Emma Harden-Wolfson

Nazarbayev University, the ‘Oxford of Kazakhstan‘, is in the headlines, though this time not on account of its myriad of impressive achievements achieved since it was founded in 2010.

Enter Shigeo Katsu, founding President (Rector/Vice-Chancellor) of NU… until a few months ago. Rumours of his departure started circulating in May 2023, confirmed shortly after by the university which issued a press release at the end of that month announcing Katsu’s resignation. No reason was given the resignation and Katsu, officially at least, was granted a warm send-off. He remains a member of the university’s Board of Trustees in his capacity as Advisor to the President of Nazarbayev University.

Things went quiet for a while until Katsu published a December 2023 comment piece for Intellinews (itself an interesting choice as a business news outlet focusing on emerging markets including Central Asia). In this piece, Katsu points to ‘recent developments’ that have ‘cast ominous shadows’ over NU, principally in relation to its academic autonomy and financial administration.

In February 2024, Katsu published another article, this time for Reaction, a UK-based site covering politics, geopolitics, business, economics and culture. By now, the tenor of Katsu’s claims had become more overt – the article’s headline is ‘Defenders of liberal values should call out the sabotage of Nazarbayev University‘. Katsu argues that NU is ‘being picked apart at the seams and could soon collapse in on itself’. Details about the undermining of the university’s financial independence as well as the closening of NU to the current government are provided, leading to what Katsu calls ‘intentional sabotage’.

Following this, several of the claims made by Katsu were unpicked in a sharp analysis by Saltanat Janenova, a former NU professor now at Bristol University in the UK. To be clear, this is not a piece that takes the university (or the government’s) side, but rather critiques how NU has developed and some of the Eurocentrism inherent in its operating model.

Most recently, Katsu gave a March 2024 interview to University World News, which provides detailed background and further information about the claims being made. It’s well worth a read. For one, you’ll learn more about the ways in which governance/funding have been deployed to advance higher education – I’ve written before about some of the unique ways that higher education is organized in Kazakhstan, and NU is no exception. It’s also really important to keep on top of an emerging story that I suspect may not get as much airtime as it deserves, for a number of reasons.