Glamourous CVs

Holding an academic degree for traditional sounding names academic fora is a sure way to a successful academic career. Of course, qualifications are not enough and given the high number of undergraduates, you need to prove your degrees by the practical experience. But, anyway, to be a LSE, or Princeton, or Harvard graduate is a good personal brading.

But...

Directly related to this high interest for getting high degrees and acquire more qualification, there are some business interests too. Of course, not all those who are enrolled and finally get the degrees are able to face the pressures of the daily academic challences. Some are dropping, but for the others, who still insist to get the academic degree, if they have enough money, it is still a chance. And here, intervenes the business I mentioned. There are either individuals or specialized companies working for you, making your papers and doing the researches according to the academic standards required. Find them, pay them and the future is yours.

Hence, do not wander if you'll meet amazing successful graduates who, in fact, are hardly able to write a coherent one page essay about a very simple topic.

Academic disabilities

The academic conferences, in my humble opinion, must represents occasions where experts and professionals from various domains are gathering together to share the results of their researches and analyse it using the tools of the critical thinking.

But, when the topics are connected to more or less recent histories, where the place of built and manipulated memories is playing the a very - if not the only - important role, these conferences are opportunities to display historical frustrations and precarious identities. The critical thinking is the last resort used for understanding and reading the realities.

The conferences with historical and political topics, addressing unsolved issues as the Balkans and the Caucasus are a good example in this direction. And I will randomly mention a couple of situations I observed in my last academic peregrinations: Hungarians claiming their right over Transylvania; Romanians claiming their predominance over Transylvania; representatives from the former Yugoslav countries fighting over who killed more and finding as well explanations and excuses for doing so; Armenians and Turks harshly fighting if it was or not an Armenian genocide; Armenians and Azeris accusing each other of aggressions. The pathetic discourses, and the passionate perspectives are killing any hope for critical appreciation. What matters is to claim that you - and only you - have and tell the truth and to deconstruct - and nullify - the point of view of the other.

What for so many hours spent in libraries and so many efforts to write presentations introduced as academic prodigies, when the basic level of the approach is not going too far of the usual information you could find in the "yellow media"?

The cultural weapon

used by the Slovakian establishment. This kind of policies will function as long as there will be individuals to answer the nationalistic messages. And you have this potential target-group because for decades, nationalism was in this part of Europe the answer to structural disfunctions, incapacity to understand the functioning of economic markets and the late modernisation. It is a vicious circle and it is how the members of the societies from this region are considering appropriate to win and request symbolic and electoral support.