The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the UC Berkeley is raising money to endow a chancellor’s chair in Ukrainian studies that will lead to expanded course offerings, cultural programs and a growing cluster of academic scholars, Alexander Rony reports in the UC Berkely News.
The department is halfway to its fundraising goal of $9 million and began the campaign in December 2023 with a $3 million launch gift from the Open Society Foundations, a grant-making network working for democracy and human rights.
Another important development at this university was the launch of the UC Berkeley-Ukraine Innovation Hubs last May by Ukrainian officials, including Anastassia Fedyk, Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business at the UC, Berkeley, Chief Economist of the AI for Good Foundation, and co-founder of the charitable foundation Economists for Ukraine, and Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Quantedge Presidential Professor of Economics, editor of the American Economic Review and since 2022 director of the Ukraine Initiative at the Centre for Economic Policy and Research, and Chancellor Rich Lyons, working in his former role as chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer. The hub’s co-founders hope that tackling urgent challenges in Ukraine, such as mine clearance, will attract investment in related industries, like robotics.