How to offer academic asylum to scholars at risk

Ben Fletcher-Watson and Lesley McAra from the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Edinburgh discuss the opportunity for providing academic asylum to U.S. scholars in the UK.

From their inception in the 1930s, IASs have also always had a moral mission to support colleagues around the world when threatened by conflict, displacement or, in the case of the new wave of populist governments, by illiberalism. For those escaping war and trauma, such institutes form quiet places of refuge, rehabilitation and recovery. A small institute can be agile enough to respond to urgent need when research is threatened, where a whole department is less able to pivot. It is worth noting that recent programmes for Ukrainian scholars and their families have tended to emerge from IASs, along with bespoke schemes for researchers from Palestine, Syria, Hungary or Türkiye – and now perhaps America.

Read the full text here (wonkhe.com)