At Moscow university, a debate: Ban politics or risk the Kremlin's wrath?

Russia’s second-largest and most progressive state-funded university is facing a dilemma.

On one hand, the Higher School of Economics (HSE), which has openly modeled itself on Western university traditions, generally espouses freedom of speech, and its spacious, modern downtown Moscow campuses are a known bastion of liberal moods. But as Russia heads into a period of potential political turmoil with a constitutional shake-up in the works, anything that looks like destabilizing political activity could bring the wrath of officialdom down upon the school.

So HSE has just enacted a controversial set of new rules to separate itself from the political arena. That includes banning explicit political activities on campus, defunding student media, demanding that students and faculty who do engage

A politically active campus“Students are not happy”“Politics is life”