Society news at HSE University

On October 13th, 2011, Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the United States, and Thomas Melia, his Deputy, met students and lecturers from the HSE, Nizhny Novgorod.

On September 28^th 2011, Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, signed an executive order ‘Approval of the list of members of the Public chamber of the Russian Federation’. As part of this, Yaroslav Kuzminov, Rector of the Higher School of Economics, became a member of the public chamber.

Ronald Inglehart, Professor at the University of Michigan and Academic Supervisor of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, and Pippa Norris, Professor in political science at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, have both won the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. The awards ceremony took place on September 24^th at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.

From August 23^rd-27^th a meeting of Nobel laureates in economics took place in Lindau, Germany. This event is traditionally organized once every three years. Henry Penikas, lecturer at the HSE Department of Mathematical Economics and Econometrics and one of the participants at this meeting, told us about the event.

On May 23rd Craig Mundie, Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft, spoke at the HSE Faculty of Business Informatics. The title of the lecture was ‘More Like Us: Computing Transformed’. The event was organized by the Higher School of Economics together with Skolkovo Open University and Microsoft Company.

From May 23rd – 25th the international symposium ‘Twenty Years: Political and Economic Evolution in Post-communist Europe’ will take place at the Higher School of Economics. Evgeniy Yasin, Academic Supervisor of the HSE, told us about the forthcoming forum.

On March 14^th students, teachers and staff of the HSE met the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Uri Rosenthal. The lecture was addressed primarily to the students and was broadcast to all HSE regional branches. Thanks to video conference facilities, HSE students from Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Perm had the opportunity not only to watch and listen to the speech, but also to ask questions to the minister after the lecture.

On February 16^th Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with the heads of expert groups to discuss Russia’s socio-economic development strategy through 2020. Yarolsav Kuzminov, Rector of the HSE, was among the participants.