live from Ukraine, co-hosts Athena Small and Peter Lupu are joined by a range of Ukrainian voices to discuss what's happening, what it means for Ukraine's future, and what lessons it implies for democracy in the U.S. and worldwide.

The series examines these changes from four directions:

April 22, Kyiv: Civil society & volunteerism in Ukraine

April 29, Kyiv: Culture - decolonizing the mindset, shifting to Ukrainian language

May 6, Kyiv: Reforming Ukraine’s education system

May 13, Lviv: Sex, Gender, and LGBT+ in the Ukrainian Social Covenant

Host: Athena Small, Lecturer, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Virginia, USA

Co-hosts: Peter Lupu, Chair, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Glendale Community College, Glendale, Arizona, USA

Pini Ben-Or, Philosopher and Data Scientist

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Thumbnail image: "Lera Nagormay, 10, sits in a classroom at school in Marinka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine" by VII Photo/UNICEF, used under the fair use doctrine. Link to the original: https://tinyurl.com/3hxzvhce