Scholars at Risk’s Free to Think 2016
Today Scholars at Risk released Free to Think 2016, the second installment in our series of reports on attacks on higher education communities.
This year’s report identifies negative trends drawn from 158 reported attacks in 35 countries that occurred between May 1, 2015 and September 1, 2016, including extreme violence by armed groups and individuals against university communities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iraq, and Syria; pervasive state interference with academic inquiry and expression in Egypt, Turkey, and beyond; and violent suppression of organized student expression.
The release also marks one week since armed militants wearing suicide vests stormed Balochistan Police College, Pakistan, killing 61 and injuring more than 120, most of whom were students. Sadly, this is only the most recent occurrence in an alarming crisis of attacks on universities and colleges worldwide–a theme present throughout the report.
Scholars at Risk calls on states, higher education leaders, and civil society everywhere to do more to protect higher education communities from attack: to reaffirm publicly their commitment to institutional autonomy and academic freedom; to disavow violence, undue external interference, and compulsion against higher education communities; and to demand recognition of the principle that critical discourse is not disloyalty, that ideas are not crimes.
KJ