The latest period in Russian literature, which evidently began on February 24, 2022, just as it did in education and science, has so far received little systematic study. There are, of course, more and more conference papers and articles on individual authors and phenomena, and conferences now bring together dozens of specialists. Clearly, systematic book-length studies of this period’s literature can only be published outside Russia, and foreign scholars are helping make them possible. Some of them have taken on the painstaking work of tracking every significant new release and translating and analyzing these texts. One of them, French literary scholar Antoine Nicolle, recently defended his doctoral dissertation, Facing the War, Facing Oneself: Russian Literary Dissidence after February 2022. It is effectively the first attempt to systematically map the part of Russian literature usually described as anti-war or oppositional. T-invariant asked Nicolle how a scholar who started out as a Rimbaud specialist got hooked on contemporary Russian literature, how that literature has responded to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the suffering it has brought to that country, and what “being Russian” means for Russian writers today.

Our interviewee today is not allowed to give interviews — under the terms of her employment contract. The senior position she holds at an American university obliges her not to make her political views public and to exercise the utmost caution in public statements. But the changes now taking place at American universities are so far-reaching that she agreed to talk with T-invariant about the serious challenges facing higher education. Her experience as a department chair and dean, and later as a vice president, helps her today to map the critical points in the development of the academic environment: how the new presidential administration is affecting university life, how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has split it, how artificial intelligence is influencing teaching and its administration, what the shrinking of university budgets leads to, and, most importantly, how the very logic by which higher education works has changed.

Renowned American legal scholar Austin Sarat, a founder of the humanistic study of law, on the responsibility of public intellectuals in the United States, the bracing “slap in the face” Trump dealt to universities, and the path forward in defending academic freedom and democracy.

Smolny Beyond Borders has launched the online Smolny Associate Degree program, with applications open through July 31. 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. T-invariant spoke with Denis Skopin and Philip Fedchin of Smolny Beyond Borders about building a liberal arts program in exile, whether serious humanities research is still possible in Russia, and what lies ahead for online education.

Vladimir Kharitonov is one of the key figures shaping today’s independent Russian-language book world outside Russia. In an interview with T-invariant, the technical director of Freedom Letters and head of the Free University’s publishing project explains how today’s tamizdat differs from Soviet samizdat and why the printed book is still very much alive — TikTok notwithstanding.

Russia’s neocolonial policies in the occupied territories of Ukraine target the education system first: schools and universities have become primary tools for coercion and identity erasure. This is the core finding of a recent study by the Ukrainian outlet Realnaya Gazeta, which details how the Kremlin carries out ethnic displacement across multiple levels. Journalist Ksenia Turkova spoke with Andrey Dikhtarenko, editor-in-chief of Realnaya Gazeta, to discuss the report for T-invariant.

November 15–16, 2025, in New Jersey, the Gamow Prize ceremony, established by RASA, will take place. One of this year’s laureates is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California, Anna Krylov. In October, she announced a boycott of the Nature Publishing Group, refusing to peer-review a manuscript for the journal Nature Communications — due to disagreement with the policy of promoting the social justice agenda. T-invariant spoke with Anna Krylov about why politics has no place in science, what scientists can be canceled for, and how to resist scientific censorship.

Trump’s clash with the US judicial system is taking on alarming forms. On June 27, the Supreme Court (in a 6-3 decision along conservative lines) issued a ruling that drastically limits the ability of lower federal judges to block presidential executive orders nationwide. From now on, judges can only block the president’s actions in relation to specific plaintiffs. This ruling marked Trump’s first major court victory of the year. What comes next for America? T-invariant asked lawyer Ekaterina Mishina for clarification.

The Russian authorities, through Rosobrnadzor, are dismantling Shaninka (the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, MSSES). T-invariant spoke with Marina Kalashnikova, former dean of Shaninka’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, now leading the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences in Montenegro. Was it challenging to explain the program to Montenegrins? How did the university find its place in a resort country? And why did around 40 students choose it over other European universities also teaching in English?