The war in Ukraine is one of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our time with broad implications for global democracy and human rights. In order to educate students and the public about this vital subject, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) at the University of Michigan has created free teaching resources for use in both high schools and universities across a wide range of disciplines.

Last year, WCEE created an interactive and inquiry-driven high school teaching guide and textbook, developed together with the Center for Education Design, Evaluation, and Research (CEDER) at U-M. The resources satisfy multiple high social studies standards in World and U.S. History and were piloted in Michigan classrooms with high praise from teachers.

Building upon this, WCEE recently released a Higher Education Guide that provides a framework for examining the war as it relates to broad issues such as human rights, political sovereignty, democracy, international law, geo-political conflict, nationalism, and/or historical narratives. The guide offers recommendations on how to integrate the high school resources into college-level courses in the social sciences, humanities, and law through discussion questions and assignments to deepen students' understanding of the conflict’s complexities and global significance. 

All curricular materials are used in conjunction with WCEE’s interactive maps and archive of witness testimonies of war crimes collected by The Reckoning Project, an international NGO that works closely with Ukraine’s General Prosecutor and international legal bodies to seek justice for victims. 

“Student engagement with these primary sources adds unique depth to their understanding of human suffering and loss from the war,” commented Geneviève Zubrzycki, WCEE Director, Weiser Family Professor of European and Eurasian Studies at U-M, and the project’s Principal Investigator.  “Our resources are also designed to be widely applicable to other global conflicts across common themes, such as human rights and accountability, evidence gathering and legal admissibility, and ethics and trauma.” 

The Higher Education Guide and high school resources are available to download and adopt free of charge on the WCEE website at https://myumi.ch/7PVg9 and on the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)’s popular educational platform Share My Lesson; please share widely with your networks.

For more information, contact WCEE Special Projects Manager Derek Groom at djgroom@umich.edu.