Free to Think Podcast

Emma Hartley and Jonathan Gelfond, undergraduates at UC Santa Barbara in California, weren't sure if elected officials in Washington DC would agree to speak with them. They were advocating on behalf of Patrick Zaki – a University of Bologna graduate student formerly detained for two years, in apparent retaliation for his human rights research in Egypt. Though released in 2021, authorities continue to postpone Zaki's trial, and he faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

To Hartley and Gelfond's surprise, they got four meetings on Capitol Hill. "We were focusing on issues that might not be these representatives or senators' first priority," Gelfond says. "It was really empowering." They join Free to Think along with their SAR Student Advocacy Seminar professor, Claudio Fogu, to describe campaigning on behalf of Zaki, using art as a tool for advocacy on campus, and the impact of engaging in human rights work. "No matter how daunting it may seem at first," Hartley says, "our voices are important and they do make a difference."

Learn about setting up a Student Advocacy Seminar on campus here: scholarsatrisk.org/actions/student-advocacy-seminars/

Free to Think speaks with Shai Reshef, President of the University of the People, the first non-profit, tuition-free, American, accredited, online university whose mission is to help students worldwide overcome financial, geographic, political, and personal obstacles to higher education.

Since August 2021, University of the People has received increasing numbers of applications from women in Afghanistan seeking a way to continue their studies. After the Taliban reimposed a ban on women attending universities, University of the People provided 2000 scholarships for Afghan women. "They want to expand their knowledge, to learn to enrich themselves, but also to feel part of the world," says Reshef. "Studying… is exactly what they need in order to keep them alive and hoping for a better future."

Free to Think speaks with political scientist Sol Iglesias about "violence for social control" and threats to scholars in the Philippines, including online trolling, "red-tagging," threats, and violent attacks.

Iglesias, who is a professor at the University of the Philippines and contributes to SAR's monitoring of attacks on higher education in the country, believes academic freedom is the lifeblood of social progress and development. "[It's] part of this ecosystem of truth telling, speaking truth to power, [and] producing evidence-based social and political criticism," she says. "We can't do without it."

In Herat, Afghanistan, Zahra Hakimi was a faculty member, midwife, family planning trainer, and women's reproductive healthcare provider. She often worked in secret and at personal risk to provide treatment to survivors of sexual assault.

Within a week of taking control of her city, the Taliban raided Hakimi's home. They condemned her work as "anti-Islam." They threatened her and her husband, and demanded her teenage daughter for a forced marriage. She had no choice: She had to flee.

On Free to Think Hakimi shares her incredible journey, including several attempts to escape Afghanistan, first through Iran, then the United States, and ultimately Canada. With SAR's help, she is now a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research on Health and Nursing at the University of Ottawa. Since December 2022, the Taliban has banned higher education for women in Afghanistan. Now in Canada, however, Hakimi's daughter hopes to become a dentist. "Every day that my children can go to school" Hakimi says, "my heart is full of joy."

Venezuelan higher education is in crisis. After decades of political attacks on universities, many professors struggle to survive a national economic collapse that threatens the whole society with runaway inflation, skyrocketing poverty, and mass outward migration of millions. Professors rely on multiple side jobs and foreign remittances but still can't make ends meet. How and why do they go on?

Free to Think speaks with Mayda Hočevar, Director of the Human Rights Observatory at the Universidad de Los Andes, and David Gomez Gamboa, the director of Aula Abierta, as they unpack the history that has contributed to the current crisis. They explain the "direct relationship between academic freedom and democratic guarantees" and why now, more than ever, is the time to fight for university autonomy and academic freedom in Venezuela — and by extension, wherever democracy is threatened.

On January 21st, police forcibly entered the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, arresting over 200 people including students pulled from their dormitories. Free to Think speaks with Salvador Herencia-Carrasco about his work with colleagues inside and outside Peru to free students from unlawful detention and to defend academic freedom and university autonomy.

Hernencia-Carrasco is director of the Human Rights Clinic of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and leading member of Coalition for Academic Freedom in the Americas (CAFA).

What is 'academic activism?' What responsibility, if any, do scholars have for engaging outside of academia, with the public and with marginalized communities in particular?

Free to Think speaks with Joel Mark Barredo, the Executive Director of SHAPE-SEA, the "Strengthening Human rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN/Southeast Asia" program. SHAPE-SEA is a regional programme for and by human rights and peace scholars and institutions engaged in dialogue, research, and advocacy about threats to academic freedom and human rights in Southeast Asia.

In 1997, Henry Reese and his wife, Diane Samuels, were at a public talk by writer Salman Rushdie, and inspired by his call for communities around the world to offer sanctuary to exiled writers. They "kicked each other under the chair" and thought, why not? Six years later, they founded the City of Asylum, Pittsburgh, a multi-unit residency program that has welcomed exiled writers and artists from China, Syria, Bangladesh and beyond.

Twenty-five years later, Reese was invited to interview Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institute Amphitheater. Just as the interview was about to begin, Rushdie was violently attacked. Reese has described the audience's rushing to the writer's aid, attributing it to what Reese calls the "reader effect" – a real time demonstration of how reading literature and sharing stories builds empathy and meaningful community.

Free to Think talks with Roya Hakakian, a writer and founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and Sasha Gladkikh, a student activist and director of philanthropy at the Iranian Student Group at UCLA about the recent protests in Iran.

On September 16th, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died in the custody of Iran's notorious state morality police. Since then, sustained mass protests have erupted across Iran, including at more than 50 universities, led by women and girls demanding freedom from state-directed violence. Hakakian and Gladkikh discuss the importance of Mahsa Amini, the protests, and the fight for women's dignity and rights.

Free to Think talks with Yulia Bezvershenko, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and Liz Shchepetylnykova, a civil society activist, on the state of higher education in Ukraine after four months of war.

As Russia invaded Ukraine, and war broke out across the country, professors and students in Ukraine fought to keep education going. Even from bomb shelters, they provided lectures online and completed their coursework. "[I]t's very important to provide this feeling of future, of opportunities." They describe how Ukrainian students and researchers are experiencing the war, explain why many scholars are opting to stay in the country, and offer advice on immediate and long-term strategies for supporting the students, scholars and higher education institutions of Ukraine.