It is July 2018. Irakli, a scientist in his 60s, and I share a ride from Tbilisi to a nearby town. As we discuss the fate of Georgian science, he recounts the painful transition of the post-Soviet era. “Nobody cares about us,” he says. “Neither did the former government, nor do the NGOs or Western donors. Funding seems reserved for research on LGBT issues, while my generation is entirely overlooked.” To Irakli, the 2003 Rose Revolution offered nothing. He explains that in the past, he was “poor but respected”; the revolution left him just as poor but also marginalized. “The National Science Foundation is the only source of funding,” he adds, “and even they don’t care about us. Their focus is on youth; we are forced to include them in our research and pay them higher rates than we do.”

Five years later, the political landscape—and the perceived status of academic groups—shifted once more. While Georgia’s post-Soviet trajectory was built upon Euro-Atlantic integration and democratic institution–building, the official rhetoric shifted significantly following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The turning point occurred after 2024, marked by the postponement of European integration and heightening skepticism toward European structures. Domestically, this shift has been defined by legislative measures subjecting Western-funded NGOs, media, and academic institutions to heightened suspicion, labeling them as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” (in the previous version, “agents of foreign influence”). In response, targeted actors have reciprocated this suspicion, viewing the ruling party as a conduit for Russian influence. 

As the familiar order of things collapses, uncertainty unfolds. Every new piece of information prompts citizens to deploy the filter of suspicion to grapple with fundamental questions: What is true? Who is morally right? Who can (still) be trusted? Thus, the ongoing political crisis also seems to be an epistemic one: the dominant discourse collapses, while different groups operate under contradictory sets of convictions and moral evaluations. In this atmosphere of indeterminacy, as Mathijs Pelkmans notes, suspicion serves as both a logical filter for empirical accuracy and an affective one for moral evaluation and social exclusion.

Amidst this crisis, those categorized as “suspicious citizens” include the “youth” Irakli described in 2018. These post-revolutionary scholars, the established, largely Western-educated academic staff, have now been rebranded by the state as “selected based on political affiliation” and “unqualified.” In 2024, special forces targeted students and professors protesting what they saw as the country’s derailment from its democratic trajectory. While a segment of the academic community united in solidarity, others remained silent or openly denounced their peers.

Identifying who is “on your side” has become a significant challenge. Some interlocutors monitor colleagues’ social media activity to see which political camps they “like.” In public, members of these polarized groups—often former collaborators or students and teachers—avoid face-to-face debate and even chance encounters on the street. This mutual avoidance further intensifies the prevailing suspicion.

These suspicious mutual dispositions are sometimes rooted in pre-existing attitudes. For Irakli, the “pro-Western” academia represents a class of unfairly privileged citizens receiving Western grants, forcibly replacing him. They were the victors of the Rose Revolution; he was its casualty. In the parlance of the early 2000s, they were those who “know English and the computer.” In David Goodhart’s terms, Irakli represented the “somewheres,” while the new elites were the “everywheres.” As the pro-Western trajectory came under scrutiny, these “everywheres” were recast as “agents of foreign influence.”

But suspicion flows in both directions. “It won’t bother them if these opportunities are closed,” says Leah, a humanities professor. She uses “they” to refer to the pro-government academics, while “opportunities” refers specifically to international exchange programs for Georgian academic staff. She and her colleagues strategize on how to mobilize peers to join protests against the 2025–26 university reforms; they fear these measures will result in massive intake cuts, the elimination of numerous programs, the abolition of institutional autonomy, isolation from international academic networks, and increased ideological scrutiny.

“Those programs never included them anyway,” agrees Giorgi, Leah’s colleague. “They’ll be only glad if we lose this chance too.” For Leah and Giorgi, the “somewheres” of Georgian academia lack the competence necessary for global scholarly participation. Levan, a professor of physics, agrees: “There are so-called scientists among them who have written entire books without citing a single source. They don’t even know what an h-index is.”

Thus, the “globalized” academics suspect that the “localized” faction is driven by ressentiment over their post-revolutionary marginalization, which they attribute to their isolated, Soviet-era competence deemed unsuitable for the global market. In Levan’s perspective, these actors seek to reclaim their former status by aligning with the government, even if their pursuit of revenge leads the Georgian education system toward disaster.

What Now?

In the ongoing transformation of Georgia’s national trajectory and the resulting political and epistemic crisis, global and local dimensions are intricately intermingled. While the most tangible shift was precipitated by the 2022 invasion of Ukraine—an event of enormous global consequence—the specific, bitter flavor of suspicion arising among Georgia’s academics has roots that are historically and politically embedded in the fractures of the country’s post-Soviet transition. Simultaneously, this suspicion echoes the broader frictions of globalization: a process that, by its very nature, has produced both its “winners” and “losers.”

As a result of these reforms, people like Leah, Levan, and Giorgi are increasingly losing their jobs, and many have already left Georgia in search of opportunities abroad. In 2025, I spoke with Irakli again. While he does not approve of the repressions his “younger colleagues” have endured, he remains suspicious of their protest. His stance reflects a quiet, persistent refusal to align with a group he still perceives as his historical displacers. Meanwhile, the other side remains equally disinterested in dialogue. If this mutual suspicion continues to perpetuate a zero-sum game that merely runs in circles, we must ask: in a landscape of such profound social and institutional fragmentation, can there really be any “winners”?