US authorities allow Coursera company to return to Crimea
The U.S. Government officially allowed the world’s largest online learning platform, Coursera, to resume its work in the annexed territories of Crimea and Sevastopol, despite the sanctions, as reported by Kommersant on Tuesday, citing the Russian partners of the Higher School of Economics (a University which cooperates with Coursera).
It became possible after obtaining a special license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control.
According to the newspaper, during an international conference in 2015, the President of the Higher School of Economics, Yaroslav Kuzminov, stated that the sanctions “nullify the idea of education as a global public good.” The academic community supported this idea. Later, the Russian Association of Global Universities submitted an official request to the creator of Coursera, Daphne Koller, to make the platform available for Crimean residents.
The online learning platform Coursera has not been available for Crimean residents since 1 February 2015 due to the sanctions against Russia that were imposed by U.S.A. and the European Union in response to the annexation of the peninsula and the beginning of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.