Invisible University for Ukraine, an initiative of Central European University (IUFU), will receive the 2024 Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State.

IUFU started in spring 2022, just months after Russia’s initial invasion. Since then, thousands of Ukrainian students have taken courses taught by hundreds of faculty from across Europe and beyond.

IUFU offers online courses as well as on-site summer and winter schools in Budapest, Hungary and Lviv, Ukraine. The program’s objective is help sustain intellectual growth in the midst of incredible hardships. Its leaders seek to help students develop democratic resiliency and help them become key actors in the reconstruction of the Ukrainian social and institutional texture.