Deputy PM to attend R-4 meeting in Istanbul as US-Iran negotiations stall

The post Pakistan’s Dar arrives in Turkey after UK visit for regional security talks appeared first on BOL News.

Um homem de 30 anos perdeu a vida este domingo na sequência de um despiste de motociclo na Segunda Circular, em Lisboa, segundo a agência Lusa.

O alerta do acidente foi registado pelas autoridades às 04:51. De acordo com fonte da PSP, em declarações à LUSA, o sinistro não envolveu outros veículos e as causas que estiveram na origem do despiste permanecem, até ao momento, desconhecidas.

30/08/2026
Por: Dino Frazão

Se ainda não é seguidor da nossa página, siga-nos para ver mais conteúdos e ficar a par de toda a informação!

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O conteúdo Motociclista morre em despiste na Segunda Circular em Lisboa aparece primeiro em OS MONHACAS.

CHICAGO: Corn and wheat futures have rallied to their highest prices in more than three years, though the factors driving the gains for each crop remain distinctly different. Wheat futures settled Friday at $7.84 per bushel, up 3.1% on the day, after hitting an intraday peak of $7.9025, the highest level since Feb. 14, 2023. ... Read more

The post Corn, wheat prices surge to multi-year highs on divergent supply threats appeared first on BOL News.

Um motociclista de 32 anos ficou gravemente ferido, na tarde deste sábado, após a colisão entre a moto em que seguia e um automóvel, em Ovar. Do mesmo sinistro resultaram ainda mais dois feridos ligeiros.

O alerta para o acidente rodoviário, ocorrido no acesso à A29, foi dado por volta das 15h30. Para o local foram acionados os Bombeiros Voluntários de Ovar e a equipa da Viatura Médica de Emergência e Reanimação (VMER) da Feira, segundo os Bombeiros Voluntários de Ovar.

Todas as vítimas foram socorridas no local e posteriormente transportadas pelas equipas de socorro para o Hospital de São Sebastião, na Feira.

Por: Dino Frazão
Data: 29 de agosto de 2026
OSMONHACAS.COM

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O conteúdo Acidente em Ovar provoca um ferido grave e dois ligeiros aparece primeiro em OS MONHACAS.

Este fim de semana , surpreenda-se em São Brás de Alportel.

Sábado, 29

A manhã começa no Mercado Municipal, com mais uma edição dos Sábados no Mercado. No Espaço Animação, há demonstração gastronómica apresentada pela Chef Ana Rita Clemente.

À noite, a partir das 20h00, a Sociedade Recreativa Alportelense convida para uma Noite de Fados ao Luar, com Beatriz Pereira e Yasmin da Silva, acompanhada de jantar. Uma iniciativa da Sociedade Recreativa Alportelense.

Também às 20h00, o Oribá Café Cultural recebe um Sunset, numa iniciativa do próprio espaço, para encerrar o fim de semana ao ritmo da música e do convívio.Este fim-de-semana convida ainda a passar pelo Polidesportivo Gonçalo Assunção para assistir à 1ª Meia Maratona de Futsal promovida pela Casa do Benfica de São Brás de Alportel.

Este fim-de-semana convida ainda a passar pelo Polidesportivo Gonçalo Assunção para assistir à 1ª Meia Maratona de Futsal promovida pela Casa do Benfica de São Brás de Alportel.

Sábado, 29A manhã começa no Mercado Municipal, com mais uma edição dos Sábados no Mercado. No Espaço Animação, há demonstração gastronómica apresentada pela Chef Ana Rita Clemente.À noite, a partir das 20h00, a Sociedade Recreativa Alportelense convida para uma Noite de Fados ao Luar, com Beatriz Pereira e Yasmin da Silva, acompanhada de jantar. Uma iniciativa da Sociedade Recreativa Alportelense.Também às 20h00, o Oribá Café Cultural recebe um Sunset, numa iniciativa do próprio espaço, para encerrar o fim de ao ritmo da música e do convívio.Este fim-de-semana convida ainda a passar pelo Polidesportivo Gonçalo Assunção para assistir à 1ª Meia Maratona de Futsal promovida pela Casa do Benfica de São Brás de Alportel.Já sabe… em São Brás de Alportel, Viva Mais!

Mustafa Kamal takes responsibility for the PIMS tragedy as Parliament moves to investigate the deaths and hold those responsible accountable.

The post ‘Matter will not die down’: Health Minister vows action over 14 newborn deaths appeared first on BOL News.

A U.S. defense official said the most concerning shortfall involves Patriot missile interceptors, which can shoot down Russia’s high-speed ballistic missiles.

The hearing gave consumers and investors an opportunity to share their experiences directly.

The post CCP records competition concerns at open hearing on real estate sector appeared first on BOL News.

The two sides discussed a joint plan to clear mines from the Strait of Hormuz.

The post Iran, Qatar discuss clearing mines, securing Strait of Hormuz appeared first on BOL News.

A CBSA report alleges that as a deputy director in Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade, Abbas Omidi, assisted the regime's state sponsorship of terrorism.

O Município de São Brás de Alportel manifesta o seu profundo pesar pelo falecimento de Maria da Conceição, aos 113 anos de idade, a mulher mais idosa de Portugal.

Carinhosamente conhecida como “Rainha” na Estrutura Residencial para Idosos da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de São Brás de Alportel, onde residia, Maria da Conceição nasceu em 1912, dois anos antes da fundação do concelho de São Brás de Alportel.

Ao longo dos seus 113 anos de vida, foi testemunha de momentos marcantes da história de Portugal e do mundo, atravessando diferentes épocas e profundas transformações do país, desde o nascimento do concelho de São Brás de Alportel até à democracia, à integração de Portugal na União Europeia e à atualidade.

Ao longo dos anos, a sua longevidade e a sua história de vida foram motivo de carinho e reconhecimento por parte da comunidade são-brasense, que acompanhou e celebrou vários dos seus aniversários.

Em setembro de 2020, durante uma visita oficial ao concelho, o então Presidente da República, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, teve oportunidade de conhecer Maria da Conceição. Desde então, fez questão de lhe dirigir uma mensagem de parabéns por ocasião do seu aniversário.

Mulher de atitude e boa disposição , Maria da Conceição conquistou o carinho de todos os que com ela privaram, deixando na memória de quem a conheceu a marca de uma personalidade singular e de uma vida extraordinariamente longa.

O Município de São Brás de Alportel recorda, com respeito, carinho e gratidão, esta são-brasense que deixa uma história de vida singular, marcada por mais de um século de memórias e vivências.

À família e muito especialmente à Santa Casa da Misericórdia, à que foi família, com uma dedicação e abnegação inexcedíveis, o Município apresenta as mais sentidas condolências, com profunda gratidão.

On July 23, the U.S. Department of Defense published a new list of organizations that, according to its assessment, pose a threat to U.S. national security or are engaged in problematic activity. The list includes Moscow State University, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the Higher School of Economics, Ural Federal University, and numerous other universities and research institutes. The Pentagon believes that these organizations may aim to steal American intellectual property, research data, technologies, and scientific innovations. The Department therefore urges American universities, research institutes, and individual scholars receiving Department of Defense funding not to collaborate with them in any way, exchange data, or provide financial support. Notably, this list is not identical to existing U.S. sanctions lists (read more: “Scientific Front: Who in Russian Science Ended Up Under Western Sanctions — and Why”) and it appeared at a time when, according to Reuters, the U.S. administration has significantly reduced efforts to enforce sanctions against Russia. T-invariant explores what this new policy means for American and Russian academia, how it differs from sanctions law, and who is likely to be affected. 

T-INVARIANT BRIEFING

The restrictions certainly apply to:

• Researchers affiliated with the listed organizations and working in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, technology, and defense-related fields.
• American universities and colleges receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.

They are highly likely to affect:

• All employees of listed institutions, regardless of their academic discipline.
• Students of the listed universities when applying to conferences or submitting articles to journals affiliated with American universities or companies.
• Universities, colleges, research institutes, think tanks, and other organizations worldwide that receive funding from the U.S. government.

The restrictions might affect:

• Students and graduates of these institutions when applying to American universities.
• Universities in third countries participating in projects funded by the U.S. government.
• Researchers at other universities and institutes in Russia, Iran, and China.

The list was issued as an implementation of Section 1286 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2019. The NDAA is a law that is issued every year and that determines the structure and budget of the U.S. military, including troop numbers, defense spending, modernization programs, and other issues. However, alongside military provisions, Congress also includes neighboring measures, such as foreign policy objectives, and funding allocation. The 2019 NDAA received broad bipartisan support and was signed by President Donald Trump. Compared with previous versions, it increased the military budget, while shifting America’s strategic focus in foreign policy away from counterterrorism toward long-term competition with China and Russia, with considerably greater emphasis on China. This legislation was especially discussed in the media due to the restrictions of Section 889 targeting Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE.

As part of the same great power competition strategy, Congress included provisions designed to protect American academic research from foreign influence and intellectual property theft. Section 1286, which received the updated list of “problematic organizations,” is titled Initiative to support protection of national security academic researchers from undue influence and other security threats and it specifically addresses universities conducting defense and technology research. Although Congress passes a new NDAA every year, the Pentagon continues updating the same list of the Section 1286 of NDAA 2019 because the 2019 law explicitly requires the Department of Defense to revise it on a regular basis. The July 23 publication is therefore not a new law, but the latest update of an existing mechanism. Being published every year, these updates all have special emphasis, relevant for the moment. For instance, the 2025 version is primarily aimed at preventing foreign influence over research sponsored by the Department of Defense. 

Such activities as funding sanctioned organizations, or exchanging data, were already prohibited by sanctions laws. Also, scholars employed by those organizations could not participate in conferences, or get published in the leading journals if they maintained formal affiliations. There are three fundamental points of difference between the new Pentagon list and sanctions: who is affected, who enforces the law, and what the consequences of violations are. 

Who is affected?

Previous sanctions and earlier lists (such as the 2023 Section 1286 list) targeted a relatively small number of universities involved mainly in military technology development or, in Russia’s case, in promoting state propaganda. Moreover, the restrictions were generally limited to individual representatives or to specific institutes. Before the new list appeared, the largest Russian research center to be included in such restrictions in its entirety was Skolkovo, which was added in 2023 – and in that case, it was hardly surprising.

This time, however, the Pentagon included 13 Russian universities as whole bodies,  and those were not only institutions specializing in engineering, physics, and biology, but also several major multidisciplinary universities, including Moscow State University (MSU), the Higher School of Economics (HSE), and Ural Federal University (UrFU). Several of China’s leading multidisciplinary universities, including Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, were also added. HSE employees, speaking on condition of anonymity, told T-invariant  that until now they had been able to collaborate with Western universities as private researchers without listing their affiliation, they participated in conferences online and sometimes even in person, conducted joint research, and published articles.

However, the wording of the new document makes it possible to extend the restrictions to employees of the listed organizations themselves. This means that concealing one’s institutional affiliation and presenting oneself as an independent researcher may no longer be sufficient to circumvent the restrictions: any collaboration between American researchers and scholars who are simply employed by universities on the list falls under Pentagon restrictions. Moreover, even though most organizations on the list conduct research in physics, technology, and such, the policy could affect physicians, historians, and even scholars of the Swahili language.

Who enforces the restrictions?

Another noteworthy aspect is that these measures operate through the National Defense Authorization Act, meaning they are administered by the Department of Defense, unlike the traditional sanctions system. Sanctions are often described as decisions made by the U.S. government as a whole, but departments matter. In reality, Sanctions legislation is passed through Congress or came in force by a presidential decree, and enforcement is typically carried out by either the Treasury Department or the Department of Commerce. But this list is neither a sanction imposed for specific actions, nor a punishment for participating in war or violating the law. Instead, it is presented as a preventive measure designed to protect American research and technology from national security threats. Meanwhile, the official sanctions lists themselves do not receive any updates, and President Trump has repeatedly signaled a willingness to improve relations with leaders of countries that remain under U.S. sanctions. 

The Department of Defense is publishing this update because it is legally required to. At the same time, it does not provide any specific evidence demonstrating that every organization included is “engaging in activities that threaten U.S. national security interests.” The use of national security and foreign influence concerns as justifications for government intervention in science, media, and business is all too familiar from the Russian experience and feels rather unsettling. That is why it is important to understand what this policy means not only for Russian science, but also for American academia.

[[socialnetworks]]

After taking office, President Trump began exerting significant pressure on American universities. His primary targets were campus protests and the promotion of woke ideas concerning equality and the rights of gender, racial, and sexual minorities. The principal tool was the threat of cutting off federal funding. Yet even during Trump’s first presidency, the administration had already started intervening in universities through the concerns of espionage, and in 2018, the Department of Justice launched the China Initiative. According to the MIT Technology Review, the effectiveness of the initiative is highly questionable, partly because the Department of Justice never clearly explained its concrete objectives beyond broad references to protecting American technology and combating espionage. It also failed to clarify the criteria used to initiate investigations. Information about many cases never appeared on official government websites, some records were removed following media inquiries and requests for comment, and only about one quarter of the cases received actual convictions. Moreover, many prosecutions had no obvious connection to national security. This precedent is especially significant in light of the new Section 1286 list, as a precedent. As follows from the name of the programme, approximately 90% of those prosecuted under China Initiative were scholars of Chinese origin, and members of Asian diasporas were subjected to disproportionate scrutiny by law enforcement. MIT Technology Review argues that one of the initiative’s most damaging consequences was the brain drain of highly qualified researchers from the United States. Scientists and scholars were leaving because of the discrimination and pressure from the law enforcement, and it became harmful for the American science itself.

During President Biden’s administration, the espionage agenda receded somewhat into the background, but it reemerged, as Trump took office again. On March 26, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce heard reports on the activities of foreign intelligence services on university campuses. Once again, the discussion focused primarily on alleged espionage involving Chinese students, the recruitment of American students on campus, and cases in which researchers were drawn into projects without being informed on the true purpose of the research. It is worth noting that in his opening remarks, the committee chair emphasized that international collaborations should benefit America rather than its rivals. This idea contradicts the traditional understanding of academia as a transnational space for free exchange of knowledge. International conferences, academic and cultural exchanges, collaborative research, and multinational projects have advanced and benefited science worldwide for decades. As with the China Initiative, extending the logic of national security into universities and scientific research challenges this principle and contributes to the isolation of American science.

At the same time, it would be wrong to deny that espionage, foreign interference in academia and business, and theft of American intellectual property do exist. Roughly one quarter of China Initiative prosecutions ended in convictions, and over the past year, several cases have emerged involving Chinese intelligence agents infiltrating American academic institutions. But these cases differ in one respect, crucial for the NDAA 2019 list: the spies concealed their connections to Chinese universities, military structures, or intelligence agencies. They would typically enter the United States as students, visiting researchers, fellows, or even professors while hiding their institutional ties. They transferred research data and intelligence to the Chinese government, smuggled research materials into or out of the country – it seems that Ksenia Petrova was detained because of this atmosphere of heightened suspicion within academia.

There were also cases of recruiting American students and professors, but it generally happened through malign foreign talent recruitment programs, in which American researchers participated without being informed who would ultimately receive the results of their work or for what purpose. The 2024 version of the Pentagon list was specifically aimed at preventing this practice.

An even more common instrument of espionage has been cyberattacks, like the case reported recently by The Insider. In this case, Microsoft uncovered a scheme that allowed hackers to gain access to data from every device connected to compromised hotel Wi-Fi networks during academic conferences.

Journalist Roman Dobrokhotov described the method for the TVRain channel: “When you try to log in, your credentials get stolen. In the worst case scenario, you’re prompted to download software or click ‘OK’ or ‘YES,’ and a real spyware virus gets onto your laptop. It steals all your passwords and captures everything you type on the keyboard. If a conference has a thousand participants, it is enough just for two or three people to download the malware for the operation to succeed.” According to The Insider, “the group primarily targets governments, diplomatic missions, NGOs, and IT companies in the United States and Europe in order to collect intelligence supporting Russian foreign policy.” 

All of these espionage cases share an important point: every time, the perpetrators concealed the affiliations with the organizations they were truly working for, they frequently used false documents, or even operated remotely. This raises a doubt as to the effectiveness of a ban on cooperation with specific universities. Such a policy is unlikely to counter the methods actually used to steal research data.

How grave are the consequences?

The third major difference between this list and sanctions packages lies in the mechanism of the restrictions: the Department of Defense does not put a ban on the activities of the listed organizations, but it is restricting its own ability to fund them. The universities included in the list, their employees, or American scholars – none of them will face prosecution by law enforcement. However, the Pentagon restricts its ability to provide funding to universities, institutes, or individual researchers who continue collaborating with listed organizations or their employees, or who use their equipment.

At first glance, it might seem that losing such a niche source of funding would hardly affect fields unrelated to the military. For instance, professor of Russian literature Oleg Lekmanov, who taught at Princeton University, expressed precisely this view: “As I see it, this is not relevant to the humanities, because no one from the military sector offers us funding in the first place.” However, the Pentagon has numerous programs and foundations that finance research, and not only in fields related to defense, but also in biology, psychology, medicine, linguistics, the social sciences, and area studies. For instance, Natalia Korbo, a former targeting analyst for the U.S. State Department Economic Bureau, confirmed to T-invariant that the Department of Defense supports an exceptionally broad range of projects, particularly in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Moreover, funding extends well beyond STEM disciplines. For example, the Minerva Initiative distributes long- and short-term grants for research intended to help the Department of Defense better understand future challenges and prepare for them. Thus, the participating projects cover a range of disciplines. According to Science, Minerva allocated $24.8 million in 2024 alone to projects involving artificial intelligence, climate change, and migration. Yet, the Science reports that the initiative had already begun drastically reducing its funding, even for projects that appeared directly relevant to defense interests. Among those unexpectedly terminated were studies examining the factors that motivate military personnel to remain in service and the conditions that prevent the collapse of international alliances. And now, it might become even more difficult to obtain Pentagon funding, since applicants will have to demonstrate that no member of a project is affiliated with any organization on the list of “the undesirables.”

Apart from research, the Department of Defense provides funding for educational purposes. It awards scholarships to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students studying languages and regions considered “critical to America’s security,” and it sponsors academic centers devoted to these fields.

Judging by the Trump administration’s foreign-policy priorities, particular attention is currently being drawn to South America and the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia remain areas of strategic interest as well. Consequently, the publication of the NDAA 2019 list will affect not only researchers in biochemistry, physics, engineering, and technology, but potentially also scholars studying Latin American music or Chinese dance if their academic center receives Pentagon funding.

Moreover, it is unclear whether the funding will be lost only by a project or an institute who maintains ties with a banned organization, or the research of the whole university will be considered compromised in case one body continues collaborations. It is entirely possible that if even one department within a university depends on Department of Defense funding, restrictions on collaboration with listed organizations could apply to the university as a whole.

Furthermore, the preamble to the document contains another provision that may substantially broaden its practical impact. Formally, the list applies only to Department of Defense grants, scholarships, contracts, and other financial support. However, it also warns that cooperation with listed organizations may negatively impact scholars’ eligibility for federal funding. And that is a much more serious prospect. The U.S. federal government finances roughly half of all research and maintenance expenditures at American universities and colleges. Federal money also supports countless scholarships, research grants, and academic conferences. In this light, universities will hardly risk losing access to federal funding, even if the document merely warns of possible consequences rather than imposing an explicit prohibition.

Denis Simon, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, argues that the U.S. government has effectively stopped distinguishing between leading civilian universities and institutions engaged in security-related research. He also believes American organizations will most likely interpret the conditions of the NDAA 2019 list very broadly. Simon further suggests that universities may begin limiting interaction not only with the organizations explicitly named on the list, but also with other research institutes in Russia, China, and Iran.

A similar concern is expressed by Evgeny Roshchin, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Policy of the SAIS School of Advanced International Studies: “On the one hand, the document concerns the research funded through Department of Defense grants. On the other hand, the disciplinary boundaries are not specified. That means it could apply to virtually any field of research, including economics, if it is financed through Pentagon grants. Researchers applying for federal grant competitions will also have to disclose all of their connections with people affiliated with organizations on the list. The existence of such connections may reduce their chances of receiving funding. I believe this will become the main deterrent. Of course, everything will depend on how the rules are applied, but the policy could seriously damage academic cooperation, because some researchers might choose to abandon perfectly legitimate collaborations simply to avoid the risk.”

According to research data, international collaboration is a significant driver of scientific progress. Natalia Korbo believes that while some restrictions are understandable, a blanket prohibition is deeply misguided:

“I understand the logic behind banning joint research in fields like bioengineering or physics, although spies are smart enough not to be affiliated with problematic institutions. But prohibiting all collaboration is simply foolish. It will harm both American science and scientific research worldwide. The restrictions will absolutely affect cultural studies as well. Even the closure of the Confucius Institutes had negative consequences for Americans themselves. Yes, those institutes promoted the Chinese government’s propaganda, but in most American cities they were also the only places where people could learn Chinese. These kinds of bans, like the TikTok ban, are often poorly thought out and produce enormous collateral damage.”

A similar view is shared by Anton Kapustin, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology: “First, I believe these are serious restrictions, and they extend well beyond defense-related research. Originally, they applied only to projects sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. But similar restrictions have since been introduced for grants from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies. In practice, they now affect almost all federal grants. Second, the list of proscribed entities grows every year. Now it includes MIPT, HSE, and Moscow State University. If a student has co-authored publications with researchers from these institutions, any American university will think twice before admitting that student to a PhD program, because it will most likely be unable to pay their stipend using federal grant money. There are still many uncertainties, of course, but I think universities will prefer to be overcautious. And obtaining visas will also become more difficult for such students. So the consequences could be very serious.”

Thus, for Russian researchers, the publication of the list may result in profound professional difficulties. But how capable are these restrictions of protecting American interests? And is the loss of cooperation with Russian, Iranian, and Chinese colleagues truly significant for U.S. science?

Entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov argued in an interview with journalist Mikhail Fishman on TV Rain,  that Russian universities continue to produce exceptionally strong specialists: “Whatever we may say about Putin’s Russia, or Russia in general, its universities and education – especially in mathematics, computer science, physics, and chemistry – remain exceptionally strong, even compared with the United States. I still think Russian education firmly belongs among the world’s top five, and specialists from Russia are highly valued.”

Academic collaborations with China seem to be even more important for American science. Over the past decade, Chinese science has dramatically strengthened its global position. China ranks second in the world in the number of scientific publications. In 2024, for the first time, Chinese researchers published more papers in leading natural science journals than American scientists did, exceeding the US by 17%. Niccolò Pisani et al. emphasize that China’s success has been driven largely by international collaboration and sustained government investment. Consequently, the restriction of scientific cooperation with China can also have an objective of slowing China’s scientific progress. But such a strategy is likely to have limited effectiveness as long as other leading countries continue collaborating with Chinese researchers. Meanwhile, American science itself risks losing specialists and forfeiting one of its greatest competitive advantages: participation in the global scientific community.

As Denis Simon argues, “the policy is likely to accelerate the fragmentation of the US-China scientific relationship, including in fields that have traditionally relied on open exchanges and multinational research teams. It could also limit US researchers’ access to some of the world’s most productive scientific institutions.” Simon also questions whether the policy is genuinely capable of slowing China’s scientific development.

The publication of the 2025 Section 1286 list may therefore substantially limit cooperation between American researchers and colleagues from Russia, Iran, and China. Although at first glance, the restrictions appear to apply only to defense-related research, they are likely to affect a much broader range of academic disciplines. The precedent of prosecuting cases unrelated to security topics, set by the China Initiative, demonstrated that a program announced with narrow security objectives could, in practice, be applied much more broadly. Meanwhile, the threat of losing Pentagon funding and risk of losing eligibility for other forms of federal support are sufficiently serious that many universities are likely to abandon collaborations with listed institutions simply to avoid the risk. The inclusion of major civilian universities such as Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics potentially affects thousands of scholars who have no connection to military research. It will be harder if possible to participate in American conferences, conduct joint research, or publish in academic journals, even if they present themselves as independent researchers and do not list their institutional affiliation. Even the students from these universities, even though the restrictions do not formally prohibit them from applying to American colleges or universities, may face indirect consequences if institutions, fearing the loss of federal funding, begin extending these restrictions to graduates of listed universities as well. The policy may also affect universities outside the United States that are closely integrated into the American academic system, particularly those receiving U.S. funding. Such institutions may likewise begin limiting cooperation with researchers affiliated with organizations on the list.

Ultimately, the measures intended to protect American science may not only create serious obstacles for researchers from Russia, China, and Iran, but they may also undermine one of the fundamental strengths of American academia itself – international collaboration and the free exchange of knowledge.

The post New “Undesirables”: Why the Pentagon Is Restricting Cooperation with Moscow State University and Higher School of Economics appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.

Um experimento da Anistia Internacional mostrou que as medidas da Meta não estão sendo suficientes para combater a desinformação no Facebook na campanha eleitoral brasileira. A ONG internacional submeteu 14 anúncios com conteúdo desinformativo sobre as eleições brasileiras e um neutro. Oito foram aceitos, enquanto os sete restantes (incluindo o neutro) foram sinalizados para verificação de identidade por parecerem relacionados a uma questão social, eleição ou política, em vez de serem rejeitados especificamente por conterem desinformação eleitoral. Nenhum deles foi postado publicamente, portanto, os usuários não tiveram contato com o conteúdo.

Os 14 anúncios desinformativos do experimento da Anistia Internacional incluíam alegações de que as eleições de outubro deste ano seriam fraudadas e pedidos de intervenção militar. Com exceção do anúncio neutro, os 14 violaram as próprias políticas da Meta sobre desinformação, especificamente a seção relacionada à interferência na votação ou no comparecimento dos eleitores. A definição de desinformação da Meta inclui “conteúdo com potencial para interferir em processos políticos”.

Três de quatro anúncios que pediam intervenção militar foram aprovados. Um deles dizia: “Precisamos de uma revolução militar. Não vote nas eleições e os militares vão tomar o poder se houver menos de 50% de comparecimento nas urnas”.

O anúncio neutro foi incluído pela Anistia para testar a exigência de verificação de identidade feita pela Meta para a postagem de quaisquer conteúdos relacionados a eleições.

Segundo a ONG, a conta usada para o teste não concluiu o processo de verificação de identidade para manter o perfil mais neutro, de modo a evitar influência do algoritmo. Portanto, não há como saber se, caso fosse feita a verificação de identidade da conta, os anúncios seriam aceitos ou não.

Em 2025, o Facebook tinha 109,2 milhões de usuários no Brasil, segundo a plataforma de dados Statista; já o Instagram é mais popular e contava com 146 milhões de contas no mesmo ano. Os anúncios podem circular entre as plataformas.

Pouco tempo para as novas regras

De acordo com a descrição do experimento da Anistia Internacional, os anúncios refletiam “três táticas frequentemente utilizadas por políticos e candidatos para apoiar práticas autoritárias”: “deslegitimação eleitoral”, com conteúdos que minam a confiança no sistema de votação brasileiro e nos resultados; “construção do inimigo”, colocando adversários políticos e a Justiça como ameaças; e “autoritarismo com foco na segurança pública”, que traz o uso da força, da intervenção militar ou de um líder forte como respostas necessárias ao crime.

“Em vez de zelar pela participação eleitoral e pelo acesso à informação precisa, estes sistemas de moderação correm o risco de aprovar conteúdo nocivo [ao processo eleitoral]”, diz Ummar Bashir, pesquisador e consultor da Anistia para Inteligência Artificial e Direitos Humanos.

Os anúncios foram enviados de fora do Brasil, do escritório da Anistia em Londres, sem uso de VPN, recurso que poderia simular que o conteúdo fora postado em território nacional. Para a ONG, a aprovação é preocupante porque mostra “vulnerabilidades passíveis de exploração por atores nacionais ou estrangeiros que busquem influenciar processos eleitorais”.

A Meta não respondeu aos questionamentos da ONG sobre as falhas de moderação que permitiram ao Facebook aceitar os anúncios enganosos.

Questionada pela Pública, a empresa disse que investe “recursos significativos para proteger o processo eleitoral de 2026 no Brasil – da transparência em publicidade, líder do setor, à aplicação de protocolos rigorosos para anúncios sobre questões sociais, eleições ou política – e continuaremos a fazê-lo.” Afirmou ainda que o relatório da Anistia Internacional se baseou em uma amostra pequena de anúncios que nunca foram publicados. “Não reflete a escala do nosso trabalho. Nosso processo de análise de anúncios possui diversas camadas de análise e detecção, antes e depois deles serem publicados”.  

Em seu site institucional, a empresa informa que usa inteligência artificial para identificar, nos anúncios, conteúdos que possam violar suas políticas. Em seguida, segundo a empresa, o conteúdo é avaliado automaticamente ou por revisores humanos e, quando uma violação é confirmada, são aplicadas medidas como remoção, restrição ou rejeição dos anúncios, de acordo com os Padrões da Comunidade da Meta. Este conjunto de regras, de acordo com a companhia, “é baseado no feedback de usuários e especialistas em tecnologia, segurança pública e direitos humanos”.

Em 2025, dias antes da posse do presidente dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, o CEO da Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, anunciou uma mudança drástica nas políticas de moderação de conteúdo e checagem de dados. Segundo ele, a intenção era combater uma suposta “censura” promovida por checadores “enviesados”, dos quais ele prometeu se livrar.

“O teste da Anistia aponta motivos para preocupação, sim. No Brasil, estamos diante de uma nova exigência que altera bastante a forma de condução dos negócios de todas as plataformas, não só da Meta”, avalia Fernando Neisser, professor de Direito Eleitoral da FGV/SP. Ele se refere ao julgamento do Supremo Tribunal Federal que revisou o Artigo 19 do Marco Civil da Internet e decidiu, em 2025, que as plataformas não precisam esperar decisões judiciais para derrubar conteúdos.

Neisser lembra ainda as novas obrigações impostas pelos planos de conformidade entregues pelas plataformas ao TSE na primeira quinzena de agosto de 2026. Segundo o professor, eles determinam a necessidade de verificação temática de publicidade paga por parte das empresas de tecnologia. Os planos ainda não foram divulgados na íntegra até o fechamento desta reportagem.

“Para certos assuntos, como pornografia infantil, a verificação é fácil de ser feita com filtro automatizado. Mas é muito difícil ainda filtrar de forma automatizada temas tão contextuais, como discurso de ódio e atos antidemocráticos”, avalia Neisser, que diz que a aplicação dessas regras na eleição deste ano é pouco provável. “É muito difícil exigir a criação de mecanismos num prazo tão curto. Eles foram pedidos basicamente às vésperas do início do processo eleitoral. Não é crível imaginar uma mudança de procedimentos em um prazo tão exíguo”.

Para Jurema Werneck, diretora-executiva da Anistia Internacional Brasil, a forma como a Meta lida com a desinformação também contribui para o modelo de negócios da empresa de Zuckerberg. “O experimento mostra que a Meta não está fazendo o suficiente para impedir que sua plataforma seja um vetor de desinformação, ao mesmo tempo em que continua lucrando com os sistemas de conteúdo e publicidade que possibilitam sua disseminação”.

*Atualização às 15h18 de 25/08/2026: Inserimos o retorno da Meta.

The Belgian federal government has nominated Hans Kluge (pictured) for the position of Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“I am very honoured by the trust Belgium has placed in me and am grateful for the opportunity to take on this important responsibility,” Kluge said on X. “Serving the WHO has been the greatest privilege of my professional life.”

Kluge has served as WHO Regional Director for Europe since 2020 and began a second term in February 2025. Under WHO rules, he will step aside as WHO/Europe Director while campaigning for the role, a process that involves lobbying member states, NGOs and the organisation's largest funders.

Tried and tested
After qualifying as a doctor in Belgium, he began his international career with Médecins Sans Frontières in conflict settings in Liberia and Somalia. He subsequently coordinated tuberculosis programmes in Siberian prisons and across the former Soviet Union.

Kluge joined WHO in 1999, initially working on tuberculosis and HIV in...

Uma colisão entre duas viaturas ligeiras na A13, junto à localidade de Santa Cita, em Tomar, provocou este sábado, 22 de agosto, um morto e um ferido grave. O acidente levou ao corte total de estrada no sentido sul-norte.

O alerta foi dado pelas 13:13 através do 112. O sinistro ocorreu ao quilómetro 128 da Autostrada do Pinhal Interior, segundo a Proteção Civil.

Segundo o Comando Sub-Regional de Emergência e Proteção Civil do Médio Tejo, para o local foram mobilizados os Bombeiros de Tomar e de Vila Nova da Barquinha. À chegada, os meios de socorro encontraram duas vítimas em estado grave, tendo o óbito de uma delas sido declarado no local. A outra vítima foi transportada para a unidade hospitalar.

O ferido grave, uma mulher de 26 anos, foi transportado para o hospital de Abrantes e, a vítima mortal é um homem de 68 anos de Ferreira do Zêzere.

As duas vias no sentido sul-norte da A13 estiveram cortadas ao trânsito, segundo a mesma fonte. Foi acionado para o local o Núcleo de Investigação de Crimes em Acidentes de Viação (NICAVE) da GNR, que se encontra a apurar as causas do acidente.

Se ainda não segue a nossa página, siga para ficar a par de mais notícias e atualizações sobre o trânsito!

Por: Dino Frazão
Data: 22 de agosto de 2026

————————————————–
© 2026 Os Monhacas. Todos os direitos reservados.
Este é um projeto independente de criação de conteúdos.
Se gostou do que leu e ainda não é seguidor, siga a nossa página para ver mais conteúdos!
————————————————–

O conteúdo A13:Um morto e um ferido grave numa colisão entre duas viaturas ligeiras aparece primeiro em OS MONHACAS.

Smolny Beyond Borders, an online education project, has launched the Smolny Associate Degree program, with applications open through July 31. Over two years, students choose courses across a range of fields — the social sciences and humanities, the natural sciences, the arts, and literature. Graduates receive an Associate of Arts degree, which qualifies them to apply as transfer students to U.S. universities, entering in their second or third year (including Bard College, which will also offer third-year admission to its online program). T-invariant spoke with Denis Skopin, a philosopher who teaches at Smolny Beyond Borders, and Philip Fedchin, manager of the Smolny Beyond Borders Initiative and an online-education specialist, about how a liberal arts program was built in exile, whether serious humanities research is still possible in Russia today, and what the future holds for distance learning.

T-INVARIANT BACKGROUNDER

Denis Skopin

Born in 1976. Graduated from Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University. Defended his dissertation in philosophy in Paris in 2012. From 2012 to 2022 he taught at Smolny College (the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. Petersburg State University), most recently as an associate professor. He was fired from St. Petersburg State University after taking part in the protests against mobilization in September 2022. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 2023.

Philip Fedchin

Born in 1972. Holds a degree in art history from St. Petersburg State University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Limerick. From 1998 to 2020 he taught at Smolny College, serving as associate dean in 2011. Since 2020 he has worked as an online-education specialist at Bard College Berlin. Since November 2022 he has directed the Smolny Beyond Borders project.

T-invariant: Smolny College was one of Russia’s leading centers of humanities education. What were the milestones in the development of liberal arts education in Russia?

Philip Fedchin: Smolny College was founded in 1997, and the first class of degree students enrolled two years later. In 2011 the program became a full faculty of St. Petersburg State University — the Russian equivalent of a school or college. Together with Bard College we ran dual-degree programs at the bachelor’s level (all of our programs) and, in later years, at the master’s level (two of the seven). At any given time the college had as many as 600 students enrolled and about 150 instructors. All told, it offered 14 undergraduate majors and seven master’s programs. Over the years, Smolny graduated more than two thousand students. It was a one-of-a-kind experiment in interdisciplinary education on the liberal arts model. Two other institutions also tried to reproduce that model — Shaninka [the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences — T-invariant] and RANEPA [the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration — T-invariant]. At a certain point Smolny became one of the city’s leading centers of cultural and intellectual life, with a brilliant teaching staff and exceptionally strong students. But in June 2021, when Bard College was declared an “undesirable organization,” our project took a devastating blow.

T-i: What exactly did you do to get on the wrong side of the Justice Ministry? Why go after some of the world’s leading universities?

Denis Skopin: Officially, Bard College was declared “undesirable” because its activities “pose a threat to the constitutional order of the Russian Federation.” That formula can be stretched to cover just about anything. But as far as I know, the real reason was that Bard received funding from the Soros foundation — and the foundation itself was already on the list of “undesirable” organizations by then. It’s worth noting that this was only a pretext: the leadership of St. Petersburg State University had known perfectly well about Bard’s ties to the Open Society Foundations long before 2021. At the time it looked as though that fact was simply put to use to destroy an independent school, at the very moment when an attempt was under way to spin it off from the university and create a separate liberal arts institution. In hindsight it’s perfectly clear that the direction the college was taking, along with our partnership with Bard College — an institution whose policy rests on respect for human rights and academic freedom — ran counter to the “party line.”

T-INVARIANT BACKGROUNDER

The liberal arts are a model of higher education built on broad study across the humanities, the social and natural sciences, and the arts. The aim is to develop students’ critical thinking and communication skills, along with their ability to analyze information and draw conclusions. Within this model, students design an individual course of study and sample a range of disciplines. The system spread most widely at American colleges and universities in the mid-twentieth century. The first year — and very often the second — involves no specialization: during that period students are meant to work out what actually interests them. After the second year, a student declares a major. Because electives account for such a large share of the workload, students can often add a minor as well, and sometimes even a second major (a double major). The key point is that students make all of these decisions themselves, though with guidance from an academic advisor. Smolny College was the first program in Russia to operate on the liberal arts model. Today there are no institutions left in Russia that work this way.

T-i: Do you follow the academic work of your former colleagues who stayed in Russia? Is the range of what they can research narrowing under the pressure of repression? And is it still possible to do serious work in the humanities today, so long as you steer clear of obviously taboo subjects like the war or gender studies?

DS: I personally know a lot of competent, decent teachers who stayed in Russia. These are anti-war people, and their situation right now is not one you’d envy. The leading prewar educational projects in Russia have all fallen apart, one way or another. Smolny is gone. Shaninka has been shut down. HSE [the Higher School of Economics — T-invariant] has been thoroughly “purged” of disloyal faculty members. Russian higher education has withered before our eyes, in the space of just a few years. Faculty members who remain in the country can no longer say what they think. Before the full-scale invasion it was still possible, even as Russia was rapidly turning autocratic. Yes, there was administrative pressure, there were attempts to control what got taught, but what goes on in the administrators’ offices is one thing and what goes on in the classroom is another. Now that has changed: you can’t speak frankly with students, because sooner or later someone will report you. As the old line has it, “If twelve of you are plotting a conspiracy, one of you is bound to be a traitor.”

Researchers in Russia today are arguably worse off than they were in the Soviet Union. Back then, for instance, holders of a Doctor of Sciences degree [the higher of Russia’s two doctoral degrees — T-invariant] could order scholarly literature from abroad. Today Russian scholars’ access to foreign libraries is severely restricted. If you’re a historian or a literary scholar, say, some 80 percent of the foreign scholarly literature you need to read isn’t in Russian libraries, and you won’t find it in open access either. And that’s before you get to how much harder it now is for a Russian scholar to publish with a serious international academic press. My own book, for example, came out with Routledge in 2022, literally a month before the big war started. I find it hard to imagine a scholar living and working in Russia getting a monograph published by a Western press today.

T-i: What’s the bigger obstacle to cooperation between Russian and Western researchers: pressure from the authorities, or Western partners’ unwillingness to deal with an aggressor state?

DS: There is pressure from the administrations of Russian universities, but Western universities are hardly likely to work with scholars based inside Russia right now either. Before the full-scale invasion there were any number of joint projects, especially with Europe, which is right next door. After February 2022, collaborating with Russian institutions — state universities above all — simply became toxic. Which means that a researcher working with scholars in Russia has to be absolutely certain about the people involved: certain they haven’t signed pro-war letters or taken part in hounding their anti-war colleagues. Nobody can offer that kind of guarantee. So Western scholars don’t want to take on the responsibility. Of course, individual scholars had personal ties with Western colleagues, and those haven’t gone anywhere. But direct collaboration is on pause.

[[socialnetworks]]

T-i: Given everything you’ve described, how did your project come about in the first place? And tell us how it differs from other educational initiatives in exile — the Free University, for instance.

DS: In February 2022 the college was shut down in all but name. Officially it still exists, but in reality it’s a ruin, and as early as this year students will no longer be taught under the old liberal arts curriculum. The colleagues who left became the backbone of Smolny Beyond Borders. The core of our project consists of people who worked at Smolny College itself, and we’re carrying on the tradition Smolny had before the full-scale invasion. We started out as a set of standalone online courses, but last year we launched our first degree-granting online program.

That’s what sets us apart from many other online education projects: we are first and foremost an academic project. We don’t just let people sit in on our courses — we give our students a way to take their first step toward the global higher education system. We hold the relevant U.S. accreditation. Along with the Associate Degree, we also offer shorter certificate programs.

PREVIOUSLY IN T-INVARIANT

“Professors have no right to drag ideological preferences into the university.” Marina Kalashnikova on the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences in Montenegro

“Come New Year’s, an owl will fly in from the Ministry of Magic with a letter saying the license is gone.” Shaninka faculty on how the authorities destroyed one of Russia’s most important universities

Free education cannot be deemed “undesirable”

Universities in Exile: A Growing Industry

T-i: So this is a full-fledged online bachelor’s degree?

DS: It’s more like the first stage of one. Our program runs two years, and graduates receive an Associate of Arts degree, which allows them to continue their studies in person at one of the institutions affiliated with Bard College (assuming, naturally, that the transfer goes through). Starting in September 2027, Bard Global Degree plans to open a full online bachelor’s program, into which our graduates will be able to transfer as third-year students. That degree will have three broad majors: 1) philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE); 2) literary and media studies; 3) data science.

T-i: Plenty of applicants will choose an online program over an in-person one. What do you see as the prospects for distance higher education in exile?

DS: I think the remote format creates obstacles and opens up new horizons at the same time. Among the drawbacks is the physical and psychological strain on students, who have to spend several hours a week in front of a computer. As a teacher, I miss the live, human contact with students that the classroom always provided. That said, online learning has obvious advantages. Above all, it’s far cheaper: a university doesn’t have to maintain a campus or buy equipment, which means those costs aren’t passed on to students. Online education has also long since become mainstream — practically every large university now has a unit devoted to it. Tellingly, most Russian faculty members who left after the full-scale invasion began — around 90 percent, I’d guess — now work in online education projects in one form or another. For them it’s both a way to survive and a new professional niche.

Top news on scientists’ work and experiences during the war, along with videos and infographics — subscribe to the T-invariant Telegram channel to stay updated.

T-i: How closely does your curriculum follow Smolny College’s?

PF: The structure of the Smolny Associate Degree is identical to that of comparable Bard College programs, since the degree itself is Bard’s. But the teaching is done primarily by our own instructors. Not exclusively, though — Associate Degree students can also take courses from the Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century network, which widens their options considerably.

T-i: Do students pay tuition at Smolny Beyond Borders?

PF: Tuition is €5,000 a year. But we aren’t counting on tuition to bring in any real income, and we encourage everyone who can’t pay anything at all to apply.

All of our students currently receive substantial discounts, up to 100 percent, depending on what they can afford. In effect, you can complete two years at an American college practically for free (setting aside what a laptop and an internet connection cost) and then either try to transfer to a regular in-person institution — where tuition is a different matter, and whatever discounts exist depend on the school you’re transferring to — or apply and enroll as a third-year student in the online bachelor’s program, on roughly the same terms you had for those first two years.

T-i: What share of the prewar teaching staff now works at Smolny Beyond Borders? Do you hire instructors who haven’t taught in other liberal arts programs before?

PF: Of our 30 current instructors, roughly half once taught at Smolny College or were directly connected to it. But we also have people who taught at the European University at St. Petersburg, at Shaninka, and elsewhere.

T-i: The Associate Degree offers a wide range of courses, from philosophy to data science. On the one hand, that looks appealing to a Russian applicant used to narrowly specialized degree programs. On the other, plenty of people will ask themselves: “And what are my job prospects once I finish?” A lot of people have switched into survival mode, and it can feel like this is no moment for philosophy or art history — far better to study something applied that pays off quickly.

PF: If you look at global university rankings, American universities are at the top — and their undergraduate education is built on precisely this liberal arts model. Students get to choose a specialization not when they apply but later, once they’re already at the university, after a year or two. A student first picks a few individual courses, tries out different fields, and only then, on the strength of that experience, chooses a major. The Associate Degree is exactly those first two years, and the point is to help students figure out what actually interests them. This trend didn’t emerge in a vacuum: it answers the demands of the labor market and, above all, the needs of students themselves. And yes, one important point. When someone claims a program embodies liberal arts principles, I usually suggest asking a simple question: what share of their coursework do students genuinely choose for themselves? If it’s less than half, it’s liberal arts in name only. In our case, of the 64 credits in the two-year program, only 13 are required courses. In other words, students choose three-quarters of their courses on their own, with a single additional constraint on the remaining 50 credits — they must take at least one four-credit course in each of the four distribution areas (mathematics and the natural sciences, the social sciences, literature, and the arts).

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T-i: How will events in Russia shape your project’s fate and trajectory? Take two extreme scenarios five years from now: either Russia enters a period of sweeping change and democratization, or the country goes down the North Korean road. Would either affect you, or are you building your educational path independently of what happens in Russia?

PF: If positive change does come to Russia, I’m confident that the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences will quickly be restored to its former shape. And that would mean not just the revival of one school but the full implementation of the model within the official educational standards. The thing is, when the plan for a new university built on Smolny was being drawn up, an enormous amount of work went into developing a new educational standard. In the end it never came to anything, but what’s written down doesn’t disappear — those ideas can perfectly well be taken up again in the future. Much of what made Smolny College interesting was precisely that it ran a liberal arts and sciences model inside a Russian university.

As for the North Korean scenario, our program was international from the outset, and we’re part of the Bard Global Degree project, whose whole purpose is to build a model for supporting displaced students and displaced scholars in a range of contexts. And while we do enroll students located in Russia in courses outside the Associate Degree, for the Associate Degree itself we accept only applicants who are outside Russia, for obvious reasons. In that sense we work with the diaspora — and given that all the program’s required courses are taught in English [except one — T-invariant], internationalization is a natural process.

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The post <h1>Smolny in Exile: From a St. Petersburg Faculty to a Global Online College</h1> appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.

In 1993, Marina Bykova became the youngest scholar in the humanities in Russia to earn a Doctor of Sciences degree [Russia’s higher doctorate, awarded years after the Ph.D.-equivalent candidate’s degree — T-invariant]. Today she is a professor at an American university and editor-in-chief of the influential international journal Studies in East European Thought. For many years her professional life has been devoted to building and sustaining dialogue between the Russian philosophical tradition and the international academic community. It is a singular and often difficult mission — keeping intellectual bridges open at a time when political conflict is tearing apart the usual academic ties. In an interview with T-invariant, Marina Bykova reflects on why Russian academia has been paralyzed by fear, how the cultural project of the “Russian World” turned into a political ideology, what happens to philosophy when it loses its autonomy, and how the experience of the Soviet “sixties generation” of philosophers [shestidesyatniki, the reform-minded intellectuals who came of age during the post-Stalin Thaw — T-invariant] helps us understand the relationship between philosophy and power today.

Top news on scientists’ work and experiences during the war, along with videos and infographics — subscribe to the T-invariant Telegram channel to stay updated.

Science Under Sanctions

T-invariant: Let’s start with your work as a journal editor. Before you became editor-in-chief of Studies in East European Thought, you ran another journal devoted to philosophy in Russia, didn’t you?

Marina Bykova: Yes, before that I was editor-in-chief of Russian Studies in Philosophy; I was invited to take it over in January 2008. By then I had already guest-edited two thematic issues for it at the invitation of the editor at the time, Taras Zakydalsky, a well-known scholar of Russian and Ukrainian philosophy. After his death, the publisher asked me to take charge. The journal had a rather unusual format: it published thematic clusters of articles that had previously appeared in Russian and were then translated into English, mostly from journals such as Voprosy filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), Filosofskie nauki (Philosophical Sciences), and Vestnik MGU (the Moscow University Bulletin). I proposed expanding that model to include original research written specifically for the journal.

T-i: So the journal was a window through which Russian-language philosophy reached Western academia?

MB: Exactly. Most Western scholars had limited access to philosophical literature in Russian, and many of them found it hard to read Russian at all. So our job was to give Western readers a sense of what Russian philosophy was preoccupied with, which problems it was debating, and what intellectual discussions were unfolding inside it.

T-i: How did you manage to keep that format going?

MB: We put out thematic issues, for which Russian authors sent us their articles in Russian. Professional translators then turned the texts into English. But philosophical translation takes more than simply knowing the language; it requires a deep grasp of the subject, the terminology, the context. So I often had to edit the translations heavily, and sometimes essentially rebuild whole passages from scratch. What came out in the end were fully fledged scholarly articles that specialists still use today. The journal’s archive is available on the publisher’s website.

T-i: Why was the journal shut down?

MB: I’ll admit this is still a hard question for me to answer. That journal was bound up with many years of my life, and its closing was painful. But to understand the decision, I need to say a few words about the journal itself. It was part of a large series that originally ran to more than ten titles covering Russian scholarship across the humanities — history, literature, cultural studies, education, and other fields. These journals were founded back during the Cold War and at first served as an important source of material for Sovietology. After the Cold War ended, they retained their significance and continued to serve an important informational function for the Western academic community.

Originally the entire series was published by a small publishing house, M. E. Sharpe, but by the time I was editor-in-chief the titles had moved to Taylor & Francis, which had acquired M. E. Sharpe along with everything it published. In its final years, Russian Studies in Philosophy appeared under the Routledge imprint — one of the leading international humanities publishers — which raised its standing considerably. The journal was widely cited, scored well in the international databases, and consistently ranked highly in Scopus-based metrics, which in turn drew a large number of Russian authors.

BACKGROUND

M. E. Sharpe was an independent American academic publisher founded in the 1950s. It issued a series of journals under the general heading Russian Studies in…, which grew out of American academia’s interest in studying the USSR and Russia during the Cold War. The series included Russian Studies in Education, Russian Studies in History, Russian Studies in Literature, Russian Studies in Critical Thought, and Russian Studies in Philosophy. In the 2000s, a substantial part of M. E. Sharpe’s academic portfolio, the journals included, was acquired by the Taylor & Francis Group, which went on publishing them under the Routledge imprint.

After Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, the publisher sent the editors of every journal in the series a notice that it had decided to discontinue them. Formally, this was presented as a business decision. I managed to win a one-year reprieve, since by that point we already had a fully prepared publishing plan of six issues. Simply abandoning material that authors and editors had worked on for years struck me as impossible. As a result, ours was the last journal in the series to go: it closed only in May 2023.

T-i: And do you think it really was a business decision, or…?

MB: No. My own experience, at any rate, convinces me otherwise. I believe it was first and foremost a politically motivated decision. In January 2019, nearly four years before Russian Studies in Philosophy closed, I had also been invited to head another journal, Studies in East European Thought (SEET), published by Springer. After the war began, representatives of the publisher approached me as editor-in-chief and proposed limiting submissions by authors with Russian institutional affiliations. I asked on what grounds such a measure was being proposed. I was told that the policy followed from the general sanctions regime and from political decisions taken in Europe and North America with respect to Russia. They also stressed that many Ukrainian colleagues categorically objected to publishing Russian authors.

But a scholarly publication is not in itself an expression of support for a state or its policies. I consistently distinguish between philosophical thought and state ideology: the first, by its very nature, presupposes critical thinking and autonomy, while the second seeks to use knowledge as an instrument of political ends. Judging philosophical work primarily through the lens of political affiliation inevitably undermines the very principle of academic freedom.

So my position was a matter of principle: the only criterion for publication in an academic journal should be the quality of the scholarship. I replied that the journal would go on accepting articles from researchers with Russian affiliations. My editorial board fully supported that stance. I also told Springer that if the publisher found this approach unacceptable, I was prepared to step down as editor-in-chief. After internal discussions, Springer decided not to interfere with the journal’s editorial policy. As a result, Studies in East European Thought remains one of the few international philosophy journals where Russian scholars can still publish on standard academic terms.

T-i: Isn’t that dangerous for the authors themselves right now?

MB: That’s a hard question. Situations vary. Some authors prefer to publish under pseudonyms or anonymously; others use their own names and even list their institutional affiliations. We try to take each author’s particular circumstances into account. At the same time, it should be understood that what we are dealing with here is scholarly work and scholarly publication. That said, we are certainly aware that for some Russian authors, publishing in a Western academic journal can itself look like a risky step today.

T-i: Which raises the obvious question: what makes that risk worth taking for them?

MB: For most of our Russian colleagues it is less about building a new reputation than about not vanishing from the international academic landscape. Many are afraid of being shut out of the global scholarly community altogether.

I was also struck by how closely Russian researchers still follow our journal. Although official access to many international databases is now restricted in Russia, scholars find ways to get the literature they need through personal contacts, professional networks, and other informal channels of academic exchange. Springer recently gave me download statistics for individual articles and full issues over the past three years. The largest number of downloads came from Russia and China.

T-i: Even though the journal comes out in English?

MB: Yes. And what is more, our journal is hardly politically neutral. We were one of the first academic publications to respond openly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and not merely with a statement. In December 2022 we brought out a special issue, Russia’s War in Ukraine: When Barbarism Takes Over Civilization (SEET, vol. 74, issue 4). I edited it and wrote the introduction. It ran to 22 pieces, including research articles and the proceedings of a roundtable with young Russian scholars. As far as I know, it was one of the first collective — and genuinely international — responses to the war from the philosophical community. That issue mattered not only as an academic reaction to the war but as an attempt to preserve the critical function of philosophical language: the capacity to describe what is happening without substituting ideological formulas and euphemisms for analysis.

Just recently, in early 2026, we put together a special double issue, Aleksandr Dugin and Contemporary Russian Conservatism (SEET, vol. 78, issues 1–2), which I co-edited with my Canadian colleague Jeff Love. The contributors examine in detail the intellectual sources, ideological foundations, and political consequences of contemporary Russian conservatism, along with the role Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas played in shaping it. The issue was important because it analyzed not just Dugin as a public intellectual but the broader phenomenon of philosophical and pseudo-philosophical constructs being turned into instruments of political mobilization. We wanted to show how ideas, once they leave the academic context, can be reinterpreted and put to work in ideological projects with real historical consequences. And of course, in that issue we stated our own position on the Dugin phenomenon openly.

T-i: As far as I know, academics don’t regard him as an academic philosopher.

MB: That’s partly true. But in the West — and this is by no means a new tendency — Dugin is often seen as one of contemporary Russia’s leading intellectual figures, even as the chief architect of the Putin regime. He is frequently called “Putin’s brain,” on the assumption that the key to understanding Kremlin policy lies exclusively in his writings. To my mind, that is a serious oversimplification. The main goal of our special issue of Studies in East European Thought was to show that this picture does not hold up and to subject the Dugin phenomenon itself to critical analysis. We set out to show that Dugin is not an independent philosopher in the strict academic sense, still less a hidden architect of Russian policy, but a political ideologue and polemicist who uses philosophical terminology to construct a particular ideological worldview. Since in the post-Soviet space Dugin is sometimes presented as virtually the foremost authority on Martin Heidegger, we brought in leading Western specialists in Heidegger, the history of ideas, and intellectual history, among them such well-established authors as Mark Sedgwick. In the pages of that issue, researchers analyzed Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory and his geopolitical concepts in detail, exposing their eclectic, ideologically driven character.

The analysis showed that behind the outward philosophical vocabulary there often lies an arbitrary assembly of disparate ideas, in which quotations from Heidegger, Max Weber, and Max Stirner, torn out of context, are mixed at will with radical traditionalism and far-right political concepts. Our special issue thus made an important contribution to the critical study of the Dugin phenomenon.

We aimed not merely to explain to the Western intellectual community who Dugin is as a political thinker, but to move the discussion out of sensationalist journalism and into the space of serious philosophical and intellectual-historical analysis.

From the “Russian World” to War

T-i: Do philosophers today — you among them — understand what is happening in Russia right now? Why did the war become possible in the first place?

MB: Whatever we do understand as researchers, we ought to be able to explain clearly. That, to me, is where the responsibility of philosophers and humanities scholars lies. I recently wrote an article on the genealogy of the “Russian World” ideology, because it is particularly important today to understand how this concept arose and why it acquired such destructive political potential. What matters to me above all is showing that ideas are rarely born in finished ideological form. They go through a long evolution, in the course of which their original cultural meaning can be radically reinterpreted and harnessed for political ends. That, in my view, is exactly what happened with the concept of the “Russian World.” The paradox is that the idea was originally neither narrowly nationalist nor aggressive. It emerged in the 1990s, during the period of democratic reform, and was largely conceived as a network of cultural centers meant to support the Russian language and Russian culture and to maintain ties with compatriots and Russian-speaking communities outside Russia. It took institutional shape in 2007 with the founding of the Russkiy Mir Foundation, charged with coordinating the promotion of Russian language and culture abroad. That was when the existing Russian Houses [Russian state-run cultural centers abroad — T-invariant], along with newly opened ones, were given fresh impetus, with an emphasis above all on cultural diplomacy, support for the diaspora, and the maintenance of cultural ties with it. There is nothing unique about institutions of cultural diplomacy. Many countries invest heavily in strengthening their cultural presence and deploying the instruments of soft power — China’s Confucius Institute, Germany’s Goethe-Institut, and the British Council, to name a few.

It is important to stress that the “Russian World” project was, in its formative stage, a matter of cultural policy, not political ideology. There is nothing exceptional or nationalist about wanting to support a language, a culture, and ties with a diaspora. Yet it was precisely in that period that the groundwork was laid for the ideological transformation that followed. Why did it happen? The answer, I think, has mainly to do with the crisis of national and cultural identity that Russian society went through after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet identity was gone, and a new one had not yet taken shape. For the first time, Russian society faced the question: what does it mean to be Russian? Out of that situation came the idea of defining “Russianness” not through citizenship but through language, culture, historical memory, a shared cultural heritage, and historical traditions. That search for identity was not in itself nationalist, nor was it peculiar to Russia. Similar processes are typical of societies living through the breakup of states, a change of political system, or deep historical upheaval. What changed the situation was that this cultural concept gradually took on political content. Language and culture ceased to be a space of free communication and became a criterion of political belonging. If millions of people share the Russian language, Russian culture, and a common historical memory, then they can be portrayed as a single civilizational space bound together by a shared history and a special historical mission. An important role in this transformation was played by the Izborsky Club, founded in 2012, which brought together ideologues such as Alexander Prokhanov and Aleksandr Dugin. It was there that the attempt was made to formulate a new state ideology, to explain who the “Russian person” is and what Russia’s special historical mission consists of. And in the process, the notion of “Russianness” increasingly shifted from cultural self-identification and toward political loyalty.

Unlike classical nineteenth- and twentieth-century European nationalism, this concept rested not so much on the idea of common descent or “blood” as on a shared history, the Orthodox tradition, the legacy of Kievan Rus’, and the notion of a single civilizational space of the Eastern Slavs. It is in this context that Putin repeatedly spoke of Russians and Ukrainians as “one people.” In the West the phrase was often rendered as “one nation,” though in Russian narod (a people) and natsiya (a nation) are far from identical. That distinction is essential for grasping the underlying logic of the “Russian World” ideology.

Little by little, the circle of those counted as part of the “Russian World” widened. At first it meant the Russian-speaking population, then the Eastern Slavs, and eventually virtually all peoples historically tied to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. That is how a cultural concept finally turned into a geopolitical project. The result was a fundamental substitution. What began as a program to support the Russian language and culture gradually became an ideology of Russia’s historical exceptionalism, of a special civilizational path, and of political revisionism. This is why the “Russian World” today should be seen not as a cultural initiative but as an ideological project that legitimizes expansionism, rejects the universal principles of international law, and defines itself against the liberal-democratic world order.

T-i: Are there questions about Russia that you keep asking yourself without finding an answer?

MB: There are quite a few. The one that keeps haunting me is how such a destructive war could come to be seen by a substantial part of Russian society as historically necessary. Rationally, much of what is happening is hard to explain in the familiar categories of political or economic calculation.

In the first months of the war, it seemed to me that Russian society was largely hostage to the political regime and to a vast machinery of state propaganda. In other words, I assumed that support for the war was largely coerced. Over time, though, my understanding grew more complicated. Talking with colleagues in Russia, including people from the academic community, I increasingly ran into a different line of reasoning. Many of them do not welcome the war at all. Some say outright that they consider it a tragedy and, quite possibly, a historical mistake. And yet they are convinced that now that the war has begun, Russia cannot afford to lose it. Underlying that position is the belief that Russia’s defeat would mean not just a military setback but the end of the country as a great power — and perhaps a threat to the very existence of the Russian state. I do not share this view, but I think it is extremely important to understand the internal logic of such convictions. If we want to make sense of what is happening, it is not enough simply to declare these views irrational or propaganda-driven. We need to understand how they took shape and why they proved so persuasive to millions of people, including people in intellectual circles. That remains one of the hardest — and at the same time one of the most important — questions for me today.

T-i: What is happening today among Russian-speaking researchers, both those who left and those who stayed? What unites them, and what divides them?

MB: A serious split has opened up in the Russian-speaking academic community, above all between those who left Russia and those who remained. But that line does not map neatly onto attitudes toward the war: among those who left there are people with very different positions, and by no means all of them are willing to voice their disagreement openly. It seems to me that one of the key factors shaping the current situation is fear. And I mean not only political fear in the usual sense of the word, but a deeper, almost existential fear — fear for one’s own safety, for the future, for one’s loved ones. Many of those who emigrated still have ties to Russia. Elderly parents, relatives, property, professional contacts are all still there. On top of that, many are unsure whether their emigration will be temporary or permanent, and they want to keep the option of returning open. All of this creates a climate of self-censorship.

People may disagree with what is happening and still avoid saying so publicly, fearing the possible consequences — not only for themselves but for those close to them. It is this fear — which one might call a biological, instinctive drive toward self-preservation — that largely defines the state of the Russian-speaking academic world today. And what makes it especially paradoxical is that this holds equally for those who stayed in Russia and for those who ended up outside it.

T-i: Émigrés of the White movement also expected to return, yet they spoke and thought freely.

MB: Yes, many in that first wave of emigration [Russians who fled after the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War — T-invariant] also hoped to come back. But the historical situation was fundamentally different: after the Revolution and the Civil War, many of them were stripped of citizenship, of property, and of any possibility of return. The practice continued through the Soviet period: the state restricted freedom of movement and often turned departure into a forced separation from one’s homeland. The border was closed, and emigration effectively meant a final break with one’s former life. But at the same time, those who left gained the freedom to speak, write, and act openly in accordance with their views and convictions. I’m reminded here of a passage in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs about his expulsion from the Soviet Union. He wrote that the moment the plane left Soviet airspace, he felt absolute freedom for the first time. He had lost his homeland, but he had gained the freedom to speak and think without fear.

The paradox of the present situation is that open borders have brought not only greater mobility but also a distinctive instrument of political leverage and pressure in the hands of the state. This, to my mind, is one of the most unusual features of the current Russian regime: a new form of political control based not on closing the borders but on maintaining controlled openness. People can leave the country, but the act of emigrating does not necessarily mean freedom from fear. Those who leave find themselves in an in-between state — between physical freedom of movement and a sense of constant vulnerability. Physically they leave Russia, but psychologically and socially they are not always entirely free of the system they left behind.

Self-Censorship Against Philosophy

T-i: What is happening inside the Russian philosophical community?

MB: To be honest, what troubles me today is not so much state censorship as the gradual transformation of the very culture of philosophical thinking. I don’t think what is going on can be explained by direct state pressure alone. Institutional constraints certainly exist, but self-censorship has become a far more serious problem. It is self-censorship that largely sets the intellectual climate today.

Let me give an example from my own experience. In 2022 the centenary of the famous “philosophers’ ships” was being marked [the 1922 expulsion from Soviet Russia of some two hundred intellectuals, most of them deported by steamship — T-invariant], and a major international conference was in preparation. I was invited onto the organizing committee as a representative of the academic community abroad. After the war began, the European participants had to withdraw from the committee, because their universities and government bodies prohibited official cooperation with Russian state institutions. In the end, the only foreign participants left were a retired French colleague and me — there were no such restrictions in the United States. I was asked to give a plenary talk over Zoom and then publish it in Voprosy filosofii. And this is where the mechanism of self-censorship became fully apparent. I was told the text was too critical, that publishing it could put the journal in the line of fire and create problems both for the editors and for the Institute of Philosophy, which publishes it. No one officially forbade printing my talk. The decision was made purely out of fear of possible consequences. That, to my mind, is the most alarming feature of the situation today.

Self-censorship is always more dangerous than censorship proper: censorship restricts what is said from the outside, whereas self-censorship gradually rebuilds and deforms thinking itself. That is why I see self-censorship not simply as a political phenomenon but as a philosophical problem. It changes not only what people say but what questions they are capable of putting to themselves. When a researcher rules out entire areas of reflection in advance as “dangerous” or “undesirable,” philosophy stops doing its central job — subjecting reality to critical scrutiny.

Self-censorship is essentially one of the most dangerous instruments of authoritarian power: it limits not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought, imperceptibly narrowing the very space of what can be asked. Every authoritarian regime seeks to control not only public expression but the conditions under which independent thinking becomes possible. And self-censorship turns out to be a remarkably effective tool of that control.

T-i: How does self-censorship show up in philosophical research?

MB: Self-censorship inevitably changes the intellectual agenda itself. Many researchers try to steer clear of topics that might be read as politically sensitive. That is part of why we are seeing a marked rise in interest in traditional values, in the history of Russian philosophy, in Eastern philosophy and religious thought. I certainly don’t mean that these subjects are unworthy of attention. On the contrary, they are important fields of study. The problem arises when the choice of topic is driven not by scholarly interest but by considerations of safety. The result is that philosophy stops asking uncomfortable questions and starts circling around long-familiar material.

One episode in particular stunned me. Talking with a colleague, I learned about plans for a summer school devoted to Kant’s essay Toward Perpetual Peace. Both the work itself and the subject it raises are exceptionally important — especially now, in the middle of a bloody war. I was excited, and I asked how they intended to discuss the text under present conditions, and how far the ongoing war would become a subject of reflection. What I heard shook me to the core. The plan, it turned out, was to discuss the essay “in purely theoretical terms,” without touching on current social and political realities. That answer became for me a symbol of where Russian philosophical scholarship, and philosophical discourse generally, stands today. And it is very sad, because philosophy exists precisely in order to connect ideas with reality. If philosophical concepts lose all connection to historical experience, they become a purely academic exercise. It would of course be unfair to claim that all Russian philosophers have abandoned this much-needed reflection and blindly support what is happening. They have not. I know many people who stayed in Russia and inwardly refuse to accept the war. But fear — for themselves, for their colleagues, for the institutions they work in — leads many of them to keep quiet, retreating into the internal emigration we know so well from the Soviet period.

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T-i: And do philosophers in emigration discuss the current situation?

MB: Émigrés certainly discuss what is happening far more freely. But another problem arises here. An enormous number of texts about the war, about Russian society, about the Putin regime are being published now. Most of these, though, belong to the genre of opinion journalism or political commentary rather than to philosophical research in the strict sense. And that is entirely understandable. Philosophical reflection requires a certain historical distance. Philosophy does not simply record events; it tries to understand their inner logic, to identify the concepts and structures that become visible only with time. And we are still inside the event itself, which is not yet over. So many of today’s interpretations are inevitably preliminary and fragmentary. This does not mean philosophy is silent. Rather, it is in the process of making sense of what is happening and searching for an adequate language to describe it. I am convinced that the most significant philosophical work on this war and on the transformation of Russian society is still ahead of us.

T-i: But parallels can be drawn.

MB: Parallels are certainly possible, though they have to be handled with great care. History never repeats itself literally. Even so, it is parallels that occupy me most as a researcher today. My recent article is about philosophers of the shestidesyatniki generation and what lessons their experience can offer us now. The main resemblance, as I see it, lies not in the political circumstances as such but in the fact that the question of philosophy’s relationship to power has once again moved to the foreground. The shestidesyatniki, after all, also lived under conditions of limited freedom. During the Thaw there was a sense of intellectual liberation, but it very quickly became clear that this space of freedom had its limits. Philosophers were confronted with the question of how to preserve the autonomy of thought inside a system determined to subordinate intellectual life to itself. That question is still with us today. Present-day conditions are of course different from Soviet ones. But the problem of the relationship between philosophy and power, between independent thinking and institutional loyalty, has not gone anywhere.

What worries me most is that many academic structures today prefer not to resist outside pressure but to adjust to it in advance. This is not only about political restrictions; it is about a willingness to give up their own intellectual responsibility. When a university or a research institute stops deciding for itself what its curriculum contains or what its researchers work on, it risks losing its central function — being a space for the free pursuit of truth.

T-i: Why do the shestidesyatniki philosophers seem so important to you today? What lessons can we draw from their experience?

MB: The shestidesyatniki are often seen simply as a generation of liberals and reformers, but that reading oversimplifies things badly. For me, the shestidesyatniki movement in philosophy was not so much a generation as a distinct philosophical project aimed at restoring philosophy to its true purpose. Their main task was to reestablish philosophy as an independent form of thinking. It is no secret that by the early 1950s philosophy in the USSR had largely turned into an ideological discipline, reduced to commenting on and quoting the canonical texts of Marxism-Leninism. Philosophy had effectively lost its own voice. It was in this context that the famous “Theses on the Subject Matter of Philosophy,” written in 1954 by two junior lecturers in the philosophy faculty at Moscow State University, Evald Ilyenkov and Valentin Korovikov, became such an important event. It is worth stressing that this happened two years before the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, where Stalin’s cult of personality was criticized, along with its consequences — including for philosophy, which had been steadily drained of living thought. The authors of the “Theses” called into question the very understanding of philosophy as the handmaiden of ideology. They insisted that philosophy must have its own object of inquiry and its own criteria of truth. They paid dearly for it. They were harshly attacked, and both were forced to leave Moscow State University. But the significance of their intervention lay in more than the specific theses. In effect, these scholars asserted philosophy’s right to exist autonomously, to have its own object of study and its own independent thinking. In other words, this was not about reforming Soviet ideology but about restoring philosophy as an independent field of inquiry — which is impossible without giving philosophy back its principal subject: the human being as a thinking, autonomous subject. That, in my view, is the central philosophical achievement of the shestidesyatniki.

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Stalinist intellectual culture was dominated by the language of collective historical forces, classes, parties, and state interests. The human being as a subject of philosophical thought had all but vanished from philosophical discourse. The shestidesyatniki put the real human being back at the center of philosophical analysis — his consciousness, his freedom, his responsibility. They returned to philosophy not merely the human being as an object of study but the human being as a thinking subject, capable of posing questions independently and answering for his own judgments. It is no accident that turning to the early Marx, and especially to the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, came to matter so much to them. In the young Marx they saw not a theorist of the state machine but a thinker of human emancipation. Many of them therefore set out to analyze not abstract historical laws but the concrete forms of alienation, bureaucratization, and dehumanization in social life.

T-i: And how was it in the sixties?

MB: This is exactly the question that interests me most today. As I said, it seems to me that the experience of philosophers of the shestidesyatniki generation holds two lessons — a positive one and a negative one. And what matters especially is that these lessons did not emerge at the same time. The positive one had to do with the fact that the shestidesyatniki managed to give philosophy back its autonomy and restore the right to think for oneself. The negative one became clear much later — during perestroika, when philosophers themselves encountered an entirely different relationship between philosophy and power for the first time. We know the achievements of the shestidesyatniki well. Far less attention goes to the limitations and internal contradictions of their project. The paradox is that a generation that had fought for philosophy’s autonomy turned out to be largely unprepared for the changes perestroika brought. Faced with a new historical situation, in which the intelligentsia — members of the philosophical intelligentsia included — gained access to political and administrative structures of power, many of them became an integral part of those power structures and lost their critical distance from them. Serving as deputies, advisers, and heads of academic institutes and universities made them active participants in the machinery of decision-making.

Let me stress that there is nothing objectionable in intellectuals taking part in public life as such. Quite the opposite: philosophy that genuinely does any work is never wholly detached from society. The problem arises when the necessary distance between philosophy and power disappears, when the philosopher becomes indistinguishable from those in power and loses the capacity to look critically at them and at their decisions.

This, in my view, is where one of the main negative lessons of the shestidesyatniki experience becomes visible. It has to do not with the mistakes of particular individuals or particular institutions but with a deeper structural danger that accompanies philosophy in every era: the temptation to gain influence, recognition, and institutional support at the cost of one’s own independence.

Kant warned long ago that the philosopher should not become the ruler. The state may turn to the philosopher for advice, but that advice must remain independent of the immediate interests of those in power. By its very nature, philosophy has to remain a space of critical reflection — including criticism of the structures that wield political power.

T-i: And the negative lessons?

MB: This is precisely why the phenomenon of the shestidesyatniki philosophers extends far beyond its own era: it is a distinctive philosophical experience that helps us understand the relationship between philosophy and power. That experience left us with two lessons — a lesson in resistance and a lesson in the seduction of power. The first shows that even under ideological pressure philosophy is able to preserve its autonomy and give people back the right to think in their own name. The second reminds us that the freedom of philosophical thought is threatened not only by censorship and repression but also by the lure of power, which gradually erodes the critical distance philosophy requires. It seems to me that the ability to maintain that distance is one of the most important professional and moral obligations of a philosopher. And in that sense the experience of the shestidesyatniki philosophers remains strikingly contemporary.

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The post <h1>The Paradox of Open Borders: Why Physical Freedom Doesn’t Liberate the Mind. An Interview with Marina Bykova</h1> appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.

O evento mais chic desse verão está a chegar na Marina de Vilamoura.

A FPCUB – Federação Portuguesa de Cicloturismo e Utilizadores de Bicicleta, com o apoio da Marina de Vilamoura e da Região de Turismo do Algarve (RTA), volta a realizar este ano o evento de grande sucesso – Vilamoura Cycle Chic.

O movimento Cycle Chic não é, nem deve ser entendido como algo elitista, mas sim como uma atitude que qualquer um pode ter: pedalar com roupas normais e descontraidamente. O objetivo final é promover a utilização da bicicleta como algo natural – sem complicações, sem stress, sem equipamentos especiais.

Data: 22 de agosto de 2026 (sábado) – 15h00
Local: Marina de Vilamoura (Marina Hotel), Algarve
Dress Code: Chic (formal ou casual)

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