News and Events

Cornell University has hosted a number IIE-SRF fellows, including Azat Gündoğan of Turkey, as well as displaced artists through the IIE Artist Protection Fund.

Eugene Nikiforovich of Ukraine was the first IIE-SRF fellow to benefit from an innovative new hosting model in which he is hosted in his home region by Daugavpils University in Latvia, while co-hosted remotely by Cornell University, which provides financial support and other benefits. As part of this arrangement, he visited Cornell to deliver a seminar and meet with potential collaborators in April.

IIE CEO Dr. Allan Goodman advocates in The Hill for every country to devote 1 percent of its GDP to invest in the goal of providing higher education access to at least 15 percent of refugees by 2030, alongside creative solutions from the higher education sector such as IIE’s Odyssey Scholarship for refugee students.

IIE-SRF alumni Mohammed Almahfali and Abdulghani Muthanna of Yemen contributed an article to University World News urging that the higher education sector must play a core role in rebuilding Yemen’s society.

The Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI) outlines their 8-year partnership with IIE-SRF to place threatened scholars at higher education institutions in Finland. The article includes a brief profile of Sweeta Akbari, an IIE-SRF fellow from Afghanistan undertaking her fellowship at Tampere University in Finland.

IIE CEO Allan Goodman writes in Forbes that international education contributes directly to the health of the U.S. economy and the prospects for sustainable world peace. While the field faces some obstacles, he is optimistic about the future and encourages everyone to play a role in supporting international education.

The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences highlights IIE-SRF fellow Eric Zama of Cameroon and the mutual benefits of hosting an IIE-SRF scholar. “In Cameroon, I was using biochar to improve soil and remove contaminants from water. Here I am using biochar to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from water. Illinois has been great. The program made the right match for me,” says Zama.

IIE-SRF fellow Serap Kavas and several colleagues describe how the Intergroup Dialogue Project at Cornell University helped them learn as instructors how to create a classroom environment that invites open and respectful dialogue. According to the article, “Kavas said she now feels better prepared to create an environment where her students feel more comfortable being uncomfortable, where they can truly enter into dialogue – at a time when those skills are desperately needed.”

As an expert in constitutional and human rights law from Afghanistan, IIE-SRF fellow Tawab Danish shared research and policy recommendations at an event titled “Hazaras and Shias: Violence, Discrimination, and Exclusion Under Taliban Rule” at his host university, Cornell.

The Philadelphia Inquirer situates IIE-SRF host partner University of Pennsylvania’s initiative to host threatened scholars from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Venezuela within a larger effort by universities across the U.S. to offer refuge to scholars whose lives or work are endangered, as represented by IIE and our century of work in this space.