Why Scholars at Risk has opened a US section

A piece by SAR’s Executive Director Robert Quinn for Times Higher Education.

Extending its work protecting threatened scholars and promoting academic freedom to more institutions in the United States, the international Scholars at Risk network has established a new US national section.

The move comes at a time of record attacks on scholars and universities abroad around the world – Turkey, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Yemen come to mind – and of heightened tensions on many US campuses.

Those tensions shouldn’t be surprising. Far from the caricature of an elitist ivory tower that antagonists of the academy love to conjure, higher education in the US is broadly representative of the American public in its income levels, race, nationality, immigration status, gender, religion and politics. Therefore, many campuses exhibit the same tensions seen in US society.

Read more here.