Higher School of Economics firing staff for their anti-war stance

This time it was Dinara Gagarina, Associate Professor at HSE University-Perm, who was fired due to her anti-war posts on social media. In October this year she was dismissed from her position as the head of a master’s program at the HSE Perm campus for the same reason.

The commission formed by HSE has ruled that Gagarina “has knowingly and repeatedly committed immoral acts” and might do so again. According to Dinara, the commission also investigated the profiles of 92 people who liked her posts.

“All this would be funny but for the war. An immoral war that has been immorally and officially supported by the university, which is now proving that faculty members commit immoral acts by condemning it,” she wrote in her Instagram post.

In March 2022, HSE fired two faculty members, Ilya Kukulin and Maria Maiofis, who had criticized the war in Ukraine on social media and had signed an open letter against the war.

In October this year, management of HSE University-St. Petersburg dismissed Professor of Sociology Iskander Yasaev, who had been recognized as a foreign agent three days earlier.