The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced five grants totaling more than $5 million in support of three independent universities in Russia and to help move the operations of the European Humanities University from Belarus to Lithuania, where it will operate as a "university in exile."

Through its Initiative in the Russian Federation, the foundation awarded the European University at St. Petersburg $1.45 million to promote advanced scholarship and education in the social sciences and humanities; $1.45 million to the Friends of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences in support of the school's master's programs in political science, sociology, law, and arts and culture management, as well as its Center for Education Policy; and $1.25 million to the American Friends of the New Economic Schools in support of the school's master's programs in economics. In addition, the American Council for International Education received two grants totaling $900,000 to help establish the European Humanities University-International in Vilnius, Lithuania. The university had been based in Minsk, Belarus, until it was shut down in August 2004 by the government of President Alexander Lukashenko.

"Strong democracies require strong universities and other centers of scholarly research," said MacArthur Foundation president Jonathan Fanton. "When authoritarian regimes place limitations on independent thought, all of society suffers. The independent and state institutions MacArthur supports in Russia and the post-Soviet region foster the atmosphere of open inquiry and humanitarian values in which freedom thrives."