In 2019 the Rector of the University of Trento, Paolo Collini, and the Rector of the University of Padova, Rosario Rizzuto, supported the establishment of the Italian section of Scholars at Risk (Sar). Since then there have been many information and awareness raising campaigns, and many petitions have been launched. Some of them are still ongoing. Some had a positive outcome. For others, we are still fighting. That is the case with Patrick George Zaki, the Egyptian student who attended the University of Bologna and was arrested last year in Egypt, where he is still detained.
"It is a very sad story and we are very worried" said Ester Gallo, professor at UniTrento. "Sar Italy started to campaign for Zaki in February 2020", she continued. "We launched an appeal with the Conference of Italian University Rectors (Crui), Amnesty International and the Scholars at Risk network demanding Egyptian authorities to release Patrick Zaki, and to grant him permission to await trial at home with his family, where he may recover from physical suffering after many months of detention".
Ester Gallo and her colleagues at the University of Padova, Claudia Padovani and Francesca Helm, were confirmed for a second term yesterday as coordinators of Sar Italy and representatives of the Sar International Advisory Committee.
"I am pleased and honoured that my colleagues of the Sar Italy network entrusted me as national coordinator for a second term. We have a lot of work to do but, with the commitment and dedication that characterize Sar Italy, we will do our best to promote awareness raising and advocacy campaigns on academic freedom. I would like to thank the equality and diversity office of the University of Trento that has worked side by side with us in the past years to develop our national network", commented Ester Gallo.
The network of Sar Italy currently has 28 members. For the two-year term of 2021-2023, the board of Sar Italy will be made up by the Universities of Padova and Trento (as supervisors), Trieste, Torino, Scuola Normale Superiore and La Sapienza of Rome. Sar Italy aims to facilitate national coordination in the organization of joint initiatives to protect scholars at risk and academic freedom in general through advocacy and awareness raising campaigns. The network's goal is to collaborate to support all those who cannot do research and teach because they are threatened, intimidated, arrested or deprived of their fundamental rights.
Scholars at risk - Sar
Scholars at risk is an international network of higher education institutions founded at the University of Chicago in 1999. Today its US headquarter are at New York University, while SAR Europe is hosted at Maynooth University (Ireland). The network has over 400 member universities across 40 countries worldwide. There are national sections in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Finland, the United States and Italy.
In 2012 Sar launched an academic freedom monitoring project to investigate attacks on higher education and protect vulnerable scholars. In 2015 it published the first Free to Think report, which examined 333 attacks (between 2011 and 2015) in 65 countries, to raise awareness among the public.
In 2020 alone, there have been 341 attacks against higher education institutions in 47 countries. These are violence by armed individuals and groups against higher education communities, students and scholars; wrongful imprisonments and persecution of scholars to limit freedom of expression; repression of protests; "reeducation camps" where prisoners are subjected to physical and psychological abuse and have no legal representation; pressure from state and non-state entities that include imprisonment, wrongful termination, prosecution, restrictions on travel and on entry or exit from a country, expulsions; threats to independence, including state intervention to close universities and research centres. Based on the report, attacks have been conducted by state and non-state actors and occurred in democratic and non-democratic countries: violence harms people and the higher education system by limiting freedom of expression and the right to think, question and share ideas freely and safely.
In 2020, Sar received more than 600 requests for assistance from scholars at risk, but unfortunately managed to create employment opportunities for only 124 of them. 76% obtained grants to work temporarily in the United States, Germany, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands. In Italy there are seven scholars under humanitarian protection in five universities.
For more information on Sar Italia visit: https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/sections/sar-italy
For more information on the first two years of activity:
https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/sections/sar-italy/section-news/2-anni-di...
The Free to think report 2020: https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/resources/free-to-think-2020/