100 HSE staff members call for reinstatement of teacher fired after arrest for retweeting protest

One hundred employees of the Higher School of Economics wrote a letter to the university's rector Yaroslav Kuzminov calling for the restoration of the contract of lecturer Anna Vellikok, who was fired after she was arrested for retweeting about the rally, the student publication HSE Press reports.

“We believe that Anna’s political beliefs influenced the decision of the HSE administration to terminate the employee’s contract,” the authors of the letter stated.

The signatories expressed the opinion that the decision to dismiss Wellikok for political reasons damages the university’s reputation and violates several points of the HSE ethical code.

• Anna Vellikok worked as a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Computer Science. Her contract was terminated on February 2, after she was arrested for 14 days for retweeting a post by FBK employee Georgy Alburov (the court found her guilty of organizing a rally in support of Alexei Navalny on January 23).
• The HSE press service noted that Wellikok was invited under a civil law contract to deliver a short course to master's students. Due to her arrest, the teacher will not be able to conduct four seminars, and they cannot be rescheduled "due to the intensity of the curriculum," the university emphasized.