Free to Think Podcast: Recent Episodes
Scholars at Risk
Free to Think features conversation with interesting, thoughtful, and inspiring individuals whose research, teaching, or expression falls at the always sensitive intersection of power and ideas. We'll be speaking with those who have the courage to seek truth and speak truth, often at great risk, as well as with those who support them and share their stories.
Free to Think is a podcast presented by Scholars at Risk, where we celebrate people with the courage to think, question, and share ideas. For information on membership, activities, or donating to Scholars at Risk, visit www.scholarsatrisk.org.
Amid conflicts and political tensions around the world, the Swedish Defence University sees its role as a source of research and education that contributes to a "robust and democratic society." That is the contention of Vice Chancellor Dr. Robert Egnell, who highlights SDU's unique role in educating officers and civilians, as well as helping the broader public make sense of complicated times. SDU furthers that mission by also hosting displaced academics—including Ukrainian scholars—with Dr. Egnell noting that maintaining higher education during war serves as a vital act of hope, societal continuity, and resistance against authoritarian trends.
This year, SAR celebrates 25 years of a global academic freedom movement strong enough to meet the challenges ahead. In this special series, we are inviting higher education leaders from across the network and around the world to share what the 25th anniversary theme Truth Matters means to them and their work. Join the movement »
Prof. Dr. Lilli Gast, Chair of the Supervisory Board and Senior Professor at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) in Berlin, sees SAR's 25th anniversary theme Truth Matters across her work. In discussing psychoanalysis as a "project of enlightenment," Dr. Gast reflects on the fundamental connection between psychoanalysis, truth-seeking, and academic freedom. "All science is about truth," she says. "And if it is not, it is ideology." As a longtime member of the SAR network and a founding member of the SAR Germany section, IPU also demonstrates how welcoming at-risk academics enriches university communities, inspires student activism, and safeguards the global pursuit of knowledge.
This year, SAR celebrates 25 years of a global academic freedom movement strong enough to meet the challenges ahead. In this special series, we are inviting partners from across the network and around the world to share what the 25th anniversary theme Truth Matters means to them and their work. Join the movement »
"We need to be open in order to be strong," asserts Professor Dr. Andreas Marx, President of Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Framing openness as a necessity for both academic excellence and societal resilience, Dr. Marx discusses how his institution lives out its core mission of "Light, Life, Liberty." To counter local political pressures on academic freedom and rebuild public trust in science post-pandemic, the university is practicing openness through direct community engagement—opening a dedicated communication hub and launching a mobile science bus to bring research directly to rural areas. Dr. Marx emphasizes that staying open and showing society the tangible value of higher education is essential to protecting academic freedom and keeping truth at the center of public life.
This year, SAR celebrates 25 years of a global academic freedom movement strong enough to meet the challenges ahead. In this special series, we are inviting partners from across the network and around the world to share what the 25th anniversary theme Truth Matters means to them and their work. Join the movement »
Camilla Croso, Executive Director of the Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas (CAFA), one of three coalitions for academic freedom founded in partnership with Scholars at Risk, joins SAR Executive Director Rob Quinn to discuss the importance of truth-seeking for a healthy democracy. Croso describes CAFA's work to deepen collaboration, in particular through partnerships between the global North and South. She also highlights that creativity cuts across all intellectual areas, uniting academics, artists, and journalists. "We can become more powerful in our struggle if we unite."
Threats to truth, inquiry, and free expression abound today. For Professor Dr. Martin Paul, Rector of Ruhr University Bochum, that means universities should be even more vocal about how those values are embodied on campus. RUB is a hive of activity on these themes, with threatened scholars continuing their research, student advocacy seminars, and even a "Garden of Refuge" exhibition created by SAR advocacy seminar students and situated within the university's botanical garden, honoring scholars who have been wrongfully imprisoned. In this conversation, Professor Paul and SAR Executive Director Rob Quinn discuss what we can learn from history and how universities can lead the way in declaring that Truth Matters.
The Université libre de Bruxelles has a long tradition of hosting threatened scholars from all over the world. In this conversation with SAR Executive Director Rob Quinn, Anne Weyembergh, Professor of Law and Vice Rector for External Relations and Cooperation, describes the motivations for and impact of hosting scholars, such as keeping scholarship "free from repression, persecution," given that "in many contexts, researchers are threatened because they produce or defend truths." Professor Weyembergh also draws on her academic background to explore how truth-seeking is vital in criminal law and considers the role of universities in cultivating an "epistemic humility" in which professors and researchers can revise their views when new evidence emerges. "Truth is not imposed, but is pursued through critical reasoning, open debate, and scientific rigor. That is the basic principle of ULB."
This year, SAR celebrates 25 years of a global academic freedom movement strong enough to meet the challenges ahead. Join us: www.scholarsatrisk.org/join-the-movement
Dr. Tyrell Haberkorn and Dr. Paul Chambers join Free to Think to discuss the use of Thailand’s lèse-majesté law to intimidate and silence scholars.
After three decades living and working in Thailand, Professor Paul Chambers was arrested in April 2025 and charged under Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code with lèse-majesté, or insulting the monarchy. He believes he was targeted in retaliation for his research on the military and democracy. After an international campaign on his behalf, the charges against him were dropped, but he lost his university position, and his visa was revoked. He is currently in the United States, where he notes: “If I am outside of Thailand, I can go on with my work and probably do a better job of describing the problems of the Thai military.”
Professor Tyrell Haberkorn is an expert on state violence in Thailand. She highlights the chilling effect of Paul’s arrest on scholars and the wider society, as well as the history of lèse-majesté law in Thailand. “People were jailed for performing plays, for having conversations in taxis, for bathroom graffiti, for social media posts.”
Free to Think speaks with Omar Gómez Trejo, a lawyer and human rights advocate from Mexico. Omar gained prominence as the special prosecutor leading the investigation into the disappearance of 43 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in the city of Iguala, Mexico.
From 2019-2022, Omar’s team secured indictments for over 100 federal, state, and local authorities for their involvement in the disappearances or subsequent cover-ups, including military officials and organized crime members. His team also worked closely with the families of victims and their legal representatives in their search for truth and justice.
Facing significant political interference in the case, Omar resigned as special prosecutor in 2022. Through SAR’s Practitioners at Risk program, Omar is a visiting scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law. There, he continues to work on the Ayotzinapa case through his research and teaching, while drawing on his experience with the case to work on broader issues of impunity for human rights violations in Mexico and beyond.
See SAR’s monitoring of the 2014 Ayotzinapa case: https://ow.ly/blY950VwQTm
Listen to “After Ayotzinapa” on Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting: https://revealnews.org/article/after-ayotzinapa/
As the first in her family to attend university, Dr. Encieh Erfani was drawn to the stars. Her interest led her to physics and cosmology, examining the origin of the universe – a rare subject in Iran at the time.
Dr. Erfani was traveling outside of Iran in September 2022 when the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement began, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. In solidarity, Dr. Erfani stepped down from her academic position in Iran. Her resignation email quickly went viral on social media and she has not been able to return since, knowing she would risk imprisonment by Iranian authorities. “As a scientist, you have never trained to be a social activist or political activist, but in some countries, your actions can be considered a political act,” she says. “A simple resignation can lead to exile.”’
In response, Dr. Erfani co-founded the International Community of Iranian Academics (ICOIA), a group providing community and support to academics of Iranian heritage around the world. Now at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, she continues her work as a researcher and staunch advocate for displaced academics worldwide.
Learn more about Dr. Erfani’s work: https://sites.google.com/view/eerfani/home
Learn more about the International Community of Iranian Academics (ICOIA): https://icoia.org/
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Fragile Freedom podcast, a joint-initiative of the German science communications agency con gressa and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of Science Year 2024 Freedom. See the Fragile Freedom podcast here: https://fragile-freedom.podigee.io/
Omar Mohammed first gained international prominence in 2014 as the anonymous blogger “Mosul Eye”, risking his life to document daily existence in the occupied city of Mosul, Iraq. His blog was considered one of the few reliable, real-time sources of information on life under the Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh in Arabic), and proved to be a critical source of information for journalists, policy-makers, and scholars.
Mosul was liberated from ISIS in 2017 but only after an extended, months-long battle that left much of the city badly damaged. Omar, now based in France, remains deeply connected to Mosul, having launched numerous social initiatives to rebuild the city and document the stories of its inhabitants. “The moment you are labeled as a scholar, and the moment you are free, then you have to give back to the society,” he says. “It’s a must.”
Free to Think speaks with Dr. Khoo Ying Hooi, an Associate Professor at the University of Malaya and 2022-23 Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellow, on academic freedom and coalition building in Southeast Asia.
Ying Hooi discusses her research and shares how building an academic freedom coalition across Southeast Asia – a region that spans 11 countries and represents a range of universities – can help academics and higher education institutions support one another. She emphasizes that academic freedom matters for all, and identifies the need for increased dialogue on related issues, particularly in states most at risk of repression. “It is really important that we embrace and understand why academic freedom is important for the future of countries,” she says. “Without being able to talk freely and write freely and express ourselves freely and learn freely, I think there will be a major obstacle for us to advance as a country.”
Free to Think speaks with three university students who express the profound impact of joining the SAR student advocacy community. “Being involved in the amplification of the voice of somebody who's marginalized doesn't just affect the person who's marginalized,” says Samkele Shange, a SAR Student Advocacy Seminar participant at the University of South Eastern Norway. “It also affects you, the person who lifts your voice.”
Samkele Shange describes how she and her peers advocated on behalf of GN Saibaba – an activist and formerly wrongfully imprisoned scholar of English literature at Delhi University. Laia Simó Garriga and Truc Hanh Vu share how interviewing scholars from Ethiopia through their SAR Legal Clinic, and compiling a UPR report for the United Nations Human Rights Council, shaped their understanding of academic freedom – and the power of their voices.
This episode is guest hosted by Clare Robinson, Advocacy Director at Scholars at Risk.
Free to Think speaks with academic, policy analyst and human rights activist Mubashar Hasan. He describes how in Bangladesh certain research topics are off-limits, particularly those that threaten the power of the ruling class, and speaks from first-hand experience — Hasan survived 44 days of “enforced disappearance” in Bangladesh in 2017.
Now based in Sydney, Australia, Hasan describes the ‘mental prison’ Bangladeshi colleagues navigate when trying to balance doing their work with the risks they face daily: “I had to negotiate with myself, ‘Should I be silent? Or should I express myself?’
Hasan is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at Oslo University, Norway and an adjunct research fellow at the Humanitarian and Development Initiative at Western Sydney University, Australia. Learn more about Hasan’s work at: mubasharhasan.com
Free to Think speaks with Katrin Kinzelbach and Lars Lott, researchers behind the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) which assesses levels of academic freedom in 179 countries and territories from 1900 to the present.
Recent headlines suggest academic freedom is in retreat everywhere, but is it true? Katrin Kinzelbach and Lars Lott discuss the latest data from the AFI and how academic freedom may fit into wider trends of increasing political polarization worldwide. They describe how they collect data for and structure the report, and how researchers can get involved. The AFI is a collaboration between FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and the V-Dem Institute. Now in its fifth edition, the AFI is a valuable tool for academics and policymakers. With it, Kinzelbach says, “we can have an independent measure, updated on an annual basis, to hold states to account.”
Free to Think speaks with Achiro P. Olwoch, an award-winning writer, playwright, and filmmaker from Northern Uganda, and current scholar-at-risk and Weiss International Fellow at Barnard College in New York City. Achiro describes her recent play ‘The Survival,’ the impact of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Uganda, and how living in New York has made her a “bolder artist.” She also offers advice to fellow artists-in-exile: “It takes time. Allow yourself to learn, allow yourself to make mistakes, allow yourself to mourn, allow yourself to grow.”
This episode is guest hosted by Leona Binz, a Program Officer on Scholars at Risk’s Protection team, who has worked closely with Achiro since 2022 through SAR’s Practitioners at-Risk program.
Watch Achiro’s play ‘The Survival’ at the Criminal Queerness Festival at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York this June 2024.
In February 2022, Artem Nazarko was in Odesa, Ukraine with his family, coming to terms with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It was huge traffic jams everywhere, empty shops, panic and confusion” he says. “No food, no petrol. It was tough times, and dark days.”
Two years later, Artem is a PhD candidate and MSCA4Ukraine fellow at the University of Bergen in Norway. He is working in international criminal and humanitarian law, focusing on war crime prosecutions in Ukraine, during the current Russo-Ukrainian war. Artem describes his decision to apply to MSCA4Ukraine, his research, and the impact of staying connected with Ukrainian research communities while living abroad.
The MSCA4Ukraine scheme provides fellowships and other support to displaced researchers from Ukraine, and is funded by the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. You can learn more about MSCA4Ukraine and its partners on the SAR Europe website.
Emma Hartley and Jonathan Gelfond, undergraduates at UC Santa Barbara in California, weren’t sure if elected officials in Washington DC would agree to speak with them. They were advocating on behalf of Patrick Zaki – a University of Bologna graduate student formerly detained for two years, in apparent retaliation for his human rights research in Egypt. Though released in 2021, authorities continue to postpone Zaki’s trial, and he faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
To Hartley and Gelfond’s surprise, they got four meetings on Capitol Hill. “We were focusing on issues that might not be these representatives or senators' first priority,” Gelfond says. “It was really empowering.” They join Free to Think along with their SAR Student Advocacy Seminar professor, Claudio Fogu, to describe campaigning on behalf of Zaki, using art as a tool for advocacy on campus, and the impact of engaging in human rights work. “No matter how daunting it may seem at first,” Hartley says, “our voices are important and they do make a difference.”
Learn about setting up a Student Advocacy Seminar on campus here: scholarsatrisk.org/actions/student-advocacy-seminars/
Free to Think speaks with Shai Reshef, President of the University of the People, the first non-profit, tuition-free, American, accredited, online university whose mission is to help students worldwide overcome financial, geographic, political, and personal obstacles to higher education.
Since August 2021, University of the People has received increasing numbers of applications from women in Afghanistan seeking a way to continue their studies. After the Taliban reimposed a ban on women attending universities, University of the People provided 2000 scholarships for Afghan women. “They want to expand their knowledge, to learn to enrich themselves, but also to feel part of the world,” says Reshef. “Studying… is exactly what they need in order to keep them alive and hoping for a better future.”
Free to Think speaks with political scientist Sol Iglesias about "violence for social control" and threats to scholars in the Philippines, including online trolling, "red-tagging," threats, and violent attacks.
Iglesias, who is a professor at the University of the Philippines and contributes to SAR’s monitoring of attacks on higher education in the country, believes academic freedom is the lifeblood of social progress and development. “[It’s] part of this ecosystem of truth telling, speaking truth to power, [and] producing evidence-based social and political criticism,” she says. “We can’t do without it.”
In Herat, Afghanistan, Zahra Hakimi was a faculty member, midwife, family planning trainer, and women’s reproductive healthcare provider. She often worked in secret and at personal risk to provide treatment to survivors of sexual assault.
Within a week of taking control of her city, the Taliban raided Hakimi’s home. They condemned her work as “anti-Islam.” They threatened her and her husband, and demanded her teenage daughter for a forced marriage. She had no choice: She had to flee.
On Free to Think Hakimi shares her incredible journey, including several attempts to escape Afghanistan, first through Iran, then the United States, and ultimately Canada. With SAR’s help, she is now a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research on Health and Nursing at the University of Ottawa. Since December 2022, the Taliban has banned higher education for women in Afghanistan. Now in Canada, however, Hakimi’s daughter hopes to become a dentist. “Every day that my children can go to school” Hakimi says, “my heart is full of joy."
Venezuelan higher education is in crisis. After decades of political attacks on universities, many professors struggle to survive a national economic collapse that threatens the whole society with runaway inflation, skyrocketing poverty, and mass outward migration of millions. Professors rely on multiple side jobs and foreign remittances but still can’t make ends meet. How and why do they go on?
Free to Think speaks with Mayda Hočevar, Director of the Human Rights Observatory at the Universidad de Los Andes, and David Gomez Gamboa, the director of Aula Abierta, as they unpack the history that has contributed to the current crisis. They explain the “direct relationship between academic freedom and democratic guarantees” and why now, more than ever, is the time to fight for university autonomy and academic freedom in Venezuela — and by extension, wherever democracy is threatened.
On January 21st, police forcibly entered the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, arresting over 200 people including students pulled from their dormitories. Free to Think speaks with Salvador Herencia-Carrasco about his work with colleagues inside and outside Peru to free students from unlawful detention and to defend academic freedom and university autonomy.
Hernencia-Carrasco is director of the Human Rights Clinic of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and leading member of Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas (CAFA).
What is ‘academic activism?’ What responsibility, if any, do scholars have for engaging outside of academia, with the public and with marginalized communities in particular?
Free to Think speaks with Joel Mark Barredo, the Executive Director of SHAPE-SEA, the “Strengthening Human rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN/Southeast Asia” program. SHAPE-SEA is a regional programme for and by human rights and peace scholars and institutions engaged in dialogue, research, and advocacy about threats to academic freedom and human rights in Southeast Asia.
In 1997, Henry Reese and his wife, Diane Samuels, were at a public talk by writer Salman Rushdie, and inspired by his call for communities around the world to offer sanctuary to exiled writers. They "kicked each other under the chair" and thought, why not? Six years later, they founded the City of Asylum, Pittsburgh, a multi-unit residency program that has welcomed exiled writers and artists from China, Syria, Bangladesh and beyond.
Twenty-five years later, Reese was invited to interview Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institute Amphitheater. Just as the interview was about to begin, Rushdie was violently attacked. Reese has described the audience’s rushing to the writer’s aid, attributing it to what Reese calls the “reader effect” – a real time demonstration of how reading literature and sharing stories builds empathy and meaningful community.
Free to Think talks with Roya Hakakian, a writer and founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and Sasha Gladkikh, a student activist and director of philanthropy at the Iranian Student Group at UCLA about the recent protests in Iran.
On September 16th, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died in the custody of Iran’s notorious state morality police. Since then, sustained mass protests have erupted across Iran, including at more than 50 universities, led by women and girls demanding freedom from state-directed violence. Hakakian and Gladkikh discuss the importance of Mahsa Amini, the protests, and the fight for women’s dignity and rights.
Free to Think talks with Yulia Bezvershenko, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and Liz Shchepetylnykova, a civil society activist, on the state of higher education in Ukraine after four months of war.
As Russia invaded Ukraine, and war broke out across the country, professors and students in Ukraine fought to keep education going. Even from bomb shelters, they provided lectures online and completed their coursework. “[I]t’s very important to provide this feeling of future, of opportunities." They describe how Ukrainian students and researchers are experiencing the war, explain why many scholars are opting to stay in the country, and offer advice on immediate and long-term strategies for supporting the students, scholars and higher education institutions of Ukraine.
Free to Think talks with Hadi Ghaemi, founding Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). Why is Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian scholar and 2021 SAR Courage to Think Award winner, at risk of imminent execution in Iran? And what can advocates worldwide do to help? Ghaemi describes Dr. Djalali’s imprisonment since 2016, academic hostage taking in Iran, and current efforts to support Dr. Djalali’s case.
Free to Think talks with Brian Mello, a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, where he leads a Scholars at Risk Student Advocacy Seminar. He’s joined by his student, Bhavna Prakash, a biology major and political science minor at the university. “You’re 19,” said Prakash’s friend. “There's no way you got a meeting at the Senate's building.” But she did, joining 30 other students and faculty at SAR’s Student Advocacy Days in Washington DC this April. Prakash and Mello describe speaking with members of Congress to advocate on behalf of wrongfully imprisoned Egyptian scholars, the value of non-traditional classrooms, and their advice for students and faculty interested in getting involved on their own campuses.
Free to Think talks with Colin Harvey, a Professor of Human Rights Law and former Head of the School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast about what UN experts described as a “smear campaign” against him for his work debating the possibility of new constitutional arrangements for the island of Ireland after Brexit. An expert on human rights and constitutional law and former Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, Harvey references growing up during the ‘conflict,’ achievements under the Good Friday Agreement, and how these are threatened by Brexit. Harvey sees the pressures on him as part of a larger struggle against human rights and democratic values going on around the world and says that academics have a responsibility to robustly defend those values, despite the risks.
Free to Think talks with Dr. Aziz Mohibbi, an environmental engineer and former chancellor of Afghanistan’s Bamyan University, about his recent relocation to Ireland following the return of the Taliban, and Dr. Roja Fazaeli, an Associate Professor of Islamic Civilization, Near & Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, who helped to arrange his visit.
Dr. Mohibbi shares his work building up Afghanistan’s education system, his flight from Afghanistan, and how he and his family are settling into life in Ireland. Dr. Fazaeli shares a behind-the-scenes look at how SAR members Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University, together with partners at the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund and beyond, raced to create an opportunity for an Afghan scholar, and ended up with a new colleague and new friends.
Free to Think talks with Christiane Schmeken, Director of the Strategy Department of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Julia Linder, at the Center for International Academic Collaborations (KIWi) at DAAD.
They discuss DAAD’s new ‘KIWi Compass,’ a guide for institutions and leaders navigating complex security, political, economic, and cultural issues within international higher education and research partnerships. They discuss the challenge of engaging with values, whether there are any ‘red lines,’ and if so, who draws them?
Free to Think talks with Mai El-Sadany, Managing Director and Legal and Judicial Director at the Tahir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP). El-Sadany discusses the cases of Patrick George Zaki and Ahmed Samir Santawy, two graduate students targeted by Egyptian authorities. She describes the arbitrariness of such detentions and how the global academic community can stand in solidarity. "It can be extremely helpful for the international community to speak up," El-Sadany notes. "It not only sends a strong message to the Egyptian regime, it also sends a message to these detainees and their loved ones that they're not alone."
Free to Think talks with Elizaveta Potapova, a researcher at the Public Policy and Management Institute in Lithuania. She holds a PhD from the Central European University, where she did her dissertation on academic freedom in Russia. Potapova discusses DOXA, an independent student journal which focuses on the problems of the modern academic environment in Russia and defends student rights and freedom of expression. She describes how DOXA editors have faced criminal investigation for their work, motivations behind self-censorship in academia, and the value of building community among scholars.
Free to Think talks with Zeynep Gambetti, Associate Professor of Political Theory, and Can Candan, a documentary filmmaker and academic, both at Turkey's Bogazici University.
They discuss the collapse of institutional autonomy in Turkey, the one-year anniversary of faculty and student resistance, and how the struggle "isn't only about Bogazici, and it isn't only about Turkey... There is an encroachment on rights and academic freedoms everywhere in the world."
Free to Think talks with Camila Nobrega, a Brazilian journalist, fellow at the Alice Salomon Hochschule, and PhD candidate in the political science department at the Free University of Berlin, and Dr. Débora Medeiros, a researcher at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies and researcher with the Collaborative Research Center Affective Societies, also at the Free University. They discuss threats to academic freedom in Brazil, including pressures on researchers working on socio-environmental conflicts and with intersectional communities, all within the context of a governmental "weaponization" of higher education as a means of advancing an authoritarian agenda.
Free to Think talks with Ali Arab, Associate Professor of Statistics at Georgetown University and board member of Hostage Aid Worldwide, which fights globally for the release of hostages while aiming to study and prevent hostage-taking against other innocent people. Arab discusses "hostage diplomacy," "ransom creep," and the importance of sharing information across hostage cases, honoring family wishes, and mobilizing colleagues to raise visibility and, ultimately, secure a hostage's release.
Free to Think talks with Dr. William Tierney, university professor emeritus and founding director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. He discusses his new book, Higher education for Democracy: The Role of the University in Civil Society, released by SUNY press in July 2021, in which he argues that beyond research, teaching, and preparing graduates for their future careers, the university community plays an important societal role. In the face of a worldwide democratic recession, Tierney argues, "the university has to change its behavior, and be more involved in trying to support the basic tenants and organs of democracy."
University scholars and students, public intellectuals, civil society leaders and human rights defenders across Afghanistan, especially women and ethnic and religious minorities, are in fear for their lives. None of them wore a uniform or got a government paycheck, but for the better part of twenty years these talented individuals have worked for a new, rights-respecting, forward-looking, and knowledge-based Afghanistan. They dedicated their lives to education, openness, and tolerance. Their lives are now at risk.
Institutions and individuals throughout the Scholars at Risk network and beyond have mobilized to offer temporary positions and other support to as many as possible.
- If you are at a higher education institution or other organization that might offer a position to a colleague from Afghanistan, please email ScholarsatRisk@nyu.edu.
- Please visit www.scholarsatrisk.org to support SAR's advocacy on behalf of Afghanistan, or to donate to SAR's urgent appeal for Afghanistan.
In honor of our colleagues there, Free to Think is replaying our earlier conversation about Afghanistan. We will return with new episodes soon.
More info @ https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/afghanistan_support/
Free to Think talks with Dr. Shuchi Karim, an academic, researcher, feminist and activist from Bangladesh. Her work on gender and sexuality brought her praise, and condemnation, forcing her into exile. On continuing her work despite threats, Shuchi notes "Fear does live with you, you know, not only for your sake, but your loved ones, because we are not isolated individuals.” Shuchi shares her experience as a SAR-assisted scholar at universities in the Netherlands and Canada. She is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, where she has "nothing but praise" for her "amazing, amazing students."
Free to Think talks with Dr. Jo Smith Finley, a Reader in Chinese studies at Newcastle University, UK. In March 2021, Dr. Smith Finley was sanctioned by the government of the People's Republic of China, along with a group of UK politicians and peers, a legal chambers, and the entire staff of The Uyghur Tribunal. The sanctions include a ban on traveling to China, a freeze on assets, and a ban on collaborating with Chinese counterparts in the PRC.
The sanctions were in retaliation for Dr. Smith Finley's research about reported human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. These include the forced internment of over one million Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority, in what some have labeled an ongoing attempted genocide.
By targeting the careers of scholars outside of China, the sanctions represent a dramatic escalation in the Party-state's campaign to censor information that is contrary to the official national narrative, and a threat to academic freedom everywhere.
Free to Think talks with Dr. Prosper Maguchu, researcher, human rights lawyer and activist from Zimbabwe. He worked to defend victims of state violence before domestic and international courts, bringing vindication to his clients, but drawing threats and violence against himself. "I wanted to be on the right side of history," he said, "I was motivated each time my clients got justice in court, motivated to soldier on, to continue on with the work. That's why I never gave up."
Prosper shares his experience as a SAR-assisted scholar at universities in the Netherlands, where he is currently a guest associate professor in the Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law, and project manager with the Centre for International Cooperation, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Free to Think talks with Kyaw Moe Tun, executive director of the Parami University, the first private, non-profit, liberal arts and sciences university in Myanmar. Parami nurtures future leaders by providing students from various cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds with skills in global citizenship and critical thinking. Dr. Kyaw Moe Tun completed his undergraduate education at Bard College and Oxford University. After receiving his PhD from Yale University, he returned to Myanmar to dedicate his life to the educational development of his country. He discusses the promise and challenges of liberal education in a time of protests and unrest.
Free to Think talks with Aziz Royesh, a leading advocate for primary and secondary education in Afghanistan and the founder of the Marefat High School in Kabul, which currently serves more than 3100 Afghan students, about half of whom are girls.
Royesh is a former fellow at the US National Endowment for Democracy and Yale University, and a 2014 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize, which recognizes teachers as changemakers not just in their classrooms, but in their communities.
After withstanding assassination attempts, mob assaults at his school, and escalating extremist violence, Royesh discusses the imperatives of transforming communities through education that unleashes the power of individualism, critical thinking, wisdom and creativity.
Free to Think talks with Sarah Stroup, Faculty director of the Engaged Listening Project at Middlebury College. Created after protests and disruption of a visit to the campus by controversial scholar Charles Murray, the project aims "to create spaces for close listening and productive disagreements." Stroup is an associate professor of political science at Middlebury College, where her research focuses on international non governmental organizations.
Free to Think talks with Marvi Sirmed, a political commentator, journalist, and human rights activist from Pakistan, about the 2021 Aurat March (Women’s March), violence against women, intersectionality, blasphemy accusations and the responsibility of social media companies.
Sirmed advocates for minority rights, women’s rights and secular democracy. She has withstood years of threats and harassment, including home invasions, theft travel documents and papers, and death threats, including attempted shootings.
Sirmed is currently a Research Scholar at the University of Connecticut, a SAR network member, where she is working on a book on free expression in South Asian countries.
Free to Think talks with Alfred Babo about Share the Platform, a new initiative to formed by a group of practitioners and scholars from refugee and non-refugee backgrounds to “center the expertise of refugees to improve policy, programs, and practice” in a wide variety of fields.
Babo is an interdisciplinary scholar in anthropology of development, political science, and African studies, currently teaching at SAR network member Fairfield University. A refugee from the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire, Babo previously taught at the University of Bouaké, and later at Smith College in Massachusetts, USA. He is also a member of the Governing Board of Scholars at Risk.
Share the Platform invites participation in their upcoming virtual conference on May 13, 2021. Information and registration at https://www.sharetheplatform.org.
Free to Think talks with Xiyue Wang, a PhD candidate in history at Princeton University, whose research focuses on Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, China and the late Ottoman Empire.
In May 2016, Wang visited Iran to do library and archival research in Tehran. Despite prior approval of his research plan by Iranian authorities, in August he was detained, falsely charged with espionage, and eventually he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years. He was sent to Evin prison, notorious for housing of political prisoners and allegations of mistreatment.
After international campaigns on his behalf, Wang was released in a prisoner swap between the US and Iran in December 2019. Wang talks with Free to Think about the complicated intersection between state hostage-taking and international campaigns for prisoners’ release.
Free to Think talks with Asli Vatansever, a labor sociologist and author of “At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity,” which examines misconceptions and structural inequities in academic labor markets around the world, through the lens of scholars displaced from their home countries.
Vatansever was among the thousands of scholars in Turkey and abroad who signed a January 2019 public petition (the “Peace Petition”) demanding an end to fighting and renewed negotiations between Turkish forces and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Vatansever, along with hundreds of other signatories, was dismissed from her post, banned from working and forced to seek academic employment abroad.
At the Margins of Academia situates the path of academic exile —familiar from earlier generations of scholars--within the wider dynamics of contemporary academic labor markets. It asks whether displaced academics are “at-risk” or “in reserve,” and whether these are two sides of the same coin?
Free to Think talks with Peter Biar Ajak, scholar, civil society leader, and democracy advocate from South Sudan.
As a child, Peter was one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan, who were displaced by the civil war and endured treacherous journeys to refugee camps. Ultimately, Peter was resettled in the United States, earning degrees in international development and international studies from Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Forgoing career opportunities in North America and Europe, he returned to South Sudan—the youngest sovereign state in the world where roughly half the population of 12 million is under the age of 18—to assist in peacebuilding. His calls for “generational exit”—transitioning political power through free elections--quickly attracted a following among young people, and threats from senior officials. He was arrested, and jailed for 18 months in the notorious Blue House prison. After international campaigns on his behalf, he was released in January 2020.
Free to Think talks with Marcia Ross and Jeff Kaufman, the team behind NASRIN, a beautiful and inspiring new film about Nasrin Sotoudeh, Iranian human rights attorney.
The film shows Sotoudeh's courage and compassion, as she represents those who have been forsaken by a brutal regime: political prisoners, religious minorities, women, and children. Arrested in 2018, while the film was being made, she was sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes for the “crime” of defending women protesting the mandatory headscarf.
Sotoudeh has been called "Iran's Nelson Mandela." The filmmakers show her as she is: a lawyer, activist, feminist, wife, mother, friend, and a central figure in an extraordinary generation of Iranian women who simply refuse to accept anything less than full and equal rights.