Dear all, It is been two months since our last update and a lot has happened since then. 1) After writing an open letter to Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson, Ilya Zaslavskiy tried to raise a question about oligarchs and Magnitsky List at the North America Oxford Alumni Weekend on 11 April in Washington, DC. He waited for his chance to ask at a key panel during Q&A time but was denied a chance to even ask the question for a minute. Instead he was escorted out by security in front of 300 other alumni, Chris Patten, Louise Richardson, Susan Rice, Chrystia Freeland, Ngaire Woods and other Oxford-related administrators and dignitaries as if he did something criminal. He described this incident here in Russian: https://www.facebook.com/zaslavskiy/posts/10154737918748916 2) After that disgraceful incident a group of activists decided to hold a protest simultaneously in Oxford and New York on 11 May. On that day new building of the Blavatnik School of Government was opened by Duke of Cambridge. It turns out Duke of Cambridge fund has also taken money from Blavatnik. The protest in New York took place in front of the North America Oxford Alumni office on 5th avenue, here is a report about it: https://www.facebook.com/zaslavskiy/posts/10154824683433916 3) More important though was the protest held Martin Dewhirst and John Crowfoot, two specialists on Russia and its dissident movement, in Oxford and the way it got covered by major Oxford papers. Here are some quotes and links to full articles: Protests greet future King. Acitivists demand more due diligence processes on Blavatnik’s donation. Prince William was not only greeted by excited students and fans of the royal family at the Blavatnik School of Government. After the prince’s official opening of Magdalen’s Longwall library this Wednesday, former Oxford student and Glasgow lecturer on Russian culture Martin Dewhirst held a picket outside the School building. Dewhirst carried a sign which read “due diligence or undue negligence?” and was accompanied by a few other protestors in the inconstant weather. On top of William’s visit, a conference on world-wide corruption held by David Cameron on the next day motivated Dewhirst to protest. “I wanted to do my bit in Oxford today to in- crease the chances that Russia will get more public attention,” he said. “Mr. Blavatnik has been accused of being corrupt, but not much of the evidence is available in English. I don’t understand why the University didn’t invite Transparency International and Global Witness to do some research on Mr. Blavatnik’s activities. I was able to express my concern on this point to quite a number of people in Oxford today – this made the trip worth while.” Talking to Cherwell after staff from the Blavatnik School of Government refused to accept his photo being taken in front of the new glass building, he said, “Maybe the attempt to control us was a sign of worry, if not fear?” http://www.cherwell.org/2016/05/12/protests-greet-future-king/ Blavatnik protest receives international media attention. The two protestors were invited inside the School of Government building for a private conversation with Dean Ngaire Woods “long before the Duke of Cambridge arrived at the event,” Dewhirst said. The conversation wasn’t a confrontation, he noted, but a later incident did strike him as such. “A photographer from Cherwell was told in no uncertain terms not to photograph me and my placard in front of the Blavatnik School of Government, even from the opposite side of the street. If she did, she would have her name taken by an employee,” Dewhirst said. Sophie Jordan, the Cherwell photographer in question, said that she and Dewhirst were told it would be “unfair” to have the School of Government showing in the background, since the protest, according to the staff, wasn’t aimed at the School in particular—though Dewhirst disagreed. Another reason the staff gave, Jordan said, was that “taking photos on university grounds is apparently forbidden, which we were both surprised to hear.” “Martin Dewhirst had been protesting outside the building alongside the fans of the royal family, and since they were allowed to take pictures of Prince William talking to various other people on his way out of the School, it seems slightly unfair that two members of staff insisted we ‘walk a mile down the road’ to do this,” she said. Oxford graduate Ilya Zaslavskiy, the author of the original petition to the University and an organising member of the campaign, told the Russian publication Svoboda that the methods the University employed to silence the protestors were reminiscent of Putin’s. “[The staff’s threats to report Jordan and Dewhirst] remind me of the statements of Moscow police, not Oxford Uni employees,” he wrote in a message accompanying a translation of the article. “But this is what you get when you take money from the likes of Blavatnik, I guess.” Zaslavskiy also speculated that the Dean had invited the protestors inside for conversation merely to remove them from the sightlines of photographers. On the same day, he’d held his own protest in New York City outside of the building for Oxford’s North American Alumni Society. A vocal critic of the University’s cooperation with, and acceptance of philanthropy from, controversial figures like Blavatnik, Zaslavskiy has also experienced his own share of silencing at the hands of University officials. On 11th April—days after he published a fiery open letter to Vice Chancellor of the University, Louise Richardson—Zaslavskiy was forced out of a meeting at the North American Alumni Society by security when he tried to ask a question on the issue. “As if I’m some criminal, they walked me out of the panel discussion in front of 300 other alumni. They didn’t allow me to speak even for ten seconds,” he said. “Is this how Oxford deals with dissenting voices now?” Martin Dewhirst said that Prince William’s attendance at the new building’s opening this month “would have been justified, in my opinion, if the due diligence process had been transparent, thorough, and robust. It wasn’t.” He also notes that University representatives have thus far been “unable to provide me with clear answers” as to why the compilers of the due diligence reports and the members of the Committees that approved Blavatnik’s donation “did not ask for any relevant materials to be translated from Russian to English” when none of them, in fact, could read Russian. “As long as due diligence at Oxford University is performed anonymously, without input from independent experts in the relevant field(s), the process cannot be trusted. It lacks credibility,” said Dewhirst. For Zaslavskiy, that credibility starts with the University’s willingness to listen to dissident voices and work towards a fruitful public discourse. “This is about public debate, due diligence, and now, also, free speech,” he said. http://oxfordstudent.com/2016/05/22/baroness-royalls-report-rules-oulc-not-institutionally-anti-semitic-2/ 3) At a presentation of Kleptocracy Archive at Hudson Institute on 17 May, problems with oligarchic donations were raised in regard to Oxford and Cambridge University by renowned specialists on Russia and kleptocracy: At 1:10 min Charles Davidson, editor at the American Interest, says that average Ukrainians have been well aware of grand corruption in Ukraine and its acceptance in the West. So with example of Firtash who gave money to Cambridge, the Kleptocracy Archive wants to shine light on western enablement of the grand corruption in Ukraine. At 01:12 David Kramer, ex senior expert of Freedom House and current senior director at McCain Institute, asks about western enablers and whether the Archive intends to shine light on lobbyists and think-tanks in Washington, DC that take money or give awards from/to people like Pyotr Aven. At 01:14 Karen Dawisha, author of "Putin's Kleptocracy" book, says people at Washington, DC are increasingly worried about their own reputation for instances when money is taken from kleptocratic regimes. She said some people at Kennan Institute are very embarrased for giving an award to someone from the Kleptocracy Archive like Pyotr Aven. Also embarrasing is taking money on Ukraine from someone who is the problem in Ukraine. It is now an issue for the US and Washington, DC to take care of our own cleanliness of our public space. It should behoove people at universities and think-tanks to do their own due diligence. From her contacts with UK friends Karen Dawisha says that Oxford and Cambridge are going to have a lot of trouble over accepting money from Firtash, Blavatnik and Aven. Here is a link to the event page and video: http://hudson.org/events/1341-kleptocracy-archive-launch52016 4) Later in May two major Russian language publications covered protest and problems with due diligence at Oxford at length. Radio Liberty published at article "Oxford defends itself in Putin style". It describes faults with due diligence and Committee to Review Donations at Oxford in 2007-2010 in regards to Alfa Bank and Blavatnik, plus incidents with censorship on this topic at Oxford: http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27732307.html Washington correspondent of Echo Moskvy Karina Orlova published a piece on "Russian money in British academic environment. How it works". The piece quickly got into top chart of the radio blog and got staggering 50000 views. http://echo.msk.ru/blog/karina_orlova/1764526-echo/ It was widely republished throughout Russian speaking section of worldwide web, including by the blog of a leading Israeli TV Channel 9: http://9tv.co.il/news/2016/05/13/225609.html 5) Activists behind this petition are planning to hold first Kleptocracy Guide Tour Oxbridge on 10 June in Oxford. It will be a continuation and add on of Kleptocracy Bus Tours London that were held in UK capital in the last few months. More details to come. If you are interested to participate in Oxford on the day or want to refer interested friends, please email at izaslavskiy at icloud dot com.