Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on September 17, 2025 to attend this event.
Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Oxana Shevel. Moderated by Mark Andryczyk.
In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has taken steps to limit the influence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), historically aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). This talk explores the legal, political, and societal debates in Ukraine surrounding the state’s efforts to safeguard Ukraine’s “spiritual independence” while navigating international norms on religious freedom. Why did the Ukrainian state conclude that the UOC pose a threat to Ukraine’s spiritual independence? Can a religion ever pose a threat to national security, and when such a threat it believed to exist how should democracies balance national security and religious liberty? Do international legal frameworks on religious freedoms sufficiently account for the use of religion in hybrid warfare and instrumentalization of religion in Russia’s war of imperial aggression? The talk will explore these questions with a focus on the post-February 2022 domestic developments and debates in Ukraine while also situating the Ukrainian case in comparative perspective, drawing parallels with how other contemporary democratic states have sought to balance national security concerns and freedom of religion.
Oxana Shevel is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University and Director of the Tufts International Relations Program. Her research and teaching focus on the post-communist region, especially Ukraine and Russia, and topics such as nation-building, identity, citizenship and memory politics, church-state relations, and democratization processes. She is co-author (with Maria Popova) of a book on the root causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war, “Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States” (Polity, 2024). Her earlier book “Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe” (Cambridge, 2011) won the American Association of Ukrainian Studies (AAUS) prize for best book in the fields of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature, and culture. Shevel currently serves as the Vice President and President-Elect of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), and as Vice President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN).
