Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

“Attacks on higher education are at crisis levels”

Today, 23 June 2015, Scholars at Risk [SAR] released the first report of its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project at the United Nations in Geneva,: “Free to Think”. The culmination of four years of monitoring and analysis by SAR staff and researchers around the world, the report analyzes 333 attacks on higher education communities in 65 countries from January 2011 to May 2015, demonstrating the pressing need to raise awareness and document attacks on higher education:

There is a crisis of attacks on higher education communities around the world. Human rights defenders often are the first victims of such attacks.

Attacks on universities, scholars and students are early warning signs of political, social and cultural insecurity.

Universities and scholars are critical parts of national infrastructure that is essential to rebuilding conflict torn states.

Rob Quinn, SAR’s Executive Director, calls on all stakeholders, including States, the higher education sector, civil society and the public at large to undertake concrete actions to increase protection for higher education communities, including documenting and investigating attacks, and holding perpetrators accountable.

Use the hashtag #Free2Think to join the conversation.

For earlier posts on academic freedom: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/academic-freedom/

via Scholars at Risk Network, where you can also find the full report.

This entry was posted on June 23, 2015 at 18:13 and is filed under books, human rights, Human Rights Defenders.

Tags: Academic freedom, Free to Think, freedom, Higher education, Human Rights Defenders, human rights documentation, report, Robert Quinn, SAR, Scholars at Risk, university level education