In the Soviet Union, collective letters of denunciation appeared in the pages of Pravda to expose the “incorrect” positioning and “political short-sightedness” of errant public figures.

Meanwhile, in supposed defence of Europe against Russian aggression, a was published in the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda in April about an academic book. That book is , written by Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-born political scientist at the University of Ottawa with an established record of peer-reviewed work on the conflict.

The signatories – more than 100 scholars in eastern European studies, with many more signing a – warn readers against the book not primarily on scholarly grounds but because its “central message” allegedly serves Russian propaganda and risks “reduc[ing] Western help for Ukraine” by creating a false moral symmetry between aggressor and victim.

Katchanovski’s book indeed revises the war’s genesis, casting Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan not as a revolution at all but as a provoked coup in which far-right groups played a significant role. Katchanovski also emphasises the outsized role of radical Ukrainian nationalist groups in escalating the conflict with Russia, as well as Western states’ failure to support a peace deal.

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Katchanovski is far from the first academic to face backlash for challenging a powerful moral consensus, of course. Scholarly publications that challenge politically important narratives are often attacked not primarily for their scholarly content, but on moral, political or ideological grounds. Subsequently, no substantive scholarly argument occurs; the focus is on establishing that the scholar in question is not a decent actor.

This happened, for example, to Hannah Arendt after the publication of her book on the Eichmann trial, which referred to the banality of the Holocaust organiser’s “evil” rather than depicting him as driven by monstrous urges. More recently, it happened to the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt after their on the influence of the Israel lobby on US foreign policy.

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It is difficult to establish whether a given scholarly statement is consciously crafted with predetermined conclusions to advance a given political position. In the maelstrom of moral outrage, such accusations can be easily made and supported. Yet scrutinising academic quality remains the best means to resolve such cases. Katchanovski’s arguments can and should be criticised according to the standards of our profession: quality of sources, transparency of methodology, verifiability of conclusions, good faith engagement with the literature, and willingness to enter into professional debate.

Everything else – interpretation, debate and even serious deviation from the mainstream – belongs to the author’s academic freedom.

However, the Ukrainska Pravda letter in effect marks Katchanovski publicly as a politically dangerous author and calls for his exclusion from academic spaces. In addition, it largely ignores the fact that Katchanovski has a sustained research agenda on the topic and has faced sustained pressure because of it – including, he claims, the of his property in western Ukraine in 2015. Nor is he the only Ukrainian scholar to face persecution and marginalisation in Ukraine in a context of deteriorating since 2014.

It is also important to recall that, according to Katchanovski, the book was and passed peer review, only for the editor to demand – presumably because of external pressure – that Katchanovski rewrite the book to include “alternative” perspectives. Katchanovski called this a violation of his academic freedom. He cancelled the deal with Routledge and signed a new contract with Palgrave Macmillan – for which he decided to raise the funds for open access from scratch. His subsequent successful crowdfunding, which received significant visibility on Elon Musk’s X, is no basis for further accusations of his political toxicity. His opponents, however, that the dark forces of American “techno-authoritarianism” are behind the book’s social media visibility and impressive metrics.

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Above all, the Pravda letter’s function is to directly prescribe how the war must be interpreted: exclusively as the “latest variation of centuries-old Russian expansionism, pan-nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism”. In other words, the authors establish a regime of truth. Such a move is understandable in political debate, but it is deeply problematic in academic discussion. Such a move deters scholars from examining “enemy perspectives” and delegitimises alternative interpretations.

It is not clear why claiming that actors in Ukraine and the West had a role in escalating or prolonging the conflict should be taboo in eastern European studies. It is no more controversial than saying Austria-Hungary or Serbian nationalists played a role in starting the First World War, even if Germany was the primary driver.

Agitation to “rally the ranks” and enforce the “one true” explanation of the war is the latest chapter of the increasing securitisation and moralisation of eastern European studies that has been occurring since 2014. Well-known scholars are accused of working for intelligence services on the basis of their scholarly specialisation, as happened, for example, in one recently published book on the history of American studies in Russia. Scholarly critique in line with professional standards is substituted with political agitation and personal attacks on “enemy scholars”. What is next? Are we to have blacklists of “bad scholars”? Lists of prohibited keywords? A prescribed set of “correct” positions on sensitive topics?

This peril concerns not only the war in Ukraine, but also other spheres infused with identitarian politics, such as the war in Gaza, debates on immigration and racism, gender and sexuality. Entire fields and topics are increasingly marked in advance as dangerous, and any deviation from the prescribed script is deemed morally evil, as social media drives groupthink and aggressive moralisation. In a broader sense, there is a mounting risk that Western societies are losing their capacity to tolerate genuine political diversity and the very practice of dialogical reasoning.

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If these tendencies continue unchecked, universities are in serious trouble. If we are unable to have debates exclusively on principles of political neutrality, professional judgement and the plurality of possible interpretations, then what is the purpose of academia?

On 30 May, it was announced that an additional 150 academics had signed the Pravda letter. The signatories may believe their cause is noble and beyond dispute. We believe the means they have chosen to assert it, however, only damages our profession further.

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is a member of the Institute of International Studies at Charles University, Prague. is a senior researcher in the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs’ research group for eastern Europe and Asia.