September 2 - September 8, 2022Scholars at Risk monitors reports of threats to academic freedom and higher education communities worldwide, including media articles, blogs, opinion pieces and other announcements. Unless otherwise indicated (such as in articles written by SAR), the language and views contained in the search results reflect those of the originating author and/or publication and do not necessarily represent the views of Scholars at Risk or its members, affiliates, board or staff. An archive of the Media Review is available on our website. |
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BELARUS: Immediately release Marfa Rabkova
Scholars at Risk, 9/8
Letter to Belarusian authorities calling for the immediate release of Maria (Marfa) Rabkova, a student at European Humanities University and human rights defender.
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HONG KONG: Apolitical student unions ‘the only option’ in Hong Kong
Pola Lem, Times Higher Education, 9/8
An “apolitical” student union forming at one of Hong Kong’s leading universities could become a model for groups at other nearby institutions where learners are still without representation.
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EUROPE: International civil society urges European Union to guarantee an enabling visa framework for human rights defenders
ProtectDefenders.eu, 9/7
In a joint statement at the initiative of ProtectDefenders.eu, 50 international civil society organisations call on all European Union institutions and the EU Member States to return on their political mandate in favor of human rights and human rights defenders, and lead on the implementation of concrete initiatives, good practices, and policy changes to ensure that at-risk human rights defenders can access EU visas with guarantees, security, and predictability.
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SWEDEN / IRAN: Djalali's wife criticizes the EU for inaction [SWEDISH]
Jesper Cederberg, Läkartidningen, 9/7
The wife of Swedish doctor and researcher Ahmadresa Djalali, together with the relatives of three other prisoners, has written an open letter to the EU's foreign minister. There they criticize the EU for not having acted sufficiently.
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UNITED STATES: Inside the Academic-Freedom Crisis That Roiled Florida’s Flagship
Emma Pettit and Jack Stripling, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/6
A ‘Chronicle’ investigation tracks how a decision to silence professors emerged from the depths of bureaucracy.
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KAZAKHSTAN: ‘Outlier’ university forges path to more autonomy for Kazakh sector
Pola Lem, Times Higher Education, 9/4
Nazarbayev University president is ready to stop being the envy of post-Soviet system, where centralised governance is still the norm.
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CHINA: Interview with the editor-in-chief of China Quarterly, a well-known journal of contemporary Chinese studies: "The biggest challenge in the future is academic freedom
Chang Siying, BBC, 9/2
In the past 10 years or so, China's political environment has tightened, and universities have become more and more strict in censorship of academic publications; on the other hand, overseas scholars who want to enter China to do research are also facing considerable difficulties.
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UNITED STATES: I Was Onstage With Salman Rushdie That Day, and What I Saw Was Remarkable
Henry Reese, The New York Times, 9/2
Violence against writers was the topic I was about to interview the novelist Salman Rushdie about at the Chautauqua Institution on Aug. 12. We were being introduced onstage when out of nowhere, like a scene from Mr. Rushdie’s novel “Shalimar the Clown,” a knife-wielding man rushed onto the stage and began to stab him.
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CANADA: Criticisms of academic freedom miss the mark and risk the integrity of scholarship
Marc Spooner, The Conversation, 9/1
In the era of today’s heated culture wars, the concepts of academic freedom and freedom of expression have become increasingly conflated. Divisive political debates around critical race theory, Québec’s Bill 32 and talk of establishing “free speech guardians” are just some recent examples.
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