Charles University ethnology students occupy building and strike, demand director be removed

Students of ethnology at Charles University in Prague are beginning a two-day occupation and strike on Wednesday, 6 May. Their protest is an expression of their disagreement with the director of the Institute of Ethnology, Marek Jakoubek, whose removal they seek.

The strike will involve debates, lectures, theater performances and students sleeping in the building and is a continuation of their previous efforts to respond to the personnel changes (and others) introduced by the director. Jakoubek became the head of the Institute in October 2014 and his appointment sparked a wave of negative reactions in the academic community, both in the Czech Republic and abroad.  

Those reactions were linked to his previous disputes with other Romani Studies scholars, the core of which were about Jakoubek’s work on Romani people, whom he believes do not constitute a separate ethnicity and whose social exclusion he believes is primarily related to their poverty. Dean Mirjam Fried is standing behind Jakoubek and is refusing to fire him.

The students are criticizing recent personnel changes in particular; five educators have left the department since January. In the case of the removal of anthropologists Jaroslav Skupnik and Martin Soukup, those educators say they believe Jakoubek’s personal antipathy for them played a role; during its March session the Academic Senate also called on the Dean to keep Skupnik and Soukup at the Institute.

The students drew attention to the problem last Friday during the Student’s May Day, when they symbolically "buried ethnology" in a procession bearing a coffin. Dean Fried, however, says changes at the Institute are necessary because it has long been neglected both as a field and as a workplace.

"Docent Jakoubek will carry out his concept and has a three-year mandate to transform the Institute. I am not considering removing him," she said.