Scholar Rescue: Turning Victims into Heroes

An article in University World News highlights the tenth anniversary of IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF). Building on IIE’s longstanding tradition of rescuing threatened scholars, four IIE trustees—Henry Jarecki, Henry Kaufman, George Soros and Thomas A Russo—created in 2002 a "permanent, formalized framework for responding to the humanitarian and academic needs of scholars whose lives and research are under threat for their beliefs or because of events in their countries." Over the past decade, the Scholar Rescue Fund has provided fellowships for established scholars whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. These fellowships permit professors, researchers, and other senior academics to find temporary refuge at universities and colleges anywhere in the world, enabling them to pursue their academic work and to continue to share their knowledge with students, colleagues, and the community at large.

Mark Angelson, the incoming SRF chair, argues that the work that SRF undertakes will be more important than ever in the near future, since SRF is able to "respond in the most immediate and impactful ways to challenges as they arise—including large-scale country-specific emergencies, as in Iraq and now potentially in Syria. We would like to increase our resources to better meet the high demand for our fellowships."

To read the full article, please visit: www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120914114623251.