Spotlight

SAR Spotlight on Jewher Ilham

“My father was trying to be a peaceful bridge between Han Chinese and Uyghurs,” said Jewher Ilham. “He never advocated for independence, never advocated for violence.” In this SAR Spotlight, we feature Ilham, the daughter of imprisoned scholar Ilham Tohti.

SAR Spotlight on Mayda Hočevar

In this SAR Spotlight, we spoke with Professor Mayda Hočevar about how current humanitarian and political crises are impacting the quality of higher education in Venezuela and recent efforts to advocate for academic freedom and institutional autonomy in Latin America.

Teng Biao on human rights in China: ‘I cannot be silent, and I cannot give up’

“I realised that I had been cheated by the Chinese government,” legal scholar Teng Biao said describing his drive to pursue a career in human rights law.

SAR Spotlight on Dr. Melanie Adrian

In this SAR Spotlight, we speak with Dr. Adrian of Carleton University on her involvement with SAR, including her efforts to build SAR Canada, establish a national program to bring at-risk scholars to Canada, and engage students in advocacy.

Syrian Dr. Kassem Alsayed Mahmoud Speaks to Index on Censorship About his Search for Academic Freedom

“We in Syria were living in a big prison, without freedom, without good education, without good quality of life, without any desire of development,” says Dr. Kassem Alsayed Mahmoud, a food science and agricultural engineering researcher.

Zelalem Kibret Forced to Choose Between Silence and Speaking his Mind

Ethiopian blogger and academic, Zelalem Kibret, was raised in a country where living in silence or speaking your mind was often a choice between life and death.

Dr. Felix Kaputu on Academic Freedom

In this spotlight, we feature SAR scholar Dr. Felix Kaputu and his experiences with academic freedom both in his home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in classrooms around the world.

Honoring International Women’s Day

This month, Scholars at Risk honors International Women’s Day (IWD). IWD, celebrated every year on March 8, provides time to reflect on the progress made for women’s rights, to call for improvements in inequality, and to celebrate women pushing for

Spotlight on SAR Student Advocacy Coordinators at Roger Williams University

In August, we spoke with Professor Adam Braver, Library Program Director and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Roger Williams University (RWU), about his leadership in supporting SAR’s Student Advocacy Seminars. In this spotlight, we check in with his team

Spotlight on “Dangerous Questions: Why Academic Freedom Matters”

In this SAR spotlight, we present an edited interview with SAR scholars, students, faculty and administrators who have taken “Dangerous Questions: Why Academic Freedom Matters” to hear firsthand what they learned. These participants include SAR partners as well as those

SAR Spotlight on Professor Adam Braver

In this SAR Spotlight, we speak with Professor Adam Braver on SAR membership, his efforts to establish the SAR-USA section, and plans for Roger Williams University to become a field office for the development and support of US-based Student Advocacy Seminars.

SAR Spotlight on Dr. Hanadi Ibrahim

In this SAR Spotlight, Dr. Hanadi Ibrahim discusses how her life and career were impacted by the ongoing Syrian conflict and what it means to her to restart her career in academia in Canada.

SAR Spotlight on Dr. Olga Hünler

Dr. Hünler discusses her work on the massive open online course (MOOC) "Dangerous Questions: Why Academic Freedom Matters," her personal experience with threats to academic freedom, and what she hopes learners will gain from the course.

SAR Spotlight on Whitman College

"SAR implicitly demands that people work through problems in very beautiful ways – ways that call upon, challenge, and interpret ideas, while bringing ethics and politics into the arena."

Herman Winick

Herman Winick, Professor Emeritus in the Applied Physics Department of Stanford University and Assistant Director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) division of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), has worked tirelessly on behalf of human rights throughout his