Emma Harden-Wolfson

Higher education in Central Asia blog

  • Corruption corrupted in Kazakhstan

    Kazakh civil servant Almat Yermagambetov wins this week’s prize for bare faced deception. Yermagambetov handed over to the police a woman who falsely claimed she could obtain admission at Nazarbayev University and a place at a top school in return for a large amount of cash – $20,000 US to be exact. This sounds great for moves towards transparency… Read more

  • I’d close some universities if I could – Kazakh Ambassador to Canada

    The number of higher education institutions in Kazakhstan – a country with a population of 17 million – rocketed up from 55 in 1991 to a peak of 182 just a decade later. Many of these were very small institutes, privately run and focussed on teaching. A number of these naturally fell away in the subsequent years, but… Read more

  • Academic diplomacy aims to bolster Kyrgyz-Uzbek relations

    Rifts between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are well documented, particularly in the border areas around the Ferghana Valley. The two most recent disputes that reached the international press came in March 2016 and August 2016. The geographical complexity of this area of Central Asia is visible in the second map below, which places the Ferghana Valley at the heart… Read more

  • Five years of blogging on Central Asia

    It’s been five years since I started this blog and I wanted to mark the moment with a post reflecting on a half decade of sharing news and views on education, society and politics in Central Asia. In those five years I’ve published nearly 200 stories and attracted over 700 regular followers – thank you all. And thanks also to… Read more

  • Paid to protest: More on student protests in Tajikistan

    In my most recent post, Protests? What protests?, I discussed recent protests both against and in favour of the government in Tajikistan. Following up on this, I want to share an excellent and highly informative article from Russian-language site Fergana News, which Open Democracy has reproduced with permission and translated into English. The article, provocatively called Tajikistan’s imitation… Read more

  • Protests? What protests? The continuing lack of plurality in Tajikistan

    News has emerged of a number of connected protests in / relating to Tajikistan. However, if at first glance this appears to be a tiny step towards practicing the freedoms (of speech, to gather in public etc) nominally guaranteed to citizens under Tajik law, don’t get your hopes up. Leading the story on 23 September, Radio Free Europe/Radio… Read more