Bucharest universities plan guidelines on avoiding political interference in academia

The Bucharest University and the National School of Political and Administrative Studies plan to draft a best practices guide in the area of university management. The guide is meant to outline how the management of universities can avoid political involvement. The initiative comes after 30 rectors of universities across the country signed, at the end of January, a letter supporting the new education minister Valentin Popa, after he was criticized for the grammar mistakes he made in a public speech. The two universities highlight the fact that leadership positions in universities should not be political and that the academic autonomy needs to be guaranteed. “In all developed countries, the lack of political involvement in the management of universities is a warrant of the fact that the opinions of the specialists in the higher education institutions, expressed in specialized publications, studies, public policies proposals, debates and so on, are the result of the expertise acquired in decades of work and are not influenced by factors exterior to the academic environment,” the two universities said in a statement. Mircea Dumitru, the rector of the Bucharest University, resigned at the end of January from all the positions held in National Council for Attesting University Titles, Diplomas, and Certificates (CNATDCU) after the new education minister's comments on plagiarism. Academic ethics and integrity courses, compulsory in Romania editor@romania-insider.com