About Olexiy Haran

Dr. Olexiy Haran is Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Kyiv Mohyla University School of Policy Analysis.  From 1991-1992 he was Dean and organizer of the Department of Social Sciences at the reborn Kyiv Mohyla Academy, where he has taught since then.  Dr. Haran graduated from the Department of International Relations at Kyiv University (1981) where he also received his candidate degree in International Relations (1986) and his doctorate in Contemporary History (1996).

Dr. Haran spent six years as a researcher at the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.  In 2004-2006 he served as the Eurasia Foundation's regional vice-president for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. He also served as a member of the consultative board of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) under the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was an expert of the Public Advisory Board of the office of President Kuchma.

Dr. Haran is the author of To Kill the Dragon: From the History of Rukh and the New Political Parties of Ukraine(1993) and Transatlantic Debates:  The Turn of Western Europe to Détente and the Position of the USA (1990). He is also editor of The Multi-Party System in Ukraine (1991), co-editor of The Ukrainian Left – Between Leninism and Social Democracy (2000) , Political and Economic Transformations in Russia and Ukraine (2003), and contributor of Ukraine at a Crossroads (Peter Lang New, 2005).  He is co-author of the report The Reform Driving Forces in a Rent Seeking Society:  Lessons from the Ukrainian Transition (2007) for the Global Research Project on Understanding Reform, and Ukraine in Europe: Questions and Answers (2009). 

Haran has conducted research at Harvard and Columbia Universities, the Federal Institute for International and East European Studies (BIOst) in Cologne, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London .  He has lectured on East European studies at RAND, Berkley, Harvard, Columbia, Carnegie Endowment, BIOst and SSEES.  Haran has served as a member of the NGO Consultative Board at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine since 2000. 

Professor Haran’s articles are featured in international media and publications. On February 9, 2010, Clifford J. Levy in his New York Times article titled For Kremlin, Ukraine Election Cuts Two Ways quotes him as follows:

“Olexiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at Kiev Mohyla University, said that many Ukrainians were disappointed in the Orange Revolution, given the political tumult of recent years, but they nonetheless appreciate what it has sown.

‘Ukrainians did not gain much of what they were promised in the social or economic spheres in 2004, but at the same time, they are enjoying democracy,’ Mr. Haran said. ‘They can criticize, they can watch television political talk shows with enthusiasm. They have real choices.’

‘They would like order and stability, and they want strong leaders,’ he said. ‘But that does not mean that they are going to sacrifice their democratic freedoms for that. This is the difference with Russia.”

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