Advocacy

Scholars, students and higher education communities are often threatened suddenly, without warning. Scholars at Risk has established several initiatives to identify, document, and take action in response to these threats and attacks.

SAR’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, which is largely supported by volunteer researchers around the world, including at Legal Clinics at SAR member institutions, identifies and documents attacks on higher education communities in order to develop a greater understanding of the volume and nature of attacks on higher education. In response to these attacks, SAR coordinates the Scholars in Prison Project that calls on government and other key stakeholders to protect the human rights of individual scholars and students—many of whom are imprisoned—as well as broader higher education communities. Central to these efforts are SAR’s faculty-led Student Advocacy Seminars which mobilize students at member institutions to conduct research and advocate on behalf of imprisoned scholars and countries where attacks on higher education are prevalent. In addition to these country- and case-based initiatives, SAR coordinates working groups to conduct collaborative issue-based research and advocacy relating to academic freedom.