September-October 2004

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A Conversation with Scholars at Risk

By Wendi A. Maloney

In the process of writing her feature article, Academe staff member Wendi Maloney interviewed Robert Quinn, director of the Scholars at Risk Network and former adjunct professor and Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights at Fordham University's law school.

The conversation printed below expands on issues raised in the article.

Academe: The feature article that accompanies this interview quotes you as noting some limits on the assistance that SAR is able to provide threatened scholars. Are there others?

Quinn: The most significant limit to date has been resources. For the first four years of its existence, SAR was only one full-time employee, with student interns and volunteers helping out. Only this past academic year did we add a program officer. SAR is just beginning a fund-raising campaign to ensure our long-term survival, and if we can raise the money to add staff, we can do more. But for now, the biggest limit is how many staff and volunteer hours there are in the day.

Academe: How is SAR funded?

Quinn: SAR received start-up money from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We have also received limited support in the past from other sources, including the Reebok Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Institute of International Education, and small, individual donations from faculty members. We need about $200,000 a year to keep operating.

Academe: How does SAR determine which scholars to assist?

Quinn: First, we determine whether candidates are scholars and whether they are at risk. These are objective tests. We use a wide definition of scholarship (for example, writers and artists might qualify in exceptional cases). Recognizable risks include any serious threat to a scholar's work or person not caused by the scholar and not of a purely economic nature. Severity of risk is, of course, a significant consideration. Once the scholars pass this basic qualification stage, it then becomes a question of allocating limited resources. We assist as many scholars as we can, but we focus our resources on those who, in our experience, have the best chance of finding a host or other relief with the help of our efforts. We also consider which candidates have the best chance of remaining scholars over the long term, and which candidates offer the most promise in terms of their work or their potential future contributions.

Academe: Despite the difficulties described in the feature article that accompanies this interview, do you think the endeavors of SAR and similar organizations continue to be critical? If so, why?

Quinn: Yes, absolutely. For the scholars, our efforts are critical, because most of them had nowhere else to turn when things got bad at home. I have had frank conversations with most of our candidates about ongoing problems of one sort or another, from loneliness to finances to health, and about their ideas on how to improve our services. But all are grateful for the chances that SAR, the host universities, and the Scholar Rescue Fund have provided; none has indicated regret at leaving home. Also, keep in mind that the rescued scholars you interviewed for your article were early participants in the program. As our experience grows, we will build a community of host universities and individuals who have a common understanding of what it is like to go through the SAR process. They will be able to lean on each other more than the earlier groups, and we will continue to collect best practices.

I think our efforts are also critical because we are educating the public about a very large, somewhat invisible problem. People are shocked by the volume of cases we have seen*and they are just the tip of the iceberg. I liken attacks on academic freedom to the problem of a hacker stealing a few pennies from every account he enters. On the individual level, each incident seems rather insignificant and perhaps even goes unnoticed. But in the aggregate, the incidents are a huge drag on the system. Over time, the hacker may get bolder, and eventually the whole system is threatened. I believe that efforts to defend academic freedom for scholars outside the United States help to legitimize and to reinforce defense of academic freedom within the United States.

But one thing is clear: we need to build on direct relief to individual scholars by organizing efforts to improve the conditions for academic freedom in the source countries. This is the next level, where the really big impact is. This is where SAR is headed as we enter our next five years.

Academe: What are the prospects for those who cannot return to their countries for decades, especially now that many U.S.-trained scholars are having trouble securing tenure-track jobs?

Quinn: While it is true that some scholars will, practically speaking, never be able to go home, the evidence that the majority will return is good. That was the experience of refugee scholars of the World War II era. With the exception of German scholars, most did return within a decade after the end of the war. We shall have to see. I think the same window of ten years is a legitimate horizon for looking back and assessing rates of return in the present effort. We are not there yet.

For those waiting to go home, their prospects will be just as mixed as for any other academic. Academia is very competitive, not only in the United States but everywhere. Our work is not trying to privilege any scholar over another, and certainly not to displace any U.S. scholars with any other scholars. Rather, we aim to level the field: we help scholars who have been unfairly or unjustly pushed out of their profession or home institution to get back in the game for a short period. (In legal vocabulary, we try to make them partially whole after they have suffered an injustice.) But once they are in the game, it is up to them, as it is for every scholar, to demonstrate their qualifications and to perform on the level that is required.

Some of the candidates will find permanent, paid employment in the United States. But they will do so by engaging in fair competition for open positions in our current global marketplace of talent (which points to an interesting and challenging phenomenon for all scholars, but which is beyond our conversation here).

The fact that others will have either to seek additional training or to consider alternative forms of work is not a problem of SAR's creation*it is a consequence of the injustice that pushed the scholars out of their homes in the first place. That said, SAR tries to do what we can to mitigate the problems. We are working hard now to expand the net-work outside the United States and to place more scholars internationally, especially in countries in their region, where they are more likely to find long-term opportunities as academics. Through SAR and the Scholar Rescue Fund, we have already placed scholars in Australia, France, Mexico, Norway, and South Africa, and we may soon finalize positions in Congo, Belgium, Hong Kong, and a few other places. Over the next ten years, I expect two-thirds of SAR-Scholar Rescue Fund placements to be outside of the United States.

Academe: We understand that the spring 2003 conference referred to in the accompanying feature article was the second conference SAR has convened to assess its progress. What adjustments has SAR made in response to issues raised at these conferences?

Quinn: Significant time and energy after the spring 2003 conference went into arranging and executing the relocation of our office from the University of Chicago to New York University. Since then, we have been actively following up on the conference recommendations. Some of the progress:

We have established a new networkwide advisory board staffed by representatives of network member institutions.

  • We launched a nationwide speaker series featuring formerly threatened scholars who speak at network member institutions.
  • Most important, we have begun drafting a best-practices manual, "How to Host a Scholar." The manual will incorporate the recommendations shared at the spring 2003 conference as well as those gathered over the whole five years of our work. It includes sections on how to organize your campus to make the most of any visit, what to expect from visitors, how to deal with problems that might occur, and similar issues.
  • We are also working on a training program and materials for scholar-candidates to help them in their cultural and professional adjustment to U.S. campuses. (We would love AAUP assistance with this!) The idea behind the training is to empower the scholars to overcome the little cultural hurdles that can slow them down and frustrate their recovery.
  •  We are initiating research and advocacy aimed not only at providing relief in individual cases, but also at effecting fundamental, systemic changes in countries where academic freedoms are at risk.

For more information about SAR, contact Carla Stuart, Program Officer, Scholars at Risk Network, c/o New York University, 194 Mercer Street, Room 410, New York, NY 10012. (212) 998-2179. E-mail: carla.stuart@nyu.edu.Web: http://scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu.