The election of a new dean comes after a months-long crisis at the Faculty of Political Sciences, since some students and professors opposed the election of Slavisa Orlović as dean due to accusations of sexual harassment.
The crisis was resolved at the end of September with the election of Professor Darko Nadić as acting dean, when it was decided that the full dean should be elected by the end of the year.
The atmosphere is heating up again, because the new dean of FPN should be elected soon. "Vremena" sources say that it was supposed to be this Thursday (December 12), although it is unclear how due to the blockade of the faculty.
In addition to Nadić, full professor Maja Kovačević, who teaches at the Department of International Studies, was in the running for that position.
According to the Faculty's Statute, the Teaching and Research Council selects one candidate by secret ballot by a majority of the total number of members and submits a proposal to the Faculty Council, which is the main governing body of the faculty and elects and dismisses the dean. The Council session is usually scheduled seven days after the Council's decision.
Support for student blockades
The faculty went into lockdown last Tuesday, and a few days later the expanded dean's collegium announced its support of the students' demands "to find and bring to justice all those criminally and civilly responsible for the accident in Novi Sad."
The press release highlights the support for the students' demands "that the judicial authorities and the authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs find as soon as possible those responsible for the beating of the students who protested due to the public's justified suspicion that the government is trying to protect the real culprits of the accident in Novi Sad".
"We support all student and other civil actions aimed at the state bodies objectively responsible for elucidating all the causes of the accident in Novi Sad - until those demands are met," FPN officials point out.
At the same time, the extended dean's collegium sent an appeal to "all fellow members of the Teaching and Research Council, as well as the competent bodies of the Faculty, to refrain from any kind of actions and sanctions against the participants of the student protest."
"The faculty, in cooperation and agreement with the students, will try to return the teaching-scientific process to regular courses as soon as possible in order to respect the institution and its primary role," was emphasized in the statement published on the FPN website.
The signatories of the statement are members of the extended FPN dean's collegium - in addition to Nadićat, there are also the president of the Faculty Council Časlav Koprivica, the head of the Department for Social Policy and Social Work Jasna Hrnčić, the head of the Department of International Studies Maja Kovačević, the head of the Department of Journalism and Communication Veselin Kljajić and the head of the Department of Political Science Dejan Pavlovic.
Who are the candidates?
Since 2012, Darko Nadić has been a full-time professor at FPN, where he received his doctorate in 1999, and previously obtained his master's degree and bachelor's degree, and is engaged in the following subjects: Social and Political Ecology, Contemporary Environmental Policy, Environmental Policy of Serbia and Environmental Policy, Public Policy and services.
Nadić's opponent, Maja Kovačević, is a full professor at the Department of International Studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences. She teaches several subjects in the field of European studies, and her research work is focused on the management of the European Union, EU enlargement, and relations between the Western Balkans and the EU.
During the nineties, she was a researcher at the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade, and from 2001 to 2003 she was the head of the Office for European Integration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
