Putin: academic institute directors should not be appointed by bureaucrats

(Interfax – MOSCOW, July 3, 2013) Bureaucrats should not have the right to appoint directors of academic institutes, President Vladimir Putin said.

“I would like to call your attention to a key provision of this draft law [reforming the Academy], i.e. the establishment of an agency managing Academy assets and essentially performing one of its main functions – the appointment of academic institute directors and, to a considerable degree, the evaluation of their performance,” Putin told Academy President Vladimir Fortov.

In the time of Peter the Great, when the Academy was just being founded, academy heads had been appointed, the president said. “Probably, we should not be doing that now. Probably, those who think that bureaucrats should not have these powers are right,” the president said.

Instead, Putin proposed that a special group of authoritative scientists at the Presidential Education and Science Council be set up to make these appointments.