Professors and students have become moving targets: Autonomy of Novi Sad University under attack

The professors and I personally are under siege, I keep getting messages filled with evil and hatred. We, the professors and students, have become a sort of moving targets that anyone can take a shot at from their anonymity, and that is why I am very cautious, and I choose my words carefully,” Ivana Živančević Sataruš, Dean of the Novi Sad Faculty of Philosophy, tells NIN.

For more than ten days, a hundred professors and students of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad have been receiving open death threats. Vojislav Šešelj is again reading the lists of enemies of the state on a television with national coverage, this time the names of those who support professor Dinko Gruhonjić’s right to life, work, and freedom of speech. And the public prosecutor has not initiated any criminal or misdemeanor charges, confirming that this is a time of lawlessness.

Our interlocutor warns that it is not only the University that is affected by this situation. It is like a nightmare, like a horror film.

“In that horror film, anyone who becomes troublesome can be made an easy target and there can be a demand to eliminate them. The laws exist only declaratively. We know that we have them, but they are not binding. Not even the prosecutor’s office is obligated to apply them. We are slipping into anarchy and lawlessness,” the Dean warns.

In the theater of the absurd

As a professor of literature, she notes that the “Gruhonjić case” is a signal that the level of cynicism here is off the charts and that reality has surpassed all fiction.

“We are living the theater of the absurd. Those who obey the laws are not good, but those who break them are. As a genre, it is a mix of horror and surrealism. An incredibly interesting moment for the historians. This has far surpassed all fiction and imagination and I feel like there are fewer and fewer humans. People have lost the sense of solidarity. People are living in fear, they have become selfish, they think that this will not happen to them if they keep their heads down and look away. But it will happen to all. And also, the feeling of shame is gone. Let’s be humans. Let’s be the people who live in an organized society. And an organized society implies rules, procedures and respect for the law. That is what a civilized society looks like, everything else is anarchy and savagery,” our interlocutor says.

She refuses to accept that anyone should make arbitrary decisions and ultimatums, that people should be dismissed for no reason. And even more so, that she should be one of those who would hand out dismissals based on ultimatums, against all rules and laws.

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And while the public does not recognize this case as the breaking point of a democratic society and a dangerous precedent that would destroy the very foundations of the Faculty autonomy, most professors of this Faculty spend sleepless nights.

“For the first time in my life, I am fighting anxiety and the feeling of meaninglessness with the help of doctors, so I could feel able to work. We are afraid, but it is our duty to work in accordance with the law and to educate young people. Otherwise, if we don’t fight, those “students” will tomorrow be able to walk in here and sign their diplomas themselves, give themselves grades and kidnap this place of education,” she says.

For those who do not know, University is the last refuge of free thought, a place where professors teach young people and prepare them for a dignified life.

“And now we are being shown that it is not what we should be doing. This is a prelude and an attempt to mold education into something that it is not, and we are yet to see what it is,” Ivana Živančević Sataruš says.

Who blocked the Faculty?

The Dean also says that, more than ten days after the blockade, they still haven’t received any information from the police about the identity of the young men who blocked the Faculty. They are still waiting for the police report. The police have told them, only a few days ago, that they haven’t received it because the procedure demands that they should pay and officially request the report. As he says, it is clear from their appearance, age and behavior that there were not just students there.

“I personally, and other professors, only recognized four of our students when they were inside the building. The others were some young men who were chanting uniformly, in an organized manner, like sports fans. That is not the typical behavior of our students,” the Dean says.

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She recounts the events from more than ten days ago when she entered the Faculty building at the moment when several young men were chaining the door.

“After that, they took turns and it wasn’t the same people there all the time. There were 11 of us, professors, and we left the building around 7 PM that evening.”

The Dean says that she understands how some people can be upset or hurt by Gruhonjić’s writing, but she doesn’t understand how in a well-regulated state any person who is dissatisfied is allowed to manifest their dissastisfaction in a violent manner.

“Who are they and who sent them – I don’t dare to talk about that. I can only say that the Rector has freed the building,” she says.

She says that it is possible that the remaining young men were students of the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education (DIF) and the Faculty of Technical Sciences, because, as she notes, why else would the deans of those two faculties show up to accompany the Rector.

As for the Rector Dejan Madić’s promise that he will organize a meeting with the professors and the students, she says that it is not a new statement.

“I have already heard that from the Rector through the media. There was no invitation. And these events, the death threats, are paralyzing us, keeping us from doing the things we were trained to do. This is a state of general cerebral palsy. And maybe that was the goal, to bring us into a state where we can no longer think, but only feel fear that someone would again block our work and the work of the institution, because it was announced that the deblocking was only temporary,” the Dean says.

The topic that was raised here is the autonomy of the University. The law and the rule of law have collapsed – how else would you call it, first you get the ultimatum to dismiss a person and then the blockade of a Faculty, of a state institution.

“And the Rector then replies that he fully understands the blockade of a member of the University of which he is the integrative factor, as the Rector of all of us. That means that he understands the demand to act outside the law. I was speechless. Instead of everyone saying no, there are laws, there are procedures, we will work in accordance with procedures until death, some have agreed to the ultimatum, that someone can be dissatisfied with someone’s words to such an extent that they demand that the law be broken and someone be eliminated,” the Dean says.

This incident raises the question if this means that anyone can now block any institution without any criminal or misdemeanor sanctions. Judging by the reaction of the prosecutor’s office, it is completely legitimate.

Obvious selective justice

Dimitrije Radovanović, a student at the Faculty of Law, is one of the four students who were arrested during the protest against election fraud and placed under house arrest. “We have just returned from the hearing,” his attorney Jovan Rajić says.

“The incident at the Faculty of Philosophy, with no reaction from the prosecutor’s office about the kidnapping of the Faculty by certain individuals, the majority of which falsely presented themselves as students, and the arrest and prosecution of students who took part in the protest against election fraud, is a clear testament of selective justice. Not everyone is equal before the law. The police, by order of the prosecutor’s office, detained students because they were at a protest, while others, who are not even students, break into the Faculty, locking it and kidnapping the entire building, holding the professors as hostages, and deciding who can come inside and who cannot. And that was blackmail, an ultimatum, demanding that a professor who is not to their liking would get fired,” Rajić told NIN.

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He adds that the problem is not just false students, but also the fact that the Rector supports them. Convinced that this was a political action, he believes that it was coordinated by the government and the highest state officials. “The practice has shown that such actions cannot take place without approval from the top of executive power and very likely from Andrićev Venac [office of the Serbian president]. On the other hand, just today, an hour ago, there was a hearing in the case of Dimitrije Radovanović, a student who was accused of violent behavior at a public gathering and, without any evidence of violence, placed under house arrest,” says Rajić.

As the only student detainee, Dimitrije served his term at the Student Dormitory “Patris Lumumba”. His term of house arrest has ended and the trial is underway.

Dimitrije tells NIN that the situation at the Faculty of Philosophy was exploited by the authorities for the purpose of diverting attention from the fundamentally important issues.

“The government is using this case to slander the opposition, even the one with extremely patriotic views,” Dimitrije says.

However, he says that he knows some of the students who took part in the blockade, and that he is glad that they were not prosecuted “because they do not like what professor Gruhonjić writes and says.”

Hostages of a demonstration exercise

The professors of that Faculty, however, see themselves as the hostages of a peculiar exercise, a smokescreen intended to cover up the significant changes that are taking place.

Dean Ivana Živančević Sataruš says that it is neither a drill nor a smokescreen when someone makes death threats and demands a professor’s dismissal in an ultimatum.

“I did not agree to fire people because somebody made an ultimatum. What comes next if anyone can say – this man annoys me, you have to fire him? It is lawlessness,” the Dean says.

The precedent has been set long ago, people are getting fired when they refuse to attend rallies of the ruling SNS party. Children are being thrown out of kindergartens, as in Pećinci, and there is no room for them if their parents are sympathizers of the opposition parties.

“If that is the connection they make, then yes, it seems that now the precedent is set when you stand up against it and say no, I refuse your ultimatum, I will obey the law until death,” the Dean says.

“But I am a professor, I run a Faculty, we are obligated to educate young people and I have not been trained for a situation like this,” she says. The professors’ children are calling their parents every hour, to check if the threats have been realized. Nevertheless, their families still want to believe that we live in a state, not a territory. And a state has rules. In our state, however, the leader of the Radicals Vojislav Šešelj is appearing on a television with national coverage to read a list of traitors to the state, as he did countless times before. In this case, it is a list of those who support a professor’s right to life and work, and his freedom of opinion. This does not bode well.

Does this mean that at some point we will all be defending ourselves from the enemy?

“No, I think that the process is reversed. First we will prove - and it will be proven by those whose job that is - who the enemy of the state is, and then we, as a state, will make sure that the enemies of the state are held accountable, not through the media, and not as decided by certain individuals,” the Dean says.

Watching the “Gruhonjić case” develop, we saw how a snowball of a lie rolled downhill to be made into truth. And how, with the help of regime tabloids, a professor who raised his hand to defend himself against unknown young men while walking out of the occupied faculty, is turned into a bully. All this is perhaps just a smokescreen intended to hide the far more important historic events that the regime would like to set aside in silence. The victims, even if they are students and professors, are not important.

A chilling warning from the history

The attack on the University of Novi Sad, as many have noted, is reminiscent of the one that happened during the Second World War and the occupation of the University in early 1942, when an administrative Rector was appointed to eliminate or appoint professors according to their suitability.

“The core of the new educational ideology was national education,” wrote a historian from the Institute for Contemporary History Dragomir Bondžić. For that purpose, 206 professors were dismissed or forced to retire, 82 were taken to concentration camps, 34 were arrested, and two were shot to death. The current situation is not identical and it would be incorrect to insinuate that fascism is at the University’s door, but it is a chilling warning from our history to see the attempts at “special education” at the University, and the use of force instead of rules and laws.

Rector Madić: I did not lead the students to the blockade

Dejan Madić, Rector of the University of Novi Sad, tells NIN that he neither brought nor led the students to the blockade of the Faculty of Philosophy, adding that he considers such claims offensive. He says that he is a father of four, that he is a Serb married to a Hungarian, and that he never chooses nationalism as an option. He condemns the demand to dismiss the professor, and considers the fact that one of the students wore a t-shirt with the image of the murderer of the prime minister as defeat of the society.

“I don’t support firing professor Gruhonjić, but you have to read what he wrote about children who throw firecrackers, and who will grow up to become throat cutters, to understand why some students felt hurt,” he says.

He doesn’t see divisions as good for the society, even less so for the University, although he believes that pluralism of opinion is necessary in a democratic society. He claims that this still is a democratic society. He promises to organize a meeting with the Dean and the professors of the Faculty and that he will do everything to reduce the tension and fear for the professors’ safety. He did not specify the time. And time is of the essence here.