HSE will prohibit students and teachers from signing open letters and engaging in human rights advocacy

The administration of the Higher School of Economics is going to ban students and teachers from making public statements on behalf of the university, as well as from engaging in human rights activities. This is reported by DOXA and The Vyshka , citing sources from the HSE Student Council.

According to their information, the student council received a new version of the "Students' Internal Regulations" developed by the HSE Legal Department. In the updated version, in the section on the inadmissibility of certain actions, there appeared actions “contradicting the goals and values ​​of the Higher School of Economics, defined in the Charter and the Declaration of Values ​​of the Higher School of Economics, the objectives of the university, determined by the founder and the development program of the university.”

Thus, the amendments prohibit public speaking on behalf of students and university teachers, sign open letters and participate in human rights activities. The DOXA editors believe that the last point may be related to the DOXA_OVD magazine project, which during the summer protests collected fees to pay fines for detained students.

It is also reported that all student media will be excluded from the list of student organizations. University support, according to the new amendments, will receive only those extracurricular activities that "strengthen the reputation of the university."

The Student Council of the Higher School of Economics may recommend changing or not introducing new amendments, but only the administration of the university has a decisive vote.

• In December, the HSE stripped the student journal DOXA of the status of a student organization. The Council of the Student Initiatives Support Fund decided that DOXA caused reputational damage to the university by publishing a text about the rector of the RSSU Natalya Pochinok, who participated in the election to the Moscow City Duma.
• Recently, open letters on various topics on behalf of HSE students and staff have been published several times online. In August, more than 200 university staff signed a collective letter in support of HSE student Yegor Zhukov, a defendant in the Moscow case. Appeals were also published against the punishment of HSE professor Gasan Huseynov and against the nomination of Vice-Rector Valeria Kasamara for election to the Moscow City Duma.