Moscow State University is investigating its teaching standards and quality of life, amid student complaints of anti-Semitic and extremist views infiltrating the curriculum. The investigation into the sociology department at one of Russia’s most prestigious universities was sparked when a rare burst of grassroots organizing among the student body last week began to catch the media’s attention.
“The dean’s office has distributed a brochure to all students which approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system,” a student group wrote in a public appeal. “Studying conditions at the department are unbearable.”
Sociology department Dean Vladimir Dobrenkov conceded that living conditions on campus were poor, but dismissed the student’s allegations of anti-Semitic and xenophobic content in the curriculum as “full of hints, rumors and half-truths.”
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