How did the revolutions around Central and Eastern Europe transform higher education? Less than you might think, suggests Jan Surman (Czech Academy of Sciences). In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, he talks to Rosamund Johnston (RECET) about the disappearance of Marxism-Leninism--if not those who taught it--from universities around the former Eastern Bloc. While often understood as catalysts of revolution, Surman argues that the region’s universities have proved far more resistant to change over the decades that followed than other institutions.

Dr. Jan Surman is a Lumina quaeruntur fellow at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Universities in Imperial Austria 1848-1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2018).