Emma Harden-Wolfson

Higher Education in Central Asia Blog (est. 2011)

  • 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

  • Faculty blamed for poor standards at Kulob State University, Tajikistan

    An unusually critical article was published recently in Asia-Plus – one of Tajikistan’s last remaining bastions of press freedoms – observing a worrying drop in educational standards at Kulob State University [ru], nominally one of the best in the country. Two main causes are identified: the fact that many of the better qualified faculty have left the university (20… Read more

  • A new phase for Central Asian higher education begins

    After many years in the pipeline (just do a quick search on my blog if you want to check the archives!), the University of Central Asia (UCA) has today welcomed its very first undergraduate students. True, they are a select few: just 71 students selected from the three UCA countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan… Read more