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“My career had ended before it started,” says Anan Alsheikh Haidar. The Syrian academic wanted to support Arab Spring in Damascus, but she felt compelled to leave her country. Gradually, regime-critical colleagues were arrested and tortured, she says: “The daily routine became risky.” The police sought her husband, who as a philosopher and social scientist wrote critically about leaders in region. He had to hide, Haidar threatened imprisonment.
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For months, both of m tried to leave country, 2014 couple managed to escape. A trip across Mediterranean did not come into question, tugs demanded more money than y had. Instead, Haidar fled to Dortmund via Beirut, Ans, Barcelona and Brussels. Her husband chose a different route. “Here comes my life back to me,” says researcher, who spoke about her story at a Congress of International Network “scholars at risk” in Berlin at end of April.
Haidar is one of many scientists who have had to work for freedom and leave ir homeland. Wher in Syria, China, Turkey, or even Hungary or USA, call for democracy is despised in many places, even persecuted as a popular incitement. The call for Freedom understood as a call to violence. Authoritarian rulers fear free speech and democratic developments, and critical scientists are denounced or expelled.
As soon as state decides which knowledge is valuable, it destroys freedom of research Judith Butler, philosopher
Because this endangers freedom of all research, leading scientists worldwide are calling for joint opposition of universities. First of all, philosopher Judith Butler of University of California at Berkeley says that he has to fend off inadmissible influence. After all, as soon as state, economy or religion decides which knowledge is valuable, this destroys freedom of research. And when administrative staff engage in alliances with such external forces, “y participate in destruction of ir own institutions.”
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Furrmore, universities are obliged to include persecuted researchers, says Susanne Baer, who works as a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and since 2011 as a judge at Federal Constitutional Court. “Democracy is under attack,” she emphasized in her keynote speech at Berlin Congress. The first victims were scientists and students. The aim is to create largest possible solidarity network for refugees, and Baer and Butler agree on this.
Foundations help to convey jobs
In Germany, for example, Philipp Schwartz initiative of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation contributes to this. It helps escaped academics by offering scholarships for stays in Germany with support of Foreign Office and several foundations. Thanks to initiative, Haidar works today as a scientist. “The scholarship allows me to be a human being again,” says lawyer. After her escape and time in reception camps, Haidar was initially afraid to go back to university. But colleagues took her: “I feel that I am in a safe place – and at home,” she says.
Nile Mutluer is also one of people supported by foundation. She now works as a sociologist at Humboldt University in Berlin, after leaving Turkey a good two years ago. She had signed call “Academics for Peace”, which criticized attacks by Turkish government against Kurds as a “massacre”, and was refore dismissed.
For Mutluer, refugee crisis is tragic, but it also sees opportunities in it. Thanks to new forms of cooperation, it is possible to create a truly transnational academic environment without Borders, says sociology. An academic world in which all scientists can speak.
