Militarist and Plagiarist Lisovyi Should Not Be Appointed Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine!

By the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, March 19, 2023

The Ukrainian Pacifist Movement was disgusted to learn about the initiative to appoint the militarist and plagiarist Oksen Lisovyi as the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine.

Even a quick analysis of the abstract of Lisovyi’s PhD thesis “Socio-cultural self-identification of the individual”, published in 2012, allows to identify borrowings without references, with signs of mechanical copying and auto-replacement of words from the abstract of the PhD thesis of Yaroslav Arabchuk “The main factors of personal socialization in a multicultural environment”, published earlier in 2011 (see here comparison in Ukrainian) . If even the abstract in the section on “scientific novelty” contains plagiarism, one can imagine what “discoveries” will await experts who could undertake a thorough check of the full content of the PhD thesis.

Oksen Lisovyi’s hardly believable PR is trying to convince us that he “has been participating in armed combat for about a year, at the same time performing the duties of the director of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.” However, it is quite obvious that it is impossible to fully commit yourself to education and science in the trenches of the 95th Air Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Such an attempt could be no more successful than “scientific research” based on the copy-paste method.

In addition, the militaristic public image of Lisovyi, his declared desire to draw intelligent young people into the army and build a “society of fighters” is in no way consistent with the fact that the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has a status of a center of scientific education under the auspices of UNESCO – an anti-war cultural organization whose task, according to UNESCO Constitution, is to prevent wars and create defences of peace in human minds.

A manual for kids about survival during the war published by the Kyiv branch of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine demonstrates the attitude of this UNESCO Category 2 Centre to the UNESCO values: it says that anyone who criticizes NATO in social networks is an “enemy bot.”

Proposing the Peace Agenda for Ukraine and the World in 2022, Ukrainian pacifists warned: current escalations of armed conflicts in Ukraine and the world are caused by the fact that educators and scientists are not fully perform their duties of strengthening the norms and values of a non-violent way of life, as envisages the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, adopted by the UN General Assembly. Evidences of the neglected peace-building duties are the archaic and dangerous practices which must be ended: military patriotic upbringing, compulsory military service, lack of systematic public peace education, propaganda of war in the mass media, support of war by NGOs, etc. We see as goals of our peace movement and all peace movements of the world to uphold human right to refuse to kill, to stop the war in Ukraine and all wars in the world, and to ensure sustainable peace and development for all the people of the planet, in particular, to tell the truth about the evil and deception of war, to learn and teach practical knowledge about peaceful life without violence or with its minimization.

Nonviolent resistance to militarism and wars – including Russian aggression against Ukraine – is a real and effective alternative to endless bloodshed. Humanity have a hope for better future only if we break the vicious cycle of self-destruction by principled refusal to respond violence with violence, building modern institutions and security infrastructure of nonviolent resistance and unarmed civilian protection.

We are convinced that the appointment of a plagiarist, a militarist and acting serviceman as the head of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine will deepen the degradation and militarization of Ukrainian education and science, will contribute to the further downfall of civilian institutions into a hotbed of militarism and a toxic environment in which criticism of the army and the advocacy of peaceful values will be persecuted, and the further destruction of intellectual foundations and ecosystems of the Ukrainian culture of peace and non-violence. This will also be another evidence of the lack of democratic civilian control over the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the uncontrolled dictate of ambitions of radical and authoritarian militarist circles to turn civilians into soldiers from childhood on the archaic principles of the cult of war and army discipline.

We call to prevent the appointment of militarist and plagiarist Oksen Lisovyi as the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine and to remove him from the office of director of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Only civilian professionals of unquestionable integrity have a moral right to administer scientific and educational institutions so that future generations learn to live without war.

We will not tolerate debasement of youth to cannon fodder!

No to militarization of science and education!

Yes to the culture of peace, peace education and research for the development of knowledge and skills of life without war, without violence!

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