In September 2014, in Mexico, 43 students were kidnapped from a teachers’ college. That same fall, two Japanese universities received threats that if they didn’t fire two professors, university buildings would be destroyed. And this past April, gunmen killed 147 people at a university in Kenya. These events only punctuate expulsions, firings, and travel bans in other parts of the world.

The American Historical Association has joined the Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) as an affiliated member. SAR works to protect academics whose safety is threatened, arranging for them to work as visiting scholars or professors at host institutions in safe locations. The organization also helps shield academic freedom by producing reports and sharing them with policy makers; in June 2015, it issued “Free to Think: Report of the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project.”

In the report, SAR calls on the international community, states, the higher education sector, civil society, and the public at large to publicly recognize the problem of attacks on higher education, review national laws and policies, provide security, call for investigations, and develop practices that promote respect for academic freedom.

More information on SAR’s work is available at scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu.

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