More on Zvarych from "good old bob" at Abdymok:

according to bob, columbia university says that ukraine's new justice minister roman zvarych, who spelled his name "zwarycz," never received a degree. he studied at the ivy league school's dept. of international affairs from the fall of 1976 to the spring of 1978.

zwarycz's official resume says he was a professor at new york university 1983-1991. but according to bob, zvarych was a part-time adjunct professor at its school of continuing and professional studies from sept. 1989 through may 31, 1992.

the silence is deafening where's the ft and nyt when you need them?

[...]

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The whole Zvarych thing started when an anonymous someone sent an angry letter to Ukrainska Pravda:

First we thought it was an April Fool’s hoax. An anonymous letter to expose Justice Minister Roman Zvarych’s alleged lies arrived to the Ukrayinska Pravda office on April 1, right after he had taken part in the US-Ukraine Business Networking Forum.

This quite successful and useful conference took place at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York, on March 30-31. Incidentally, New York City is hometown of Minister Zvarych. And on the 1st of April Minister Zvarych had a speech at his alma mater, Columbia University.

[...]

The gist of the anonymous letter was that its author(s) took advantage of the Minister’s visit to the campus and decided to arrange an interview with him and the Columbia alumni magazine.

However, the alumni magazine staff replied that they were unaware of any Columbia graduate named Roman Zvarych.

Most likely, the alumni magazine in question is Columbia Magazine - "the only University publication sent to all Columbia alumni, both in the U.S. and around the world." I didn't find anything relevant there.

Of the irrelevant things, I began to miss NYC like crazy again (thank God, we're going to Istanbul soon - Istanbul is almost like New York) - and I bumped into the name of the guy who had designed the Columbia Magazine site: Ihor Barabakh. The transliteration of the first name is Ukrainian - the non-Ukrainian way to spell it would be 'Igor' - not 'Ihor.'

Mr. Barabakh is a painter living in New York. He was born in Lviv in 1958 and graduated from the Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts - also in Lviv - in 1984. (A note to Mr. Zvarych: this is an example of a straightforward bio - a bio that cannot cause a career-threatening confusion.)


#0122, by Ihor Barabakh