In the News

IIE President and CEO, Allan Goodman, spoke with Inside Higher Ed to discuss IIE’s ongoing efforts to support Afghan scholars and students.

IIE-SRF and UNESCO-The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) are delighted to announce that eight IIE-SRF scholars from Syria and Yemen have been selected for the TWAS-Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Young Refugee and Displaced Scientists Programme! These academics, whose fields of study span the STEM disciplines, will join the TWAS Young Affiliates Network (TYAN), which comprises outstanding young scientific researchers from developing countries. TYAN facilitates participation in TWAS meetings and conferences and offers access to competitive opportunities, including grants and awards. The Young Refugee and Displaced Scientists Programme was developed by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) in consultation with IIE-SRF in order to help address the unique and substantial challenges faced by scholars displaced from their home countries.

“Throughout the past few years, IIE-SRF has collaborated with TWAS to raise awareness of the large number of threatened and displaced scientists globally and to help these scholars gain access to the networks they need to reestablish their careers and resume their important work,” says IIE-SRF Director James Robin King. “We are thrilled to continue our ongoing partnership with UNESCO-TWAS and IsDB on the Refugee and Displaced Scientists Programme, which provides select IIE-SRF scholars with critical opportunities that are difficult, often impossible, to access for scientists who have been forced to relocate and navigate new academic environments.”

In a recent article, two of the IIE-SRF scholars selected for the Young Refugee and Displaced Scientists Programme – Dr. Nada Abdulwali of Yemen and Dr. Hasan Aljabbouli of Syria – spoke with TWAS about the challenges threatened academics face amidst conflict and when integrating into a new academic systems abroad. They also discussed the ways in which programs like IIE-SRF and TWAS Young Affiliates can help displaced scientists gain access to new resources and networks while also providing opportunities to collaborate on key issues, support other academics in need, and strategize on the rebuilding of higher education systems and infrastructure in their home countries. “At IsDB-TWAS workshops, we [have] met with several scholars from different countries and exchanged ideas and points of view,” says Dr. Abdulwali, a woman scholar of physical chemistry currently undertaking an IIE-SRF fellowship appointment at the University of Guelph in Canada. “This programme allows members to discuss the strategy to help scientists who remain at risk.” Dr. Aljabbouli, a computer scientist who undertook IIE-SRF fellowships at New Jersey City University in the U.S. and now holds a position at New York University, considers how the program can serve as a springboard for new endeavors. “I am filled with hope that I will be able to exchange knowledge with others, contribute more to the community, and help rebuild my destroyed country in the future,” he says.

Inside Higher Education’s article on May 13, 2021 explores the IIE-SRF alumni impact study.

The Times Higher Education’s article on May 8, 2021 showcases the IIE-SRF alumni impact study as well as the stories of IIE-SRF alumni who have enriched both their host and home communities.

PIE News assesses the IIE-SRF impact study, To Rescue Scholars is to Rescue the Future, in its April 30, 2021 article.

Image: Felix Bloch

For nearly a century, Stanford University and IIE have partnered in support of academics facing civil conflict or persecution for their scholarship or identities. A new Stanford Today article traces the history of this partnership, beginning in the 1930s, when Stanford and IIE provided refuge to European scholars facing Nazi persecution. The university offered safe haven to luminaries such as Felix Bloch, a celebrated physicist who was aided by IIE’s Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars after he fled Germany amidst Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Dr. Bloch later won a Nobel Prize for his research conducted at the university on nuclear magnetic resonance, the science behind the MRI. In the 1980s, Stanford worked with IIE’s South Africa Education Program (SAEP) to host Black South African students denied access to education under apartheid. One SAEP student who completed a Ph.D. at Stanford, Jonathan Jansen, returned to South Africa to become the first Black president of the University of the Free State, a historically white-only institution that was desegregated after the end of apartheid.

Since 2006, Stanford has served as a dedicated IIE-SRF host partner, bringing to campus 11 fellows facing threats to their lives or careers. The scholars, whose academic disciplines span the humanities and social sciences, have hailed from eight countries, including Belarus, China, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe. More than half of the scholars have been supported through the university’s Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES). Dr. Jovana Lazić Knežević, the associate director of CREES, explains that just as IIE-SRF scholars find Stanford’s support to be valuable, the Stanford community benefits from their presence as well. “One of the things that’s really valuable about bringing these scholars to Stanford is that we learn from them,” says Dr. Knežević. “We benefit from the ideas they bring from different parts of the globe, but also from their experiences of what it’s like to live and work in a society that doesn’t afford them the same kind of freedom of thought and expression.”