While scholars around the world have occasionally faced political persecution because of their academic work, in recent years a “staggering” number of them have been physically threatened, imprisoned, or otherwise intimidated.
So says Jesse Levine, an advocacy officer at the Scholars at Risk Network, a nonprofit organization that on Tuesday published a report that seeks to shed light on the scope and scale of attacks on academic freedom globally.
The report, “Free to Think,” lists 247 instances from January 2011 to May 2015 in which professors, students, or others in higher education faced threats to their safety or their ability to conduct research or to teach. In all, the Scholars at Risk Network, which is based at New York University, tracked incidents in 65 countries. Such problems tended to be concentrated in places with authoritarian governments or facing civil strife, yet the United States too had recent cases in which professors faced death threats.
Mr. Levine, who managed the project for Scholars at Risk starting in 2012, said the number of attacks could not be attributed to one broad factor. He did note that governments like those of Pakistan and Malaysia are increasingly using blasphemy and sedition laws to persecute scholars based on what they say inside and outside of class.
Given a lack of historical data, it’s hard to tell if attacks on higher education have increased in recent years. Some human-rights experts have said that the continued violence in Syria, Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East, which has led to the largest displacement of people since World War II, has contributed to a dangerous environment for scholars globally.
Silencing Scholars
To help document the risks, Mr. Levine and a team of researchers began by tracking incidents in English-speaking countries in Africa. To Mr. Levine’s knowledge, no other group has ever embarked on a project that specifically focused on attacks on higher education.
“Many of these attacks appear to be run-of-the-mill human-rights violations,” he said, “but they are more complicated than that in many ways because they include the additional motive of silencing someone.”
The researchers classified the 247 incidents into six types: killings, other forms of violence, and kidnappings; wrongful imprisonment or detention; wrongful prosecution; wrongful job dismissal; restrictions on travel; and other cases that didn’t fall neatly into those categories.
They examined the September 2014 disappearance of 43 Mexican students, multiple clashes between state security forces and Egyptian students, and the expulsion of a Russian professor after writing an article criticizing the invasion of Ukraine, among other incidents.
Even scholars in the United States are not immune to threats. In March, Islamic State militants threatened Yasir Qadhi, an assistant professor of religious studies at Rhodes College, in Memphis, for condemning the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo — a threat Mr. Levine called “striking.”
In October 2014, the feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian canceled a talk at Utah State University, which under Utah law permits the carrying of concealed firearms, after receiving an anonymous email threatening “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if her event happened. In all, the report documented six incidents in the last few years in the United States.
While scholars at American colleges enjoy protections under the First Amendment, “the types of attacks that we see in the U.S. are most often things like pressure from groups of people who politically hear about something that a scholar says and they become outraged,” Mr. Levine said. “And there is pressure, sometimes violent harassments, to cause the professors to stop doing what they’re doing or get them fired.”
Mr. Levine said that the incidents covered in the report are by no means comprehensive, as many countries do not release information about such human-rights violations or threats to academic freedom. But he said he hopes the report will show how dire the global situation is and encourage colleges and universities around the world to offer more protection to their scholars.