By Emily Elliot-Meisel
This article originally appeared in the December 2020 edition of Revista de Educación Superior en América Latina (ESAL), a biannual publication focused on higher education in Latin America. The Spanish-language version of the article is available here.
Venezuela’s widespread political instability and protracted economic crisis are having a devastating impact on the country’s university students, professors, and higher education sector at large. Scientific research in the country has come to a near-complete standstill, university funding has decreased by as much as 80 percent, and academics face precarious situations, including mounting restrictions on their autonomy to elect university leadership and ability to obtain research funding from international sources. Among the more than four million Venezuelans who have fled the country are hundreds, if not thousands, of scholars. By some estimates, nearly 60 percent of Venezuelan scientific researchers have left the country. Scholars who remain describe largely abandoned and neglected campuses often lacking running water, electricity, internet, and air conditioning. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the difficulties for academics in Venezuela, who have been forced to grapple with increased repression, a worsening economy, and an under-resourced health care system.
The Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) – the only global program that arranges and funds fellowships for threatened and displaced scholars at partnering higher education institutions worldwide – has responded to the higher education emergency in Venezuela by offering career-saving support to a growing number of the country’s professors, researchers, and public intellectuals. IIE-SRF assists scholars from any country and academic discipline who face threats to their personal security or academic careers, in order that they can escape danger, relocate to a safe country, and quickly re-establish themselves as teachers, researchers, and intellectuals. The IIE-SRF fellowship package includes a $25,000 grant (typically matched by the hosting institution), health insurance, relocation funding, and other supplemental support. Scholars also receive dedicated assistance from IIE-SRF and its partners – before, during, and after their fellowships. IIE-SRF has supported nearly 900 scholars from 60 countries since its inception in 2002, approving grants of more than $33 million and placing scholars at more than 400 higher education institutions in 47 countries.
In the past five years, IIE-SRF has received a record-breaking number of qualified applications from scholars worldwide facing threats to their lives and careers, an alarming trend that has undoubtedly been intensified by applicants seeking respite from the crisis in Venezuela. In 2019, IIE-SRF saw a 110 percent increase in applications from members of Venezuela’s academic community who reported an inability to continue their work under circumstances of sustained hardship. Venezuela now represents the third-highest source country of applications to IIE-SRF behind only Turkey and Yemen, and more than 1 out of every 10 IIE-SRF fellowships awarded between January 2019 and September 2020 have gone to Venezuelan academics. Since 2016, IIE-SRF has awarded fellowships to 15 academics from Venezuela, 5 of whom have pursued or are currently pursuing their academic work in safety in Colombia, Spain, and the U.S.
As a growing number of professors and researchers are forced to flee the economic and political conditions in Venezuela, finding opportunities for them within Latin America is a crucial step in mitigating ‘brain drain’ and ensuring that scholars hailing from what was historically one of the region’s strongest higher education systems continue to imbue local universities with their talent and expertise. Placing scholars within Latin America also ensures that they can continue their academic work in Spanish and maintain ties with their students and academic networks in both Venezuela and the regional diaspora. In the program’s experience, Venezuelan fellows’ research, which ranges from the exploration of mathematics education throughout Latin America to indigenous ethnoecology in the Andes, is also often most applicable and impactful in the context of other South and Central American countries, and the need for their expertise is frequently found within regional universities.
IIE-SRF’s work to connect threatened and displaced Venezuelan scholars with higher education institutions in their home region is informed by the program’s previous and ongoing efforts to preserve national academies in crisis. In 2007, for example, IIE-SRF launched the Iraq Scholar Rescue Project (ISRP) to address an unprecedented academic emergency in Iraq, where thousands of scholars faced threats, displacement, or were otherwise unable to continue their academic work. ISRP supported more than 300 of Iraq’s most senior or promising academics to continue their work in safety, primarily in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Iraqi scholars who undertook their fellowships within MENA were able to continue their academic work in Arabic, remain engaged with research relevant to the region, and share knowledge and expertise with the Iraqi diaspora in neighboring countries. Many IIE-SRF scholars from Iraq made significant contributions to higher education in their fellowship countries, filling expertise gaps or faculty shortages and working with colleagues to publish quality research in international journals. When conditions improved in Iraq, many IIE-SRF alumni returned to the country to resume or commence university positions. IIE-SRF scholars have since played an important role in rebuilding Iraq’s higher education system, serving in top leadership positions within its universities. Scholars remaining abroad have also participated in the rebuilding process through the IIE-SRF Distance Learning Initiative, an ongoing project that enables IIE-SRF fellows and alumni in the diaspora to help address curricular and expertise gaps in the Iraqi higher education system through the virtual delivery of live academic lectures and courses.
In many ways, IIE-SRF sees parallels between the opportunities for Iraqi scholars in the MENA region and those for Venezuelan scholars in other Latin American countries, particularly in Colombia, to where more than one million Venezuelans have fled in recent years. In 2019, the University of the Andes in Bogotá (Uniandes) became the first institution in South America to host an IIE-SRF fellow. The scholar, Dr. Fermin Rada, worked with IIE-SRF to secure a placement in the country, sharing that an appointment in Colombia would best enable him to continue his important work as an expert in the tropical ecology of the equatorial Andean mountains spanning Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Dr. Rada has recounted an “incredible experience – both personally and academically” on fellowship in his neighboring country’s capital, describing the cultural ties between the two countries that helped facilitate his transition to life and work in Bogotá. Through his successive fellowships at Uniandes, Dr. Rada has been able to teach laboratory and fieldwork courses on water and carbon dynamics, mentor graduate students, and complete a monograph on high mountain ecological research and the impacts of climate change on biodiversity in the area. Dr. Rada’s supervisor at the university relates that “there are very few experts [who have Dr. Rada’s expertise] on the physiology of this unique ecosystem. Having the opportunity to host him is a great opportunity for my students and my lab.” Dr. Rada has also maintained ties with his home university in Venezuela, continuing to work with graduate students to publish the results of their theses and publishing several articles with former colleagues in Venezuela and in the diaspora, including another IIE-SRF scholar on fellowship in Spain.
During and after their fellowship appointments, IIE-SRF scholars from Venezuela remain deeply committed to their home academic communities. Among other activities, fellows have presented virtually at conferences hosted by their home universities and published articles in Spanish with colleagues on topics including Latin American female migrant literature, biodiversity and climate change in the Andes, and the clinical characteristics of rheumatic diseases in Venezuelan patients. Notably, an IIE-SRF fellow undertaking an appointment at the University of Lleida in Spain was asked by the Juan Guaidó delegation to represent Venezuela at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid in late 2019.
Encouraged by the initial positive experiences and accomplishments of Venezuelan scholars on fellowship within Latin America, IIE-SRF has recently secured fellowship appointments for Venezuelan scholars at the University of Antioquia in Colombia and the Catholic University of Maule in Chile. Moreover, in an effort to facilitate future partnerships in the region, the program has strengthened relationships with organizations such as the Latin American Studies Association and the CeiBA Foundation, a science and innovation non-profit in Colombia with strong ties at seven leading research universities in the country. IIE-SRF welcomes the partnership of additional universities and organizations via the IIE-SRF Alliance, the program’s recently-launched network offering practical support to threatened and displaced scholars, such as temporary academic positions, professional development and career advancement opportunities, and other critical assistance.
Venezuelan scholars today are facing incredible challenges to both their safety and their ability to freely undertake their academic work. IIE-SRF remains committed to addressing this crisis by awarding fellowships to academics in need and enabling them to continue their teaching and research within Latin America or elsewhere. These ongoing efforts ensure scholars’ safety and academic freedom in the immediate term and will preserve the expertise that will undoubtedly prove critical to the country’s rebuilding in the future. Higher education institutions, organizations, and individuals across Latin America are welcome to join IIE-SRF as it continues to address the higher education emergency in Venezuela. For more information on how to partner with the program through the IIE-SRF Alliance, please visit www.scholarrescuefund.org or contact srf@iie.org.
