News and Events

"How do I tell if I am connecting with my students if they are Munaqaba?" The question was followed by somewhat stunned silence and then a good answer that, like most Zen problems, required some inner reflection. This was the most difficult question of some 100 that we got in two days of plenary and workshop sessions on classroom and faculty assessment: how to do it and why it matters. We also kept score and of our five scholar rescue conferences, this one generated by far the most participant engagement, which is a very hopeful sign. Faculty want to connect with and do better by their students and administrators are beginning to encourage this. Feedback and assessment are important first steps toward embracing a student-centered learning approach and encouraging critical thinking, which is not the way things have been done here.

“Preserving [Syria] higher education is essential to defending academic and civil freedoms, protecting regional and global security, and rebuilding fragile states.” July 5, Chicago Tribune Op-Ed by IIE’s CEO and President, Allan Goodman, and IIE-SRF Chairman, Mark Angelson.

Wheelock College recently hosted Dr. Gadziro Gwekwerere, an International Rescue Scholar and Zimbabwean lecturer in African music and ethnomusicology.

"The fight for Syria seems as intractable as ever, but the struggle for what comes next is already well underway."

UC-Davis Prof. Keith Watenpaugh's first-hand account of Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan. IIE Scholar Rescue Fund partnered with Watenpaugh on a reseach project to learn more about the conditions and needs of Syrian university students and academics in Jordan.

IIE Scholar Rescue Fund recently collaborated on a field-based study with UC Davis titled "Uncounted and Unacknowledged: Syria's Refugee University Students and Academics in Jordan."  Adrienne Fricke, a human rights expert and SRF research collaborator, tells BBC anchor Marco Werman of the importance of having Syrian university students in the refugee communities continue their education during the crisis in Syria.

“International higher education writ large, needs to begin to imagine regional solutions to the displacement of students and at-risk university professionals,” said Keith David Watenpaugh, a historian of the Modern Middle East and associate professor who directs the University of California, Davis Human Rights Initiative, which joined with the Scholar Rescue Fund to produce the report.

"We have rescued nearly 500 scholars from 50 countries over the past 10 years. It’s important to be single-minded in our focus on the fact that our job is to rescue scholars and save their lives and knowledge."

US English language giant ELS Educational Services says it will team up with the Institute of International Education to support foreign scholars in crisis.