Ignorance of Soviet Russia’s violently repressive imperialist history and the uncritical adoption of language that echoes modern Kremlin disinformation has landed the University of Toronto’s education faculty in hot water. Article content
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) — which offers graduate degrees in teaching — is currently leading an educational research project that risks legitimizing Russian state narratives that seek to marginalize and delegitimize nations once colonized by the Soviet Union, including Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine.
The fallout is sparking diplomatic concern from all three Baltic embassies, which have formally expressed their concerns to the university.
Titled “Post-Soviet Canadian Diaspora Youth and Their Families,” the project claims to explore the integration experiences of youth whose families came to Canada from countries colonized and oppressed by Soviet Russia. While its stated intent may indeed be to foster a deeper understanding of these communities, the project’s language and conceptual framing are historically inaccurate, politically insensitive, and risk reinforcing harmful Kremlin-aligned stereotypes about the very groups it aims to study.
By lumping together all nations once occupied by Soviet Russia into a single “post-Soviet” identity, the project risks distorting the unique histories, cultures and political experiences of Canadians who are of Baltic and Ukrainian heritage, as well as all nations that were violently subjected to Soviet cultural annihilation. Worse, this framing unintentionally echoes Russian propaganda efforts that seek to blur the line between occupier and occupied, casting doubt on the legitimacy of these nations.
…
This is National Post right wing scaremongering and attacking academic freedom. “Risks legitimizing” is absolutely ridiculous language that tries to put weird meta-limits on academic freedom.
This is a funded SSHRC project, which means it had to be written up as a research grant proposal which was then vigorously peer reviewed at the federal funding agency level. For this framing to be accepted it means that in this scientific community, this framing is a valid epistemological framework.
Then if you read the actual project page, as opposed to the National fucking Post you see clearly written:
Disclaimer
This research project is an exploratory, education-focused inquiry grounded in the principles of the need for impactful evidence-based policy research, academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and social and ethical responsibility towards participants (and policy impact). It seeks to understand and inform educational policies and practices in Canada by engaging with the lived experiences of Canadian immigrant communities now residing in the GTA/Ontario and who came from Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Caucasus and Central Asia—countries that regained or gained independence following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
This project does not carry any political or ideological agenda. We are aware of the complex history of the Soviet Union, including the widespread experiences of oppression along national, linguistic, religious, class, and other lines. We are also aware of the contested nature and various uses of terms such as “post-Soviet”. Our usage of this term is meant exclusively to describe countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.
Importantly, our study’s principal focus is on these communities’ Canadian educational experiences. However, given that attitudes towards Canadian education are influenced by participants’ prior knowledge and experience, and the qualitative-constructivist paradigm of the study, our participants often explain by sharing their educational experiences before coming to Canada, including those from both pre-independence and independence periods.
We are committed to the responsible and respectful use of data and language in our analysis and reporting.
Which means that the researchers are engaging actively with the actual problematic epistemological limits of the framing. This is what actual scholarship looks like, whereas the National Post hit piece is only interested in a sensationalized moral panic playing on right wing stereotypes about academia.
A recent article showing how mediocre the National Post is aside from just making stuff up but a basic seriousness level.
This a a rather long ass article talking about how Carney winks and it’s a problem.
are you claiming that nation protesting the language or assumptions are also right-wing propaganda? In times of renewed russian aggression one has to be rather precise describing reality and qualify when terminology used is referring terminology from the past. Fact is that russia frequently leapfrogs ambiguous statements twisting them into supporting argument of their narratives.
Alright you used a lot of words to basically say you need to be precise in your language to make sure Russia doesn’t use them as statements of support, correct? If correct, please explain how looking at the this communities educational experiences will do that.
you didn’t answer to the issue some of the affected nations have with the language.
