The “Legal Journalism Course” was banned at Murmansk University

Murmansk Arctic State University (MASU) has canceled the “Legal Journalism Course” on its territory, despite a preliminary agreement. This was reported on February 1 in the course group on VKontakte and on the page of one of its organizers, Alexander Borisov.

A message in the “Legal Journalism Course” group notes that despite the cancellation of the course in the MASU auditorium, planned meetings with speakers will take place on “neutral territory” (where exactly is not specified).

on his page Borisov explained that they called him with a message about the cancellation of the course when the posters had already been printed and he, along with another organizer Tatyana Kulbakina, was getting ready to go to the university to hang them up. According to Borisov, at that time an audience had already been appointed and all the details had been discussed, but the director of the Social and Humanitarian Institute of MASU, Andrei Vinogradov, “suddenly suspected something was wrong.”

“From a telephone conversation with him, I realized that lectures at MASU can only be given by certified specialists with a certificate of no criminal record. These are all clear arguments that I understood. The rest is water, links to some kind of checks,” Borisov noted.

He added that last year he invited RBC journalist Puzyrev to give a lecture, which “it turns out that was also illegal.” In response to his arguments, he was told that no one except university teachers had the right to speak at MASU.

According to the SeverPost agency, several seminars on the topic of human rights are planned as part of the free “Legal Journalism Course”. The speakers are a freelance correspondent for the publication “Takiye Dela” Natalya Baranova and human rights activist Tatyana Kulbakina, who is awaiting trial for an anti-fascist picket in Murmansk.