Free to Think talks with Dr. Jo Smith Finley, a Reader in Chinese studies at Newcastle University, UK. In March 2021, Dr. Smith Finley was sanctioned by the government of the People's Republic of China, along with a group of UK politicians and peers, a legal chambers, and the entire staff of The Uyghur Tribunal. The sanctions include a ban on traveling to China, a freeze on assets, and a ban on collaborating with Chinese counterparts in the PRC. 

The sanctions were in retaliation for Dr. Smith Finley's research about reported human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. These include the forced internment of over one million Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority, in what some have labeled an ongoing attempted genocide.

By targeting the careers of scholars outside of China, the sanctions represent a dramatic escalation in the Party-state's campaign to censor information that is contrary to the official national narrative, and a threat to academic freedom everywhere.

Free to Think talks with Dr. Prosper Maguchu, researcher, human rights lawyer and activist from Zimbabwe. He worked to defend victims of state violence before domestic and international courts, bringing vindication to his clients, but drawing threats and violence against himself. "I wanted to be on the right side of history," he said, "I was motivated each time my clients got justice in court, motivated to soldier on, to continue on with the work. That's why I never gave up." Prosper shares his experience as a SAR-assisted scholar at universities in the Netherlands, where he is currently a  guest associate professor in the Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law, and project manager with the Centre for International Cooperation, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Dr. Kyaw Moe Tun completed his undergraduate education at Bard College and Oxford University. After receiving his PhD from Yale University, he returned to Myanmar to dedicate his life to the educational development of his country. He discusses the promise and challenges of liberal education in a time of protests and unrest.

Free to Think talks with Aziz Royesh, a leading advocate for primary and secondary education in Afghanistan and the founder of the Marefat High School in Kabul, which currently serves more than 3100 Afghan students, about half of whom are girls. Royesh is a former fellow at the US National Endowment for Democracy and Yale University, and a 2014 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize, which recognizes teachers as changemakers not just in their classrooms, but in their communities. After withstanding assassination attempts, mob assaults at his school, and escalating extremist violence, Royesh discusses the imperatives of transforming communities through education that unleashes the power of individualism, critical thinking, wisdom and creativity.

Free to Think talks with Marvi Sirmed, a political commentator, journalist, and human rights activist from Pakistan, about the 2021 Aurat March (Women’s March), violence against women, intersectionality, blasphemy accusations and the responsibility of social media companies. 

Sirmed advocates for minority rights, women’s rights and secular democracy. She has withstood years of threats and harassment, including home invasions, theft travel documents and papers, and death threats, including attempted shootings.

Sirmed is currently a Research Scholar at the University of Connecticut, a SAR network member, where she is working on a book on free expression in South Asian countries.

Free to Think talks with Alfred Babo about Share the Platform, a new initiative to formed by a group of practitioners and scholars from refugee and non-refugee backgrounds to “center the expertise of refugees to improve policy, programs, and practice” in a wide variety of fields.

Babo is an interdisciplinary scholar in anthropology of development, political science, and African studies, currently teaching at SAR network member Fairfield University. A refugee from the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire, Babo previously taught at the University of Bouaké, and later at Smith College in Massachusetts, USA. He is also a member of the Governing Board of Scholars at Risk.

Share the Platform invites participation in their upcoming virtual conference on May 13, 2021. Information and registration at https://www.sharetheplatform.org.

Free to Think talks with Xiyue Wang, a PhD candidate in history at Princeton University, whose research focuses on Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, China and the late Ottoman Empire. 

In May 2016, Wang visited Iran to do library and archival research in Tehran. Despite prior approval of his research plan by Iranian authorities, in August he was detained, falsely charged with espionage, and eventually he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years. He was sent to Evin prison, notorious for housing of political prisoners and allegations of mistreatment.

After international campaigns on his behalf, Wang was released in a prisoner swap between the US and Iran in December 2019. Wang talks with Free to Think about the complicated intersection between state hostage-taking and international campaigns for prisoners’ release.

Free to Think talks with Asli Vatansever, a labor sociologist and author of “At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity,” which examines misconceptions and structural inequities in academic labor markets around the world, through the lens of scholars displaced from their home countries. 

Vatansever was among the thousands of scholars in Turkey and abroad who signed a January 2019 public petition (the “Peace Petition”) demanding an end to fighting and renewed negotiations between Turkish forces and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Vatansever, along with hundreds of other signatories, was dismissed from her post, banned from working and forced to seek academic employment abroad.

At the Margins of Academia situates the path of academic exile —familiar from earlier generations of scholars--within the wider dynamics of contemporary academic labor markets. It asks whether displaced academics are “at-risk” or “in reserve,” and whether these are two sides of the same coin?