SAR and Partners Organize 3rd Annual Conference for the Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas (CAFA)

From November 20 – 21, CAFA and its founding partners Scholars at Risk, University of Monterrey, and the University of Ottawa’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre, organized CAFA’s 2024 annual conference at the University of Notre Dame’s Washington D.C. campus. About 100 higher education and human rights advocates from across the Americas attended the event. 

The conference included 8 panels covering challenges to implementation, the relationship between free speech and academic freedom, and good practices for combating gender-based discrimination and harassment in higher education. 

“We educate students so that democracy
can meet its goal.” 

 – Fabián Salvioli, Former President of the
UN Human Rights Committee and
Director of the Human Rights Institute
at the National University of La Plata 

Fabián Salvioli, Former President of the UN Human Rights Committee and Director of the Human Rights Institute at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, and Farida Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur to the right to education, delivered keynote addresses encouraging states, higher education communities, and civil society to press for the implementation of protections for academic freedom at the global and regional levels.

One of the panels featured SAR team members and Catherine Newling, Director of the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the US Department of State. As the only panel with a government representative, the panel provided useful strategies for ways the higher education community could better engage with the US Department of State and its embassies abroad.

In addition to advancing research on relevant themes for academic freedom throughout the Region, the meeting also mobilized CAFA members to more actively participate in the Coalition as a whole. CAFA membership is open to individuals who have a commitment to academic freedom and are actively engaged in its defense and promotion. Join today: https://cafa-claa.org/become-a-member/ 

Watch the recording of the CAFA conference here: https://www.youtube.com/@CoalitionforAcademicFreedom