NEWS AND VIEWS: In defense of HURI (08/02/98)

NEWS AND VIEWS

In defense of HURI

by Lubomyr Hajda

Dr. Myron Kuropas is a distinguished community leader and a tireless defender of Ukraine, Ukrainians and the Ukrainian American community against every slight or slander. His column in The Ukrainian Weekly often takes stands on controversial issues where others fear to tread. At times, however, his passions - and occasionally prejudices - carry him away, to the detriment of the very causes he seeks to defend. Such is the case with his piece "The 'grunts' will carry us" (July 12).

In this polemic, Dr. Kuropas directs gratuitous, unsubstantiated and unfair charges against the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, its faculty and associates, and the programs it conducts. The effect is to sow confusion and disillusionment among many readers, who are entitled to know the whole truth about the institution their generosity helped create.

There are three main charges that Dr. Kuropas levels at the institute. Let us examine them one by one.

The first is that the academics at the HURI "live in their own little world" and engage in work "for the benefit of a handful of other academics." In fact, the HURI conducts activities far beyond the publication of the "esoteric" articles Dr. Kuropas arbitrarily cites. Here are only a few recent examples. The institute has hosted several delegations of officials from the U.S. departments of State and Defense for briefings on current Ukrainian affairs. Most recently, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, spent an entire day in consultations organized for him by the HURI scholars before assuming his post in Kyiv. Scholars from the HURI have been invited to Washington to testify at hearings or participate in policy debates at various government agencies. The institute has close working relations with the Embassy of Ukraine as well. These are matters not usually publicized, but they are not secret either. A simple telephone call to the HURI would have produced this information.

The institute has developed several programs not only for academics, but practitioners - government officials, businessmen and others. One such program has been an intensive, weeklong Summer Seminar on contemporary Ukraine that dozens of participants have attended. Another is a Mid-Career Training Program that has allowed professionals to spend several months or a year at the institute to deepen their knowledge of Ukraine. Participants have included journalists and officers of the U.S. Army; this year the institute will host a desk officer from the Department of State. Three members of HURI serve on the steering committee of the Harvard Kennedy School's Ukrainian Security Program that has already brought 30 military officers and senior government officials from Ukraine to Harvard for executive training and will continue for some years. All these programs have been funded by participant fees or outside grants.

Not least in importance are the conferences organized by the HURI on contemporary themes. In 1994 the institute held a conference on "The Military Tradition in Ukrainian History" that was attended by officials and policy-makers from Washington and Kyiv. (The proceedings have been published, but apparently overlooked by Dr. Kuropas in his search for more exotic material.) A spin-off from this event was the subsequent yearlong residence at Harvard of Ukraine's first minister of defense, Gen. Kostiantyn Morozov, whose public presentations and private meetings in Cambridge and Washington were of great significance for Ukraine. (Gen. Morozov also worked on his soon-to-be-published memoirs, an extremely important source for the history of Ukrainian independence that will be of great interest to the general public.)

In April 1996 the HURI sponsored a symposium on the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster. Then, in connection with Ukraine's fifth anniversary of independence, in December 1996, in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine, the HURI organized an international conference in Washington devoted to Ukrainian foreign relations and security. With ambassadors and other high-ranking diplomats from a dozen countries in attendance, and Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski as keynote speaker, The Ukrainian Weekly termed the conference ""perhaps the most high-powered cast assembled during the year" (December 29, 1996). The proceedings, with additional material, are to be published in the forthcoming volume of the much-maligned (by Dr. Kuropas) Harvard Ukrainian Studies, as well as separately. The HURI's commemoration of Ukraine's independence concluded with a three-day symposium on domestic issues in July 1997. Again, all these programs were funded through outside grants, including support from the U.S. government and private foundations. In short, this is hardly the record of an institution lost in the mists of esoterica that Dr. Kuropas unfortunately presents to The Weekly's readers.

The second charge made by Dr. Kuropas is that Harvard academics live "blissfully oblivious to the rest of us" - that is, the Ukrainian American community. This is an especially unjust and hurtful accusation. The HURI has always felt its debt to, and therefore obligation to assist, the community that has so generously supported it. Dr. Kuropas may be forgiven, perhaps, if he is unaware of the hundreds of hours that institute staff, especially its librarian, spend in researching and answering inquiries from across the nation and abroad - from high school students writing term papers, through third-generation Americans seeking to discover their roots, to senior citizens anxious to learn what is transpiring in their native region. Or how frequently these "ivory-tower" academics are called upon by local communities to provide speakers for the Shevchenko "akademiyi" and independence celebrations, or to address, for instance, the Massachusetts legislature at commemorations of the Ukrainian famine-genocide of 1932. Or how often the HURI makes its premises available for community organizations, from Plast to the Children of Chornobyl committee, or uses its auspices to obtain access to Harvard facilities for cultural programs, such as the Bandura Choir concert, saving the community thousands of dollars in rental fees.

However, Dr. Kuropas should know about the almost 30 years of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute and the almost 2,000 students, most of them young members of the Ukrainian American community, who have benefited from its programs - often at greatly reduced tuition rates. Perhaps he may also remember the special two-part series "Five Years of Independent Ukraine" offered by HURI scholars to the readers of The Ukrainian Weekly (August 18 and 25, 1996), of which one reader wrote to the editor: "Congratulations on your best edition ever ... Judging from the content, all of you spent countless hours on research, interviews and editing" (October 6, 1996). And indeed we had, both as a service and a token of appreciation to the community that has supported us.

The third charge, based on a cursory perusal of Volume XIX of Harvard Ukrainian Studies, is that the institute unjustifiably "provid[es] a forum for Russian studies." Here a number of points need to be made. The uninitiated reader will not know that this volume was published as a special tribute to Prof. Edward Keenan. Prof. Keenan has for 30 years been among the strongest supporters of Ukrainian studies at Harvard, engaged in every aspect of the institute's activities: as a member of its executive committee, editorial board of the journal and other publication series, and in many other capacities. He also has been a revolutionary figure in reconceptualizing Russian and Slavic studies, including the vexing problem of Russian claims to Kyivan Rus'. His fundamental positions on these questions have always coincided with those of Ukrainian specialists. A tribute to him was not only appropriate, but required by our appreciation for his untiring support.

A collection of this sort traditionally contains contributions chiefly by the honoree's former students and colleagues. Some of them have indeed written on medieval Muscovite topics - that is their specialty. Tributes to Profs. Omeljan Pritsak and Ihor Sevcenko, published earlier, contained contributions by Turkologists and Byzantinologists, respectively. That is a reflection of the traditional nature of such publications. They also have the added benefit of drawing Ukrainian studies into the broader sphere of international scholarship.

But a further point is in order. It is in fact a great advantage to Ukrainian scholarship that the Ukrainian Institute participates in the evolution of Russian studies in the United States and internationally. It was, indeed, partly a reaction to the then existing state of Russian and Slavic studies, and dominance of Russian emigres in the field, that led the Ukrainian community to support the creation of Ukrainian chairs and a Research Institute at Harvard. It was never a mission of HURI to isolate Ukrainian studies within the confines of its own walls, but to participate in and influence the broader field of Slavistics. To have scholarly treatments of Russia based on objective, critical study, rather than a continuing reflection of the imperial Russian tradition, is certainly in the best interest of Ukrainian scholarship.

Finally, we need make no apology for engaging in what may be termed "pure scholarship." Yes, we offer lectures on the phonology of northeastern Ukrainian dialects, and we publish Ottoman sources on the slave trade in the 15th century, as well as articles on the Laodicean Epistle. And yes, academics do conduct a scholarly dialogue with other academics, as physicians communicate with each other, and opera singers exchange experiences on performance styles. That is true of any profession. However, scholarly activities conducted at HURI, even if "arcane" in Dr. Kuropas' jaundiced view, produce long-term benefits not only in the realm of academe - their prime forum, after all - but for the Ukrainian American community more broadly, and even in Ukraine.

Through his columns, Dr. Kuropas has often made valuable contributions by enhancing knowledge and raising the consciousness of The Ukrainian Weekly's readers. He should continue to do so by concentrating on those issues of community development in which he has a unique expertise. He should not, however, provide a gross disservice to that same community by seeking non-existing enemies within such institutions as the Ukrainian Research Institute, whose faculty, associates and staff are no less dedicated to matters Ukrainian than he himself.

Lubomyr Hajda is associate director of the Ukrainian Research Institute and editor of Harvard Ukrainian Studies.