Carnegie Corporation Commits $2.5 Million to Centers for Advanced Study in Post-Soviet Regions over Next Two Years – Bringing Total Investment to $14 Million

Academic Centers of Excellence Training New Generation of Researchers in Western Eurasia, South Caucasus

New York, New York, March 12, 2010—Asserting that scholarly research and education in the arts, humanities and social sciences are not luxuries in difficult times but vitally necessary for emerging nations as they articulate new civic and cultural identities, Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian announced a $2.5 commitment over the next two years to further strengthen centers for advanced study focusing on Western Eurasia and the South Caucasus.

A single Western Eurasia center covers Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova. There are three South Caucasus centers in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

The grants announced today represent a significant renewal of support for the four advanced study centers originally launched by Carnegie Corporation in 2003, bringing the foundation’s total investment in these centers to $14 million.

“The intellectual and academic resources in these centers of excellence are helping to advance the transformation of the region’s higher education institutions into modern and more comprehensive research universities,” said Gregorian. “The women and men supported by the centers—the intelligentsia—are the region’s engine of reform. Hence, we must continue to invest in them as they contribute to economic development, political and legal reform, and the formation of post-Soviet civil society.”