As the daughter of an Army chaplain, Indiana State University history professor Dr. Barbara Skinner traveled a lot as a kid and picked up her father’s love of the world and other cultures. During her undergraduate years at Yale, she spent a semester in Leningrad, meeting warm, kind regular people who defied the cold stereotype of what was then the Soviet regime. She speaks Russian and Polish, and studies the world between the countries, including Ukraine. She reads Ukrainian and Belarusian for her research. When Russia invaded the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, Skinner, who has won two prestigious fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, found the world’s attention focused on the place that matches her academic expertise. “It has been agonizing to watch,” Skinner said. “Ukraine had so much going for it, with a modernizing economy and energetic young people helping to create a vibrant future, and now all of that is in jeopardy. The Russian war crimes and atrocities are simply horrifying, the humanitarian crises there are heartbreaking. “As one New York Times reporter who had worked a long time in Russia remarked, it is like watching a friend you love lose their mind. Putin has destroyed Russia’s economy and place in the world, and it may never recover from this. Belarus is implicated as well. So the entire region that I study is in crisis, and the future is grim.”
Dr. Barbara Skinner
—History professor Barbara Skinner
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STATE MAGAZINE
Skinner is a prime example of the high-quality faculty who make an ISU education so valuable and the student experience unique. She values teaching and said she appreciates making a difference with students she refers to as “personable” and “down to earth.”
BY MARK ALESIA
...if you have full-time faculty teaching these entry-level courses from the beginning, from freshman year, you’re getting quality. I just can’t stress that enough.
“I came from a family that wasn’t that well off,” Skinner said. “Army chaplains were not well paid back then. Yeah, I did get to go to Yale, but I was a total scholarship kid, and I always felt out of place there. It’s just nice to be in a place where it feels real.” What also feels real to her, perhaps more than many others, is the devastation of the war. She has been constantly checking the news and contacting Ukrainian and Russian friends. She has followed Russian opposition YouTube channels.
