An excellent presentation and discussion on Flagship Universities led by Prof John Douglass of UC Berkeley, with Dr Igor Chirikov (NRU Higher School of Economics, Moscow), Dr Manja Klemencic (Harvard) and Prof Isak Froumin (NRU HSE).
All this while I was supposed to be in Durban, South Africa, to be part of the Group on University Governance, Leadership and Management at the 2nd National Higher Education Summit, called by the Minister of Higher Education and Training.
I hope all who are there are charting a new path for post-Apartheid SA HE, while I am learning about post-Soviet Russian HE, not that the one "post-" is comparable to the other. It appears that the Soviets actually did quite well in establishing and coordinating a massive higher education system that has only been recovering in the last ten years from the after-shock of the disintegration of the USSR.
Well, after the first, pre-conference day, Paul Ashwin (Lancaster), Manja, Hamish Coates (University of Melbourne) and I went with John, his wife, and three colleagues from the HSE to the Bolshoi Theatre, to watch an opera!
That's us, just before the Prima Donna dies :)
