In a TV interview, poet and academic Vlada Urosevic said that the only criteria for membership in the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences should be individual contribution and not the ethnicity of the candidate.

I can confirm that ethnic Albanians were rejected for MANU membership, but far more Macedonians were left outside of the institution. If an ethnic Albanian is rejected, it’s not because of his ethnicity but because of the failure to meet the criteria, Urosevic said, as the Albanian VLEN coalition is pushing for the creation of a separate Albanian academy.

The poet acknowledged that the procedure for adding new members is complicated, but that is because of the high criteria that are laid out.

As a MANU representative in the international association of academias, it is customary that one country has only one academy. MANU has ethnic Albanian members, and two were named Vice Presidents of the academy, he added.