Volodymyr Ishchenko, Marta Havryshko, Tarik Cyril Amar, Milica Popović and Almut Rochowanski

The following is a response to the editors of the Review of Democracy (RevDem), the online journal of the Democracy Institute at the Central European University, who suspended an event that they agreed to host on December 11, 2025: “Men in the Vans, Women on the Streets: Gender, Resistance, and Forced Mobilization in Ukraine and Ex-Yugoslavia.” Its authors are the panelists who were scheduled to speak at the event.

This case illustrates how academic freedom and open debate are eroding in Western institutions, including those that publicly position themselves against authoritarian trends. Concerns about “balance” and “public responsibility” in discussions of the Russia–Ukraine war are applied in a highly selective way, effectively excluding scholars who are among the very few conducting empirical research and publishing on silenced and inconvenient topics. While calls for “balance” are rarely voiced when events reproduce dominant narratives about the war, they are used to delegitimize discussions that highlight phenomena—such as mass draft dodging and forced mobilization—that expose growing tensions between hegemonic discourse and social realities in Ukraine and sit uneasily with the current climate of European remilitarization. Invoking “responsibility” has, in practice, meant devaluing and silencing the lived experiences of large numbers of people suffering and resisting serious human rights abuses, whose perspectives the suspended panel was explicitly designed to bring into the conversation.

We are profoundly shocked and saddened by the statement issued by the Review of Democracy (RevDem) and the CEU Democracy Institute, which we consider an attack on our academic freedom and our academic and professional integrity. We feel compelled to respond to this deplatforming, which is nothing less than an act of political censorship.

Our panel was scheduled to address the phenomenon of “busification” (forced mobilization in Ukraine). We were to examine its relationship to gender and nationalism, as well as the resistance and civil society responses it has provoked. The panel also planned to place these issues in a comparative context, exploring forced mobilization in Ukraine alongside similar practices during the Yugoslav wars. The event was proposed and organized with the utmost care to ensure the rigor of academic debate and to reflect the urgency of the human rights abuses on the ground. We proposed the speakers and the topic to the RevDem team on November 15, responding to all questions about structure, specific themes, and format by late November. The event was subsequently announced on the evening of December 3 and shared on RevDem and Democracy Institute social media on the afternoon of December 4. As we were proceeding with preparations, on the evening of December 5 we received an email announcing the event’s suspension. We later discovered that the RevDem team and the Democracy Institute had simultaneously issued a public statement on the suspension.

The statement claimed that the decision followed “careful consideration of concerns raised by colleagues, faculty, and students across the university, particularly members of CEU’s Ukrainian community.” However, RevDem and the Democracy Institute did not ask us, the speakers and organizers of the panel, to comment on these concerns while making the decision, giving us no possibility to respond and leaving us entirely excluded from the process. Nevertheless, the statement on the suspension plainly declared that “the current format of the event does not meet the standards required for an academically balanced and contextually grounded discussion of this subject” and, moreover, that the event does not seem to be structured in ways “that uphold academic integrity, provide appropriate expertise, and acknowledge the lived experiences of those directly affected.”

In the private email we received about the cancellation, we were informed that “the issues raised included: the need for a clearer contextualization of forced mobilization within the ongoing full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine; questions about the appropriateness of comparisons with the Yugoslav conflicts; the absence of scholars who have conducted direct research on forced mobilization or on civil society responses in Ukraine, and worries that the current setup may not be able to sustain the kind of balanced, rigorous academic debate that the topic requires and CEU stands for.” Essentially, the suggestion was that our proposal was not grounded in scholarly rigor and appropriate expertise, nor sensitive to the wider impact it may have on communities directly affected by the war. The statement promised “thoughtful reassessment” of the “event’s format, scope, and potential future iteration”; however, it called into question our academic integrity and research expertise as well as the lived experiences of some of the speakers before any proper reassessment was conducted.

The panel was organized by scholars who have been conducting direct research on forced mobilization and/or on civil society responses in Ukraine, as well as in the former Yugoslavia. Weare among the few academics to have published on these topics.

Volodymyr Ishchenko has co-authored the essay “Why is Ukraine struggling to mobilize its citizens to fight?”, which is based, in particular, on recent empirical research, including interviews with Ukrainian volunteers and draft dodgers. This forms part of a large-scale cross-national research project he has been co-leading with the support of the Alameda Institute, which also included a representative survey commissioned this year in Ukraine exploring, among other questions, attitudes towards draft dodging.

Tarik Cyril Amar published the most comprehensive article to date focused on forced mobilization in Ukraine: “The Nation and Busification: Forced Mobilization in Wartime Ukraine,” published by the Institute for New Global Politics, a think tank founded by a network of  scholars at Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and elsewhere.

Marta Havryshko has published extensively on forced mobilization and gender specifically, including: “Mobilisation et résistance à la mobilization: le coût social de l’effort de guerre ukrainien” (Postface à l’édition française du “Le Massacre du Maidan – La tuerie de masse qui changea le monde” du prof. Ivan Katchanovski, à paraître en novembre 2025 aux éditions Perspectives Libres, Paris) ; “Müde vom Ukrainekrieg: Warum ukrainische Soldaten von der Front fliehen,” in Berliner Zeitung, October 26, 2025 ; “Der Krieg der Armen : Wie Klasse, Macht und Korruption den Krieg in der Ukraine prägen,” in Berliner Zeitung, June 9, 2025 ; and “Feinde im Inneren ? –‘Krieg’ gegen Rekrutierungsmaßnahmen in der Ukraine eskaliert,” in Berliner Zeitung, February 15, 2025.

Milica Popović is currently leading an extensive empirically-rooted project on desertion and forced mobilization during the Yugoslav wars at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Her project “The Silence of Saying No: (Un)Remembering Deserters from the Yugoslav Wars” has received funding from the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) based on international peer-review evaluation, and she has delivered several academic lectures on the topic.

Almut Rochowanski has decades-long experience supporting women’s civil society groups in Eastern Europe. She has worked on Ukraine and women, particularly women activists, since 2014, notably with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an international women’s peace organization founded in 1915, which has consistently worked on anti-militarism, including by defending conscientious objectors and deserters.

The above-mentioned publications are not yet in peer-reviewed journals precisely because careful empirical research of a new and silenced phenomenon requires time. It should be noted that academics routinely speak on issues on which they have not yet published peer-reviewed papers—as numerous events, panels, and podcasts at the Democracy Institute and CEU itself demonstrate.

We find the claimed “inappropriateness” of comparing the Russia-Ukraine and Yugoslav wars to be without serious grounds. We are aware of each other’s studies on forced mobilization in Ukraine and across ex-Yugoslav states: we find important convergences, and divergences, that help us see each case in comparative context. Furthermore, the Invisible University for Ukraine—one of CEU’s own projects—apparently finds such comparisons entirely appropriate, as it offers two courses: “Protests, Social Transformations and the EU: Rethinking the Balkans for Ukraine” (course co-directors: Marija Mandić, University of Belgrade, and Olesia Marković, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy); and “Facing the Legacy of the Yugoslav Wars” (course co-directors: Vladimir Petrović, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam and Miloš Hrnjaz, University of Belgrade).

We are scholars and practitioners with deep expertise on the proposed topic of discussion and a long record of books and articles on directly related aspects of Ukrainian and (post-)Yugoslav societies and histories, including wars, nationalism, gender, violence, protests, and civil society. We are fully competent to contextualize forced mobilization appropriately—that was precisely the goal of our discussion.

We are able to sustain the balanced and rigorous academic debate that any serious topic requires, and we have proven this through our academic work and its recognition—unless “contextualization” and “balancing” means that we should, in effect, justify and legitimize the large-scale and serious human rights abuse that forced conscription represents.

Further accusing us of a lack of sensibility “to the wider impact that it may have on communities directly affected by the war” is particularly insulting, given that two of the panelists are Ukrainian citizens (Marta Havryshko and Volodymyr Ishchenko); and one of the panelists lived through the Yugoslav wars (Milica Popović). Acknowledging the experience of our close relatives and friends who have become victims of forced mobilization, had to become deserters, or hid from mobilization for years was one of our primary motivations for initiating an academic discussion on this topic.

We believe that RevDem and the Democracy Institute’s handling of the situation with our panel was unprofessional and unethical. The public allegations made about our integrity, expertise, and experiences before conducting any proper review are unacceptable.

We also believe that the real reason for this cancellation is our public stance and political views—in particular, critical views on the Russia-Ukraine war and nationalism—as well as the lack of readiness by the RevDem and the Democracy Institute to address the inconvenient complexities of wars not suitable for the dominant political discourses in the current atmosphere of Europe-wide militarization. Such cancellation practices stand as a warning to the rapidly deteriorating conditions of academic freedom and freedom of scholarship, as well as freedom of speech in the European Union, even by institutions which otherwise claim to fight against such authoritarian tendencies.

Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist from Ukraine currently affiliated with the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, and author of Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War.

Marta Havryshko is Dr. Thomas Zand Visiting Assistant Professor in Holocaust Pedagogy and Antisemitism Studies, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.

Tarik Cyril Amar (@TarikCyrilAmar), is an historian from Germany currently at Koç University, Istanbul, and author of The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv. A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists.

Milica Popović is a political scientist, and currently, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Culture Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, where she leads her project,”The Silence of Saying No: (Un)Remembering Deserters from the Yugoslav Wars.” Her first monograph, The Last Pioneers: Deconstructing Yugonostalgia and (post-)Yugoslavism, will be published with Amsterdam University Press in 2026.

Almut Rochowanski has been an activist for women’s rights and peace in countries of the former Soviet Union and is currently a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.