Notre Dame's Support for Ukraine

 

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Europe found itself plunged into war, mass migration, and crisis. 

At Notre Dame, it sparked a quick call to concrete action, especially at the Nanovic Institute, which boasts a two-decade history with the Ukrainian Catholic University, from which 22 visiting scholars and 18 university leaders have taken courses in South Bend. Indeed, on the day of the invasion, Nanovic organized a virtual flash panel of experts who could comment on the outbreak of war to hundreds of audience members. Four more panels, and a series of other events, would dot a year clouded by the dark situation in Ukraine.

Taras Dobko, the senior vice rector of UCU, said: “In the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Nanovic Institute has stood shoulder to shoulder with its partners who were forced into adverse circumstances….The institute’s long friendship with Ukraine made Notre Dame’s response to the war in Ukraine unmatched in solidarity and action. Notre Dame has proposed a comprehensive plan for partnership with UCU that would empower the university in its response to the challenges posed by the war and its aftermath. This plan encompasses student and faculty exchange, opportunities for administrators to share their experiences and expertise, and research grants to pursue potential new topics of intellectual and academic inquiry that would have a positive impact on civil society in post-war Ukraine.”

This year’s Nanovic Forum was dedicated to discussions on religion in post-communist Europe, the threat of authoritarianism, and preventing genocide. It featured Myroslav Marynovych, an activist and vice rector for university mission at UCU; Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize– winning historian and journalist who had just interviewed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky; and Lord Alton of Liverpool, British parliamentarian and human rights campaigner. Though the conversation was not limited to the situation in Ukraine, and did touch on other global examples, the volatile war inevitably influenced the gathering.

As Notre Dame was bringing scholars to campus, so too would Notre Dame venture toward Ukraine. Students volunteered to help the refugees as they escaped. Matt Chuma ’22 was already scheduled to be in Germany as part of a Nanovic experiential learning course, but when Russia invaded Ukraine just two weeks before, he knew he wanted to help.

He wrote: “All four of my grandparents fled Ukraine to escape political and cultural persecution by Nazi Germany and the USSR. Their story had been at the core of my identity as a native Ukrainian speaker and proud Ukrainian American…I would have never guessed that two weeks before our departure, Russia would invade my ancestral homeland of Ukraine and spark a new wave of refugees, the pace and enormity of which has not been seen since the period when my grandparents fled Ukraine almost eighty years ago. I would also have never predicted that on the final day of our Berlin migration class trip I would see my grandparents’ tragic story repeat itself before my eyes.”

Chuma and some of his classmates volunteered at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the central train station where evacuation trains were arriving from Poland. They donated food and water before spending a day carrying children, fielding questions, handing out food, and consoling the elderly.

“As my cousin fights for his country’s freedom in Kyiv with the Ukrainian army, the least I can do is tell traumatized women and children, waiting with uncertainty in a cold, foreign train station, that there is hope,” he wrote. Still, the war drags on. But Notre Dame’s solidarity and support has not gone unnoticed.

Ukrainian Metropolitan-Archbishop and President of UCU Borys Gudziak was invited to give the 2022 commencement address. He shared: “Notre Dame has offered a singular response to the Russian invasion and devastation of Ukraine. My presence reflects your heartfelt solidarity. It is a sign of your capacity to love generously, to embrace, to serve, and save the suffering, to bless the cursed and lift up the downtrodden and trampled.”