Monday 2nd August 2010 | 4:53 PM
The head of the only Catholic university in the former Soviet Union – who recently refused to be muzzled by intimidation methods of the soviet KGB adopted by the new pro-Moscow president of Ukraine – is in Australia presenting innovative approaches to university education.
The Ukrainian Catholic University is setting world precedents by mentally handicapped people to teach human relations.
A leading academic historian and author, Rev. Dr Gudziak is in Melbourne this week speaking on Post-Soviet society and its search for democratic solutions to its Post-Soviet problems.
Meeting university heads and academics (in Melbourne at the Australian Catholic University and Monash University), as well as Church and civic leaders, Dr Gudziak is bringing the story of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Catholic University to the Australian public.
“In Ukraine in the 20th century, during the First and SecondWorldWars and also because of the Great Famine (Holodomor) a Russian Stalinist inspired and executed genocide by hunger, 17 million people were killed or died unnatural death,” Rev. Dr. Gudziak said. “Millions more were exiled to Siberian labour camps.”
“Today emerging from this political, social, cultural and spiritual trauma is a complex process which requires very careful, patient and subtle approaches.
“Despite the troubled history of the country, the Ukrainian Catholic University is developing innovative approaches to the university experience. “We are building a dormitory that along with regular students will be a community of handicapped people. The university is trying to join and integrate what through communist ideology or a rationalist mindset was separated.
Rev. Dr Gudziak said that the handicapped, through their needs and lack of masks or facades, become teachers of human relations. They also help eliminate the pretence that is part of the academic world.
