U of A, GSIE Champion Academic Freedom Through Scholars at Risk Program

Scholar Saladdin Ahmed speaks during a campus visit last year as part of the international Scholars at Risk program.

Since 2015, the Scholars at Risk committee has promoted academic freedom by bringing international scholars to campus who may have been displaced from their native countries that may have deemed their work controversial. Luis Fernando Restrepo, University Professor in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, co-chairs the committee alongside Adnan Alrubaye, assistant professor and associate director of Graduate Program in Cell and Molecular Biology.

Q: Tell me a little bit about the Scholars at Risk program.  

LR: Scholars at Risk is actually an international organization based out of New York University that now has more than 500 member institutions worldwide. What they focus on is scholars that are threatened because of their academic work. As a result, every time scholars anywhere get censored, we all get censored. So SAR seeks to provide an international support network. It’s a shame when people who are so revered and talented are displaced from their countries and end up doing things not in academia. This organization tries to get them back on track.

Q: What specifically does our chapter do on the U of A campus?

LR: In 2015, we joined as a member after unofficially working with international scholars for a few years previously. With the support of Dean Curt Rom and the Graduate School and International Education, we started paying membership dues. William Quinn, SAR founder, came here and visited with us, and we established a committee at the U of A. 

We’ve started a lecture series for scholars who are already displaced and are have relocated in America or Canada or Europe. Since 2015, we’ve been bringing them to campus as part of International Education Week, which is a festive celebration of our global academic community. However we felt that we also needed to address the challenges that many academics face worldwide.

About three years ago, professor emeritus Dick Bennett generously established an endowment for the SAR lecture series. His support has been critical for us, and it is much appreciated.

Q: It sounds like this is a mix of research across a lot of different disciplines. Seems like there’s a mix of creative activity in addition to research and scholarship that’s controversial.

LR: Yes, absolutely. For example, recently, Turkey did a purge of many scholars. It was the result of a political regime change. In many countries, state universities are subject to the swaying of the political winds, affecting all disciplines. Faculty from any disciplines may be subject to persecution.

We had a scholar from China who was conducting research on the death penalty. He was detained and tortured and he had to leave. In his visit to the U of A, he  talked about all the difficulties scholars face in China. We’ve had another one from Syria that has also had to flee with his family. From Zimbabwe, a journalist was threatened after reporting government corruption. We also hosted a linguist from Pakistan. His academic work analyzing sacred texts had to leave the country or face death because his work was considered blasphemy, punishable by death. This reminds us not to take academic freedom for granted.  

Q: Being the chair of this committee, what about this work resonates with you personally? What made you want to get involved in it?

LR: I come from Colombia, where we had an internal conflict for over 50 years that really affected my family. My uncle became involved in some community activism and crossed paths with some of the paramilitaries, who killed him as a result.  

College campuses are an important bulwark to speak out against injustice. With many regimes, the students are the ones who see the problems and speak up. So every time the government gets repressive, one of the first targets are the university students and campuses as a whole.

I know that very good scholars from different political sides have been affected by that, so I decided that my defense and my territory is to maintain academic freedom within the university. That’s something that I feel called to do. I do not want my colleagues lose their careers and lives because of repression. Teaching at a public university really means advancing the mission of knowledge for the common good. Here, we have the privilege to think, and we have to think courageously.

Q: So they come here and present about their research/studies. What else do they do when they visit campus?

LR: Every time the scholars come to campus, we have them visit classes relevant to their field. They also present to public in an open lecture about their experiences and perspectives. In addition, they also do interviews with local media.

Bringing scholars here can be very challenging. When we’re going to invite scholars, SAR provides us a brief description of the scholar, the country of origin and the discipline. We do not get their names until we receive clearance from the speaker, because some scholars cannot put their information on the web. We had a Syrian scholar who said he still had extended family in his home country, and he could be at risk if he spoke against the regime here.    

Q: What sort of impact have you seen this have on students here who hear these stories, or just campus in general?

LR: You get some of the international students and faculty who come to these lectures, and it resonates for them to hear these scholars. When they go visit the classes, the students are asking questions, and it makes it much more real for them to understand the threats to academic freedom worldwide. The speakers’ interactions with other faculty here makes a huge impact as well, because some of them have survived wars and repressive regimes. Many of us know Fulbright’s mission of peace through education. It requires standing for academic freedom.

Some of these scholars start hard conversations. It can be a challenge to talk about these topics with our students. But it’s important. It’s very important to build that culture here that we can have an open critical discussion no matter what the topic is and no matter the side of the spectrum they’re coming from.

The Syrian scholar that we brought had worked as minister of culture under President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime soon turned repressive, forcing our scholar to flee. We checked with our Middle Eastern Studies colleagues who knew a little about his record but ultimately considered that he provided our campus community a valuable perspective of the situation in Syria and the fate of the thousands of refugees that had to leave their country.

Q: You’ve been on this committee for six years. How rewarding is it for you to be able to do this work on this committee?

LR: Silence would be complicit with repressive regimes. I cannot ignore that my academic freedom is a privilege not to be taken for granted. I really have a good life here. I have security for me and my family and the opportunity to teach. So if I just sit here comfortably and don’t speak up, I couldn’t live with myself. There’s ethical imperative.

This story originally ran in Razorbacks Worldwide, a eNewsletter for international alumni distributed by the Graduate School and International Education.