krasilnikova jr.

This is incredibly close to home, but also from a very distant past. Nastya Krasilnikova, one of the most important and consequential Russian investigative journalist, just published her new multi-year investigation of sexual abuse in Russian and international high schools: adultsintheroom.libolibo.me/. Some of the abusers are on the run, some are still professors or PhD students at prestigious Western universities. This is close to home as one of the abusers had worked, for many years, in my high school #57, the best and most prestigious Moscow high schools for many years. For those who love Russia, he was featured, with his family, in famous documentary "My Perestroika", shot years before the abuse started. I even taught, part-time, a class with some of his victims, and cannot forgive myself for not knowing then. In 2016, I was the chair of the alumni commission that issued a short report on the matter - the first (and the last) time sexual abuse in Russian high schools and those who tolerated it for years were publicly condemned. I do not know much about the Sambation summer school and other episodes of abuse investigated in the podcast, but I hope that @goetheuni and @AarhusUni_int, the current employers of some of the protagonists will pay attention. It is an embarrassment that @nyuniversity features under the hashtag #institutionalbetrayal. This is not the first Nastya's investigation of sexual abuse in prestigious Russian schools - and you cannot imagine the backlash she and her team (and of course heroic victims going public) faced even before the war. The discussions that the West has painfully gone through decades ago - Is it really fine for teachers to sleep with high school students? - and still taboo for many people.