The Scholars at Risk (SAR) initiative at Carleton is dedicated
to helping scholars who are facing threats to their lives due to their scholarship. We work to protect scholars (and their ideas) and promote academic freedom by arranging one to two-year appointments in host departments across the university.
Since 2014, SAR Carleton has hosted 19 scholars, who have taught and researched in six different departments of the University.
Carleton SAR partners with the Scholars at Risk Network and the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) to arrange these annual appointments.
Annual Report
Our work is more vital than ever. The SAR Network’s “Free to Think 2024” report, published in October, catalogues the increasing global
threats to higher education in locations such as Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan. Attacks on individual academics have a chilling effect on
universities, and in turn on the health of democracy. The erosion of norms of openness, the growth of illiberal legislation, the spread
of war, and the closing of borders to students and academics alike, have stifled international collaboration. While war and increasing
authoritarianism are perhaps the most obvious global threats we face, in subtle ways growing efforts even in traditionally liberal
societies such as the United States to erode the institutional autonomy of universities and their curricula, as well as the rights of free
expression, pose a new range of challenges. In the face of this, SAR Carleton remains robust and a leader among the over 30 SAR
committees in Canada. This report traces both the challenges we face going forward, but also the extraordinary difference we can
make.
