News and Events

“We need authoritarian-proof higher education models.” —Kyaw Moe Tun

Kyaw Moe Tun, OSUN project leader and president of the Parami Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, published an article in Times Higher Education discussing the need for authoritarian-proof higher education models in Myanmar. Following the military coup, faculty and students fear the end of a budding modern higher education system. Bard is an OSUN cofounder and partner of the Parami Institute

Open Society University Network has signed on to an urgent appeal to President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas to work closely with Congress to take immediate action in admitting Afghan evacuees into the United States within the next 30 days.

The letter asks that the United States fulfill its promise to "provide safety and security to Afghans who have stood alongside us for the past twenty years" in the war against the Taliban and "ensure that our Afghan allies do not languish in legal limbo abroad waiting for an opportunity to restart and rebuild their new lives."

The letter explains how the small number of US allies that did manage to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover face a web of bureaucratic and punitive legal processes that will greatly delay entry into the United States.

"Our allies are exhausted and traumatized, and many are separated from family and friends who are anxiously waiting to welcome them. We cannot further abandon them by leaving them in limbo abroad, at risk of having to wait for years to enter the United States—or, worse, be returned to Afghanistan," explains the letter.

Many evacuees are being held in dire conditions on military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, and Germany, while others wait in third countries such as Albania, Rwanda, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan that will soon close their borders.

The full letter recommends that:
1)     All evacuated Afghans and those with pending immigration applications be paroled by US Customs and Border Protection into the United States within a maximum of 30 days. 
 2)     The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services commit to the creation of a designated humanitarian parole program to guide and expedite the review of parole petitions for additional at-risk Afghans. This program should include pro-democracy activists, journalists, women’s rights activists, human rights activists, children, and LGBTQ persons.
3)     The administration pay specific attention to expediting the reunification of separated Afghan families. 

Through Bard College, OSUN is now accepting scholarship applications from students from Afghanistan who are experiencing displacement.

This article was originally published in Karin Fischer's latitude(s) newsletter.

Heartbreak and What You Can Do: How Higher Education Can Aid Afghanistan

An Afghan student studying abroad fears for the safety of siblings still at home. A university president works to evacuate students from Afghanistan and find them places to study. Higher-education groups raise emergency funds.

As the precipitous and tragic crisis in Afghanistan unfolds, students, scholars, and researchers are vulnerable. For years, the Taliban has targeted academics and universities in its attacks. In particular, it has opposed the education of women and girls. 

Some American colleges are erasing any mention of past collaborations with Afghan colleagues from their websites or social media out of fear that such western ties could make them Taliban targets.

Jonathan Becker, the acting president of the American University of Central Asia, has been scrambling to try to get endangered students out of Afghanistan. “The stakes are high for all students but especially for young women who won’t be able to pursue higher education under the Taliban,” he said. “These are women who are smart, who are empowered, who are extraordinary.”

Working with the Open Society University Network and Bard College, where he is also vice president for academic affairs, Becker has persuaded universities to host displaced students and raised tens of thousands of dollars to pay for chartered airplanes. Bard will take as many as 100 students as well as threatened scholars. But a big challenge remains: how to get visas for the students to go to other countries.

In recent days, Becker got some good news: The government of Kyrgyzstan, where AUCA is located, has pledged to issue 500 visas to students from Afghanistan. Now, he hopes other countries will do the same. “It’s a sprint to get these students out.”

I’ve also been in contact with Afghan students who have shared heartbreaking and harrowing stories. One student who is studying abroad told me how much she worries about her sisters who are still in Afghanistan; they have lost their chance to study, to work, to live their lives, she fears. Another told me that her family has gone into hiding. “We are not sure about tomorrow,” she said.

I hope to tell you more about these amazing students, but for now, they worry that revealing even minor details could put their families at risk.

One of them asked me to appeal to you: Urge your elected officials to advocate for the presence of troops in Afghanistan, she said. Lobby the U.S. government not to recognize the Taliban government unless it guarantees human rights and women’s rights and refrains from persecutions based on ethnicity, gender, language, and religion. Ask humanitarian and media organizations to remain in Afghanistan.


Through Bard College, OSUN is now accepting scholarship applications from students from Afghanistan who are experiencing displacement.

After 40 years in prison, Gregory Mingo was pardoned on August 23, along with several other incarcerated people, in one of Andrew Cuomo’s last acts as governor of New York State. Last fall, Bard College student Seamus Heady produced a video for OSUN’s inaugural Visual Storytelling Workshop that depicted the longstanding advocacy efforts of the grassroots group seeking clemency for Mingo.

Mingo has served the greater part of a 50-year sentence at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in New York State for a crime he maintains he did not commit. In fall 2020, Heady and other students enrolled in a Bard College course on human rights advocacy worked with CUNY Law School and the human rights organization WITNESS to create a short video that was filed with Mingo’s official application for clemency. Heady then went on to create a second video with his own production crew that served as a "digital case study" for the OSUN workshop. “Bring Them Home: The Fight for Clemency” provided a less clinical take on the case, including emotional interviews with Mingo and members of his grassroots advocacy group of family, friends, and carceral justice activists. 

Heady says the second video allowed him to humanize the arduous process of the appeal for clemency, “giving some of the perspective of Mingo’s family while they were going through this fight and struggling with bureaucracy and feelings of loss and grief.” 

Heady says it is difficult to put into words the feelings that the pardon has stirred up, particularly after Mingo's bid for clemency was at a dead end as recently as last winter. When he found out last December that Mingo’s appeal had been denied, “my heart sank at that moment.” When he got the news this time around that Cuomo had granted clemency, he was “overwhelmed, overjoyed” but found it "difficult to process the emotions in such extremes.”

Heady has since gotten some emails from members of Mingo’s advocacy team that included brief comments from family members, who are all struggling to articulate their feelings. “For the family this is something greater than anything they could imagine.” 

The OSUN Visual Storytelling Workshop, cotaught by filmmakers Adam Stepan and Sean Steinberg, trains students across OSUN to use inexpensive tools, such as smartphones, to create “digital case studies” of the research and civic engagement projects they undertake for OSUN network courses.

OSUN’s Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative has joined 45 other scholar protection groups and organizations in signing an urgent appeal to European governments and EU institutions to take immediate action toward safeguarding the lives and careers of Afghanistan’s scholars, students, and civil society actors.

As explained in the appeal, signers, including the Scholars at Risk Network (SAR), the PAUSE program in France, and the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, are racing to offer assistance to researchers, scholars and civil society actors in Afghanistan whose lives and livelihoods are now at risk due to the Taliban takeover of the country. 

These groups and organizations are asking European governments and EU institutions to continue evacuation flights from Afghanistan for as long as possible and to increase resettlement quotas to help those in need of international protection. Among other measures, they also ask for dedicated EU and national fellowship schemes for scholars and expedited complementary legal pathways for candidates who demonstrate an existing host institution, job, or sponsor. 

“The eroding situation in Afghanistan poses a threat not only to the lives of our colleagues still in Afghanistan, but to the future of that country,” reads the appeal. “The European higher education community is ready to do its part, but we need your help. If we move quickly, we can go a long way towards mitigating the worst of the threats and demonstrate continuing commitment to the future of Afghanistan and its people.”

Read the full appeal and list of signers here.

Last month, Bard College and the Open Society University Network sent out a call to Afghan graduates of American programs in Afghanistan and the region. Immediately 120 replies came back. “I had a student this summer who had to miss class because ‘the Taliban surrounded our town.’ She indicated to me her final paper would be late because a bomb blew up her house,” Jonathan Becker told the Atlantic’s George Packer. “This is a tragedy of epic proportions.” After reading Honorable Exit, Thurston Clarke’s account of efforts by individual Americans to save their Vietnamese allies before the fall of Saigon in 1975, Becker realized how little time was left. In recent days Bard and Open Society have appealed to universities in the region to host Afghan evacuees, and to foundations and board members to pay as much as $400,000 to charter flights out of Afghanistan. “In many cases we have institutions to host them. Colleges, universities, and funders are stepping up,” Becker said. “That is not a problem. The challenge is the time to get people out and get them visas into those countries.” Jonathan Becker is OSUN vice chancellor, executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard.

Eva Gedeon, Director of the CEU-OSUN Summer University, recently sat down for an online interview with Bonnie Goad, OSUN Director of Communications, to discuss the program’s history, vision, and what’s in store for the future. 

OSUN Summer University is a great opportunity to work as a team on developing and piloting new curricula, bringing together students, scholars, practitioners and community advocates in an intensive collaborative learning experience. OSUN provides funding for SUN courses, covering the costs of development and delivery of the courses, tuition waivers, stipends and travel support for OSUN affiliates. 
Learn more about submitting a proposal for the 2022 OSUN-CEU Summer University. The OSUN-CEU Summer University 2022 course proposals deadline has been extended to September 1, 2021.
  
BG: Let me start by asking you, because you've been doing this for a long time, how did the CEU Summer University get started?

EG: I've been with the program since 1997 so it's quite a while. It was started just a year before I came to CEU and the reason it started was really to enhance CEU’s mission through this outreach program. The original idea was to generate more knowledge and research projects.  The program originally targeted the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe and then the effort was expanded to enhance access to existing knowledge and scholarship, which many of these countries had been deprived of. There was even a book donation program because people were starving for knowledge and books.

The original idea was to meet the existing scholarship, which was largely one-directional from Western to Eastern scholarship. As time went on, it became more of an experimental ground for research and cooperation and the outreach was more global, where people applied from every corner of the globe. It’s the same today.

BG: Many universities have summer programs. What makes this one different?

EG: It’s really an extension of CEU into the larger community. We want to give other people a taste of CEU. The program also helps faculty to connect and work more intensively on a project during the summer school or to forge new relationships. 

What makes it different is exactly this team element, it’s not one faculty offering a course. It's a real team approach. So there can be a group of five or six or seven people working and teaching together. That’s rather different from the model of most summer schools. Very often, because it's a team, there's a chance to be multidisciplinary so it's not just one narrow discipline but a multidisciplinary union with a 360-degree look around the world and within those fields. And that's exciting.

CEU SUN is typically one or two weeks of intense work so, as one student said, “it’s an incubator of ideas.” It can be very stimulating because you hear ideas and perspectives from a lot of people, which sparks new ideas and deep critical thinking.  

BG: This past year, everyone has had to make a transition to online teaching due to COVID. How has that impacted the experience for the faculty and for the students? 

EG: That’s where OSUN has really been instrumental. If it hadn't been for OSUN, I don't think we would have been successful in making this transition. OSUN helped faculty to see that they could do this and also provided the extra funding for the preparation. It was a big jump in the first year but by the next summer the whole world had learned what Zoom is. Everyone is so much more proficient but the support gave us the resources to train faculty and to realize that despite the loss of being together in the same physical space, we can do even more than we realized. 

No doubt, that act of being together, of continuing a conversation at a bar or over dinner, has always been an important part of the SUN learning experience. But we can see that so many people who would not have been able to come to Budapest because of the cost have been able to participate online. So that is something we have to consider for the future. We had a very successful online mediation course this summer, for example, where there were deep emotional ties that developed during the breakout rooms. They did a lot of simulation exercises with rich discussions and developed strong bonds. 

BG: You've had a big transition during this time but also experiences that sound like they were incredibly powerful and really speak to the original mission of outreach in a way that you had never envisioned. So what are you hoping for in 2022?

EG: Well, we are hoping to become more aligned within the OSUN network and with other projects. Perhaps a SUN course can be an exploratory phase of a larger project or as a pilot to test an idea and see how it works before developing it into a larger project. A SUN course could also be the dissemination phase of a larger project.

BG: That sounds like a great opportunity. So if I'm a faculty member at an OSUN partner and I have an idea I'm incubating, what should I be thinking about if I want to submit a proposal for a course next summer?

EG: We’re really happy to help nurture an idea, discuss it together, and identify possible partners and, where appropriate, a CEU faculty member to contribute to the team. Faculty members can contact me directly. 

BG: Terrific. Anything else you wanted to share?

EG: So many of our students have talked about how they are not only learning from the faculty but from each other. That's very exciting. We have these very mature students and professionals in the same group. What they learn from each other is unique because the students are very diverse in terms of geography, age, experience, and disciplinary background. And there's a lot of exchange going on. They tend to hang out after classes – including the faculty. No one flies in, teaches the course, and flies out. They are here for a week or two and spend almost 10 hours a day together in each other's company. The learning that takes place outside the classroom is very powerful.

As the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan proceeds, multiple OSUN partners, including the American University of Central Asia, Bard College, and the American University of Afghanistan, are working intently to evacuate students and scholars to safety. Jonathan Becker, Vice Chancellor of OSUN and Acting President of AUCA, shared the following letter with the AUCA community and offered commentary on the situation in a recent article by George Packer in The Atlantic.

As Becker's letter points out, while some progress has been made, OSUN continues to work to assist its colleagues and friends in Afghanistan, and continues to express solidarity with Afghan scholars across the globe during this troubling time.


Dear American University of Central Asia Community:

While we all watch with concern the quickly evolving situation in Afghanistan, I want to express on behalf of the AUCA community our deep concern for our Afghan students and their families and friends and Afghan students across the Open Society University Network (OSUN), particularly at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAf).

We are working now to find safe havens for students and graduates.  I met with more than 80 Afghan students yesterday, and we have active communications going through various forms of media.  Several weeks ago, we opened a special scholarship program for Afghan graduates of AUCA, and we have offered to host many AUAf Embassy Scholars through an academic exchange program.  Bard College has offered to take in as many as 100 students, as well as threatened scholars. 

We are heartened by and thankful for the bold decision of the Kyrgyz government to extend visas to 500 Afghan students across the country.  We want to salute this generous humanitarian initiative, which stands in stark contrast to the tepid steps we see some others taking.  Numerous commentators in the U.S. and Europe have praised the Kyrgyz initiative, and have held it up as a shining example for others to follow.  

We have informed our students still in Afghanistan that we will honor their scholarships whenever they can make it to Bishkek.

Herculean efforts are taking place through the Open Society Foundations and other NGO partners to arrange for planes out of the country, but conditions in Afghanistan, and in particular surrounding the airport in Kabul, have made our efforts far more difficult.  We are working day and night on this issue, liaising with governments, NGOs and anyone we believe can help our students.  AUCA’s vice presidents, the international student office, the alumni affairs office and many others have worked tirelessly on this issue and I wish to thank them here.

AUCA will continue to work to support its students in Bishkek and through OSUN, the Open Society Foundations, and other partners to find ways to welcome to Kyrgyzstan the students to whom we have made scholarship commitments. 

What is taking place now in Afghanistan is a tragedy.  It affects students and colleagues we have educated and worked with over many years.  We stand with the Afghan students from AUCA, AUAf and across the globe.  

Yours cordially,

Jonathan Becker
President
AUCA

The most successful K-12 teachers are scholars of their practice as well as their discipline. In the Master of Arts in Teaching Programs at American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Kyrgyzstan, Al-Quds Bard in Palestine, and Bard College in New York, all candidates learn to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their lessons by reflecting on student work, mining the current research literature for ideas and best practices, developing a revised course of action, and studying the results. Variations on this cycle of classroom research play a role not only in MAT coursework, but also in the capstone research projects at each site. The projects differ in emphasis and structure depending on local needs, but they share the common goal of instilling in MAT graduates a sense of the value of teacher-led research.

As part of the Enhanced Network Teacher Education Capacity project (ENTEC), supported by OSUN and led by Bard MAT, alumni of the Bard MAT program are advising candidates in the AUCA MAT as they research and write their capstone projects. The collaboration not only enhances capacity through a cross-campus sharing of human resources, but it also enriches the projects and the work of students and faculty alike. 

Having taught for many years in K-12 settings, and having completed doctoral level studies in education or their discipline, Bard alumni involved in the project during 2020-21 are eager for the opportunity not only to guide teacher research, but also to benefit from the cross-cultural experience that the OSUN setting offers. 

“It was great to see [my advisees] deepen the questions they investigated and use their own research to improve education in Kyrgyzstan,” says John Shekitka, Assistant Professor at Manhattanville College in Harrison, New York. “The OSUN collaborations are definitely a model for future educational partnerships in our increasingly globalized world.” 

Peter Joshua Hatala, Director of Curriculum and Innovation at the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, also noted the value of “connecting our two worlds through this cross-cultural exchange.” 

Bard MAT alumni got a glimpse into the reality of schooling in the Kyrgyz context; while the AUCA MAT candidates were able to situate their analysis and articulate their insights within a broader perspective of research on interventions (teaching methods, lesson plan, other activities) that teachers design and implement in their own classroom to improve the learning environment and learning outcomes.

Like their advisors, the AUCA MAT candidates appreciated the opportunity to work across campuses and cultures. Many of them spoke enthusiastically about the guidance they received. Zalina Satylganova wrote, “Thanks to the questions (my advisor) asked regarding some ideas in my findings, I could better analyze, unpack, and make them accessible to readers.” 

Versaviia Gura attested to the ways her advisor’s modeling allowed her to learn to “look at pedagogy with a critical eye,” a central goal of the capstone project. Nazima Abdybekova described her advisor as a “lighthouse” that kept her from “drowning” in the information that she had to navigate, and Aiperi Arystanbekova wrote that “cooperative work with my advisor made my research paper interesting, original, and academically strong.” Altogether, fourteen AUCA candidates worked with Bard alumni and faculty in 2020-21. 

The project will continue with a new cohort of AUCA candidates in ENTEC’s second year. Based on feedback from the first year, candidates and advisors would benefit from a longer engagement that brings the Bard advisors on board earlier in the process. Tamo Chattopadhay and Derek Furr, MAT directors at AUCA and Bard, respectively, are currently working on a timeline that will start the next round of projects in the fall of 2021.
 

Erica Kaufman, Director of OSUN’s Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (CLASP) and the Bard College Institute for Writing & Thinking, recently shared her thoughts on CLASP's new fellowship program, a two-year professional development opportunity for early and mid-career OSUN faculty interested in writing-based, student-centered liberal arts pedagogy. What follows is an edited version of her comments.

Can you explain what the Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy is and what it does? 

CLASP is an OSUN project established by the Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT). IWT offers professional development workshops for faculty around the world with a focus on writing-based teaching and critical reading and writing practices. What CLASP does is slightly different: it makes available regular workshops, which are usually quite expensive, to an international network of faculty who might not normally have access to pay for them. CLASP also offers a full spectrum of pedagogical workshops beyond writing that focus on teaching in the liberal arts tradition; student engagement and motivation; how to hold classroom discussions; and ways to design syllabi and assignments, so students feel like they have a choice in their own education.

Can you tell us how the fellowship came about and some of its goals?

The Fellows Program has always been intended to be the core of CLASP’s work; however, OSUN and our project began in the midst of a pandemic so we had to shift gears pretty quickly to assist faculty who were suddenly teaching online. The fellowship was postponed and that was actually great because it gave us a chance to hear more from our partners about what they needed. 

The program will produce two results. First, it generates trained fellows with expertise in liberal arts and sciences pedagogy and embeds them in campuses across the network. Second, the fellows themselves will be researching the kind of liberal arts pedagogical practices that succeed in their own classrooms at their own campuses. So we'll both be training faculty to increase support across campuses and we'll be generating new research and scholarship on the pedagogy that we practice. The program also prepares the fellows so they can continue to facilitate workshops on their own campuses and collaborate to develop new workshops that bring OSUN faculty together around pedagogical topics.

What can educators expect from engaging with the fellowship?

We hope the fellows who apply will be faculty who are not brand-new to an institution, who are maybe early to mid-career. We are particularly interested in faculty who are in positions where they're committed to their OSUN partner institution and will be there for a while. We are also excited to welcome faculty from across all disciplines, so this is not something that's just focused on the humanities.

The nuts and bolts of the program revolve around the monthly online workshops that are spread throughout the academic year and cater to what the fellows want. We hope to convene in-person at an OSUN partner site in Europe in January and then at Bard in Annandale in July, pending COVID.

The first year is really the training year and the second year is the content year, when we begin to move towards a mentoring, research, and experimentation model. Fellows will be intentionally trying out strategies in their own classrooms, identifying a research project that they're exploring, and then bringing that to our sessions for feedback.

In the second year we will also bring on a new cohort of fellows, so there will be a mentoring opportunity for the already experienced fellows. And we're going to use Brightspace (a cloud-based learning platform) which will allow us to build up a collaborative archive of materials that can be used for future online modules.

The mentoring aspect of the fellowship is really interesting and innovative–sort of a built-in model of sustainability.

OSUN adds a whole new range of different kinds of institutions and faculty expertise to the conversation. We really feel it's important to collaborate with our partners and offer them the support they need to be thinking seriously about what it means to teach in an interactive, student-centered way in different contexts.

It seems collaboration is key in that the program welcomes educators from many different disciplines and it is also collaborative across institutions. 

Our workshops are best when we're learning from the people in the room and I think that ethos is represented beautifully by all that OSUN stands for and does. Let’s say a Spanish-speaking university is interested in learning more about writing-based teaching. My hope would be that through the fellows program we have people within the region or school who could create and lead the workshops themselves.

I feel context is so important. One of the goals we have is to really build this contextual, intercultural knowledge and begin to think about what are best practices in liberal arts education that is intentionally and authentically global and culturally sensitive. I'm not interested in bringing any particular pre-made model to a new context. Instead, we want to build something new with the faculty we work with.

The call for the fellowship says the commitment is intense. So it’s important that fellows be able to commit to contributing to this project going forward.

The thing that I’m increasingly fascinated by is that in the field of writing-based teaching there is little research on how these practices work on a global level and beyond English-language learning. So it seems everything that we're doing as a network should be written up because it represents a significant contribution to the field of writing studies. That’s something I feel incredibly excited about.

From my experience, doing this work and teaching myself, I know that the growth that students experience when faculty move from a more faculty-centered to a student-centered teaching model is really significant and really surprises faculty. So I feel like the capstone research project and year two is something that can have a real impact on the field of thinking about global higher education.

Do you see the program as a workshop of sorts for establishing a “COVID-era” way of learning?

Absolutely. I think that being pressed to teach online very quickly invited faculty to perhaps pay more attention to what they do in the classroom. Teaching online is really very hard sometimes as there are so many wild cards in play. Now you have to sit down and plan and really think about the practice of teaching intensely. And we’re obviously very lucky in that we have a network of educators who care deeply about their students and about what it means to teach in a college or university environment.

I also think that, as faculty are returning to in-person classes, there's going to be a ton of excitement. And so I'm hoping that this will enable us to really build and create a stronger collaborative bond across campuses by virtue of the fact that we're all doing this thing that we care so much about.


Accepting applications until August 30, 2021, the CLASP fellowship runs on a cohort model with 20 fellows joining each year. Fellows come from a range of disciplines and institutions across OSUN’s global network. Educators who have completed the fellowship will be equipped to offer their own intensive workshops in pedagogy, cultivating future generations of OSUN faculty so they can in turn lead blended workshops and collaborate with colleagues at partner institutions. 

Apply to the CLASP Fellows Program by August 30, 2021

In July, Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, Executive Director of the Foundation for Knowledge and Freedom (FOKAL), a Haitian NGO, and the former Prime Minister of Haiti from 2008-2009, spoke at a summer class on “Civic Engagement in Challenging Environments” taught by Jonathan Becker, OSUN Vice Chancellor and Erin Canaan, Vice President for Civic Engagement, Bard College. 
 
Pierre-Louis examined the mass protests against state corruption and repression currently taking place in many countries across the globe, discussing how students and other individuals living in such distressed countries can still effect political and social change. With students attending the virtual class from Haiti, Myanmar, Swaziland, and Albania—all places that have recently experienced political turmoil amidst other ongoing social challenges—Pierre-Louis’ valuable insights focused on students’ agency and the benefits of renewed civic engagement. 

Pierre-Louis said that in places such as Algeria, Belarus, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sudan, and the US, mass mobilizations had been triggered by corrupt governments, systemic inequalities, authoritarianism, racism, and the denial of minority groups’ rights. Such problems motivated activists to emerge from their private spheres and enter public spaces to speak out collectively against injustices. 

“Collective interests and the collective risks taken to defend them are key in the mobilizations,” Pierre-Louis pointed out. Mostly younger protestors, emboldened by shared experiences of physical, institutional, or political repression by their governments, have taken to the streets to demand their civil and political rights. In this way, the sense of mutual responsibility that is the hallmark of civic engagement has been translated into citizens assembling on a purely voluntary basis to bring about the social transformations they desire. 

Another factor in the surge of public protests is the popular conception that traditional politics is synonymous with crime and corruption. As this opinion pervades public consciousness, civic engagement can act as a process to restore confidence in politics as a legitimate tool for transformation.

“Civic engagement challenges authoritarianism,” stated Pierre-Louis, while the opposing phenomenon of “political disimagination” discourages citizens from envisioning and building a more positive future together. Pierre-Louis explained that disimagination occurs when a centralized government power restricts civil and political liberties and a deceptive, homogeneous narrative begins to permeate public discourse.  Social inequalities also feed into these trends, abrading the social fabric and coercing the public into apathy and withdrawal from political involvement.

Despite this “vicious circle” where social inequalities can lead to weak political culture and polarization of society, such adverse conditions can also cause civic movements to emerge, sometimes taking the form of civil disobedience. 

“Civic engagement is a way to rescue the political imaginary,” added Pierre-Louis. The audacity of students and other young activists who espouse direct political action surprises government officials, creating a ripple effect on the streets and online. These phenomena spark greater numbers of citizens to engage in collective actions aimed at regaining their capacity to participate and recover the right to a political future.

Pierre-Louise made it clear that while civic engagement can act as a catalyzing agent for political renewal, it requires citizens to believe in a shared human condition. This sense of a common interest spurs citizens to take the risk of transforming a belief into action, with the hope that reentering the public sphere might eventually lead to improved living conditions. 


 

Recently, OSUN's Hannah Arendt Humanities Network, Central European University (CEU), and the Institute for Human Sciences awarded Helga Nowotny, former President of the European Research Council and Professor Emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, the first annual Yehuda Elkana Fellowship.
 
During the award ceremony at CEU in Vienna, Nowotny delivered an insightful keynote lecture that was livestreamed to a global audience, addressing the ambiguities surrounding the rise of artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms.
Watch video of the lecture here. 

The lecture was followed by a four-day workshop on artificial intelligence and the digital humanities that drew on Nowotny’s forthcoming book, In AI We Trust: Power, Illusion, and Control of Predictive Algorithms. Scholars attending the workshop hailed from a wide array of network institutions, including CEU, Asheshi University in Ghana, Bard College in the US, Birkbeck College in the UK, BRAC University in Bangladesh, The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, the Institute for the Human Sciences in Vienna, and American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan.
 
Nowotny’s address and the workshop discussions focused on a series of paradoxes regarding the limits of human certainty. Nowotny and the scholars established the fact that people have always yearned to know the future and master their fates. AI and predictive algorithms offer people the uncanny knowledge that gives useful insights on phenomena as diverse as the weather, the economy, and human behavior. With this unprecedented ability to predict the future, the demand for certainty grows, even though human life itself remains irrational and unpredictable. While artificial intelligence is deployed to simplify and master the world, artificial intelligence also makes the human world more complicated.
 
Nowotny and the scholars agreed that what people too often neglect to ask is: How does the desire and conviction to know the future–and the increasing ability to predict the future–affect humans? What happens to humans–­fallible, passionate, unpredictable beings–when they put their trust and faith in AI and algorithms to predict and plan the future?
 
Several of the scholars warned against overestimating the power of artificial intelligence; they also worried that misplaced faith in and over-reliance on AI could foreclose future possibilities instead of creating new ones. One common theme was the concern that AI predictive algorithms might become self-fulfilling prophecies. In contrast to the yearning for certainty that is promised by AI there also exists the need for celebrating human fallibility and embracing uncertainty.
 
The scholars discussed the fact that new advances in machine neural networks allow machines to make judgments and explanations at the same capacity as humans. This raised the question of how to nurture human values in a world where ever-more corporate, social, and political decisions will be made by or alongside artificially intelligent neural networks.
 
The scholars also examined the question of what it means for humanity to retain meaningful control over the world, which led to yet another paradox: as people seek more control over their environments, the more they find that is beyond their control. For example, as expectations of safety rise, the desire for an ever-more complicated reliance on artificial intelligence emerges. As people turn to machines to regulate behavior and thus provide more security, they inevitably discover new and greater risks tied to the very tools at their disposal.
 
Nowotny’s central theory of the human desire to gain certainty and security through the use of artificial intelligence and the ever-more complicated relationship with technology provided rich fodder for the workshops building on her digital humanities research. Scholars drew on a wide range of knowledge and experience to address the paradoxes she introduced, clarifying some of the human impacts of technological advancement.

This article was originally published by University World News

Teaching the Power to Make Changes in Everyday Life

By Nathan M. Greenfield  

As if to dramatise one of the central points he would make – how poor infrastructure complicates the efforts of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Africa to implement digital technologies in production and marketing – and before introducing himself to the virtual audience and other panel members, Decent Mutanho explained that he was not on screen “because we have no electricity at all, so I’m trying to improvise”.

While using his smart phone to make the best connection he could from Johannesburg, South Africa, he was participating in the 12th episode of the webinar series, “Adapting to the New Reality: Civically engaged universities offer strategies of hope,” on 8 March 2021.

That same day, half a world away in New Jersey, Andy Saunders, another of the six winners of the Communities of Virtual Alliance and Inter-Dependence (COV-AID) mini-grants, woke to the New York Times carrying the report, “The Officers Danced at a Black Lives Matter Rally. Then They Stormed the Capitol” (during the 6 January insurrection). This story exemplifies the inequitable actions and racist actors that the police departments that have partnered with Saunders’ New Blue Project would not tolerate.

Established by the Open Society University Network (OSUN) in partnership with the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities (comprising 417 university presidents from 79 countries), the COV-AID Student Engagement Award (administered at Tufts University in Boston) provided grants to assist student-run projects that were already running or created to help communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Out of 306 undergraduate and 117 graduate applications from countries around the world, 10 undergraduate and six graduate student proposals were chosen. Each winner received a US$2,500 grant.

The awards were administered by Lorlene Hoyt, executive director of the Talloires Network, and Erin Cannan, vice president for civic engagement at Bard College (in upstate New York). Speaking of OSUN’s and Talloires Network’s activities before the pandemic, Cannan says: “We’re teaching students the power of education and the power to make changes on an everyday experience.”

When the pandemic struck, she added, “It was important for us to step up and support students who are asking themselves the questions: ‘How can I make a difference?’ and ‘How can I act?’”

The six graduate student winners hail from Kenya, Chile, South Africa, Nicaragua, the United States and Bosnia.

Rose Macharia from Mount Kenya University used her prize to help fund Light & Empower, which provided solar-powered lights to 200 homes, kiosks, roadside stalls, and communal toilets and washrooms in the Kiandutu slum (near Thika, 40 km north east of Nairobi), as well as solar-powered flashlights to community security officers.

The lights will allow workers, such as vegetable cutters, to work longer hours – which means, says Macharia, who is pursuing a masters in information technology – they will earn more money. Further, she told the 8 March panel that it is important to replace the kerosene lamps that are the main source of light in the homesteads because they produce soot that damages eyes and leads to breathing problems.

“And, if you fall asleep and your son or daughter knocks it over, then you have no house the next day because the house burns to ashes,” a reality that seemed so out of kilter.

One of the aims of the COV-AID mini-grant project was to help support graduate students whose efforts at civic engagement were endangered by loss of income during the pandemic.

As Freddy Yanez Cerda, a masters student in human scale development at Universidad Austral de Chile (in Valdivia in west central Chile), explained in a short video prepared for COV-AID, because of a drop in his family’s income, his efforts to provide safe drinking water in Chile’s southern zone on the country’s west coast could not have continued were it not for the US$2,500 grant.

In addition to being a masters student, Cerda is the co-founder of Universal Project, an NGO that links technical experts with local groups needing expertise and which has operated in Kenya, Haiti and Chile. Cerda used the grant to access safer transportation, purchase supplies to maintain sanitary protocols and pay for water quality analysis.

Across the South Atlantic, COVID-caused lockdowns prevented Mutanho, a PhD student in marketing at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, from moving on with research for his thesis, “Digital and human touchpoints; trade-offs in consumer purchase process and shopping experience research.”

The proposal he made to COV-AID was to develop a series of online workshops that help SMEs (of similar size to his family’s peanut butter manufacturing company) use digital technology to market their products. Despite the problems with the electrical infrastructure, he believes that local SMEs can use digital marketing to compete successfully with multinational companies, and thus keep the profits in South Africa.

“Most people in South Africa have smartphones,” he told University World News. “They use them as phones, to access social media platforms and to do their banking.” What they are not being used for by SMEs is marketing, he says.

Funding from COV-AID allowed him to design a series of workshops to teach SMEs how to:

• Price their product.
• Showcase it on the website so that “the customer has almost physically experienced it”.
• Ethically inform the customer about the product.
• Inform the customer where the product can be purchased and if there are any promotions.

“I tell the companies that they are in niche marketing. And in a niche market, you have to service your customers before you can think of expanding into larger markets,” he says.

The products of the companies he trained (including a restaurant and vegetable oil manufacturing company) are now “well known and are competing with bigger companies”, he said with pride.

Socially sustainable business model

Saunders’ project in New Jersey, and the one that Sol Rodriguez, a masters student in applied science (forestry) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has undertaken in Nicaragua, are parts of significantly larger and better-financed organisations.

In 2017 Rodriguez co-founded Casa Congo, a non-profit dedicated to building community-based conservation programmes and employment in El Astillero, on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast.

In 2020 partners and donors contributed US$65,000 that funded programmes in agroecology, community development and conservation, which saved 28,500 sea turtles and planted 150,000 trees.

What most impressed Hoyt, she told University World News, was that Rodriguez “had not only developed an innovative design for sustainable housing but, also, a socially sustainable business model that includes a supply chain that supports the building of ecologically sustainable housing and provides jobs to build the local economy”.

The sustainable project Hoyt refers to is Casa Congo’s “Ku Na,” which means "house of nature" in Mayan Yucatec. The COV-AID grant allowed Ku Na to engage the community of El Astillero in the design process that, instead of gathering people together, consisted of a house-to-house survey.

Using US$200,000 raised elsewhere, this year Ku Na has constructed a treatment facility for the bamboo that will be used for the houses and a workshop where the houses will be prefabricated; both facilities will be community-owned. Rodriguez’s aim is to produce 20 homes this year, which will be given to people whose homes were destroyed in November 2020 by Hurricane Iota, and the scaling up of production to 125 next year.

Equity-minded decision-making

Saunders’ New Blue Project was founded in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020. Saunders is an African-American from New Jersey, who is studying for a masters in public administration at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

After graduating from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, with a degree in criminal justice, Saunders attended the police academy in Pitt County, North Carolina, and then served as a police officer in Wilson, North Carolina, for several years before returning to teach in a low-income school in Newark, New Jersey.

Designed with his one-time police partner, Brittany Nestor, New Blue is not a defund-the-police project but, instead, focuses on training equity-minded decision-makers.

Noting that on the day we spoke, 5 July 2021, a police chief in Ohio was forced out after leaving a Ku Klux Klan note on a black officer’s desk, Saunders says: “For us, it is less about power than about the next generation of police leadership. We are interested in creating the sergeants, the sheriffs, the police system leaders that are making decisions. What you see right now are some, not all, of the decision-makers without an equity mindset.”

COV-AID funds helped support the design of an online training programme that will enroll its first group this fall, aiming for 100 officers per year by 2025. Far from being a COVID-enforced compromise, Saunders says being online will help build a community of police officers from across the country who want reform but feel they are isolated.

“You might work for a small rural police department and you might see something you feel is unjust, but you don’t have the resources or the network to be able to process what just happened in front of you – much less know what’s needed to change it,” Saunders says.

Among the courses are mental health, ethics of our democracy, social skills and interaction, ally building and communities, and police history. This last is vitally important, he says, because in the police academy, cadets are taught that policing began with Sir Robert Peel’s creation of London’s Metropolitan Police in 1829 or the one in Boston nine years later.

“But that’s just not true. The first policing in America was done by men on horseback that were hunting down runaway slaves.”

For police in North Carolina, Georgia or Alabama to understand why the Black community responds to them the way it does, equity-minded police officers need to know about the generations of trauma that runs through American history, he says.

“We are not looking for officers that want to create a neutral zone,” Saunders adds, while discussing ally-building, another key component of what New Blue aims to teach police. “We are looking for officers who are actually willing to identify community problems and use their institutional power and leadership to advance the needs of the community,” as Saunders himself did when he was a police officer, in addition to arranging for youth who were incarcerated for non-violent crimes to be brought to school instead of to the juvenile magistrate.

Hoyt recalls that when she read Saunders’ proposal, “the need for us to elevate the work that he’s doing felt very important to me, given the racial reckoning moment we were in when doing the applications [during the Black Lives Matter protests following Floyd’s murder].”

Adnan Schubert’s project, the production of a 30-minute film that will document the discrimination against his ethnic group, the Roma, in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the most political.

Schubert, a public policy masters student at the Central European University in Vienna, will stay behind the camera, as "Voicing the Voiceless" features the faces and voices of some of the 300 remaining Roma in Banja Luka, telling their own stories of being discriminated against in employment (most are unemployed), education and social welfare.

The film will include stories of how discrimination against the Roma has increased during the pandemic; coincidentally, a month after the 8 March panel, the Open Society Foundations, the parent organisation of OSUN, published Roma in the COVID-19 Crisis: An early warning from six EU member states, which highlights, among other threats to the Roma, how “disinformation by members of the far right and others ... frames the Roma as a public health threat, reinforcing and politicising hatred."

Schubert hopes to show the film, which he calls “a lobbying instrument," to Banja Luka’s new mayor, the 28-year-old Drasko Stanivukovic, who in 2020 replaced a mayor who “was openly racist towards the Roma," Schubert said in a video prepared as part of his proposal.

"Tremendous challenges"

“COVID represents both a tremendous challenge to universities as well as an opportunity for universities and a university network to demonstrate the characteristics which we so prize: creativity, adaptability, and resilience,” says Jonathan Becker, Executive Vice President and Vice President for academic affairs at Bard College, New York, who is also Vice-Chancellor of OSUN.

“The prizes are drawing attention to this, but are part of a larger project between the Talloires Network and the Open Society University Network to underline the importance of civic engagement for student learning and development and universities as important social actors,” he says.

By Christof Royer

In May, the newly created Open Society Research Platform (OSRP), held a talk on “Does Open Society Travel Beyond the West?”– the first in a series addressing the concept of “open society.”

Panelists Achille Mbembe (University of Witwatersrand), Hagar Kotef (SOAS University of London), Prem Kumar Rajaram (Central European University) joined discussant Christof Royer (OSRP) to unpack and explore the political and philosophical concept of “open society,” which plays a pivotal role in the missions of both OSUN and founding partner Central European University (CEU). 

One underexplored aspect of "open society" is the question of whether it “travels beyond the West.” Advocates of open society often confront criticism that this “Western” concept must not be imposed on “non-Western” societies that have different traditions and value systems. Taking this counter-argument very seriously, the workshop sought to explore if the concept of “open society” is indeed haunted by the spectre of Western neo-imperialism or if it has the potential to be a powerful tool in decolonial struggles. Might “open society” even pave the way for the development of a decolonized, truly global universalism?

Unsurprisingly, the panelists had diverging views on these questions and, more generally, on any potential of “open society.” On the most basic level, all three presenters agreed that as an aspirational category, political philosopher Karl Popper’s juxtaposition of “closed” and “open” societies prompts the question of how concepts like “open society” circulate and are translated into specific contexts. One panelist warned that if we do not pay attention to these processes of circulation and translation, the value of political and philosophical concepts will remain limited, and can easily become a tool of exploitation and domination. 

Nonetheless, at least one panelist saw considerable potential in employing the concept of “open society” in the quest to decolonize. Since a colonial society is by definition a closed society, a truly open society would reflexively address structures of subjugation and exploitation. A more sceptical presenter argued that the key elements of an open society – democracy, rationality, and individualism – have served as tools of colonial domination in the past. Instead, they said, solidarity and unobscured social conflict were actually more beneficial in advancing social justice.  

While some speakers were highly critical of the concept of “open society,” they did not suggest jettisoning it altogether. Rather, they stressed the importance of remaining cognizant of the frequent historical abuses of philosophical and political concepts that have made them tools of colonial domination and exploitation. Thus, the underlying risks and dangers of the concept of “open society” should primarily be approached as historical and not philosophical questions. 

Two panelists argued that the very question “does open society travel beyond the West?” is itself reminiscent of the European colonial project because it takes the largely imaginary concept of “the West” as its point of departure and main focus. This argument was rejected by the discussant, who said that the question instead expresses an awareness of the potential limitations of open society, challenging its assumed universality and thus confronting colonial logic. There was broad agreement that many of the fundamental values associated with the concept of “open society” (diversity, plurality, toleration) could be found in societies around the world and that such values are certainly not limited to so-called “Western” societies. 

While OSRP’s first workshop encompassed a wide range of critical exchanges, it made clear that OSUN is the ideal platform for examining such questions. Ideally, the workshop served as a fruitful jumping-off point for further conversation within and beyond OSUN.

Read about the second discussion in the series, “Conflict and Polarization in Open Societies,” here. 

 

By Christof Royer

In June, OSUN’s Open Society Research Platform (OSRP) hosted a panel discussion on “Conflict and Polarization in Open Societies,” the second in a series examining the concept of “open society” from theoretical and practical perspectives. The talks, robust spaces for critical discussion and reflection, not only focus on “open society” as a concept but also seek to conduct discussion in the spirit of “open society” as a critical attitude.

The second talk featured panelists John Thrasher (Chapman University), Giunia Gatta (Bocconi University), Adam Ramsay (openDemocracy), Renáta Uitz (Central European University), and discussant Christof Royer (OSRP).
 
The discussion used as its starting point the critical argument that the concept of “open society” does not actually allow for social conflict and transformative change, thus making it unclear how the idea of “open society” can contribute meaningfully to social justice. While open societies are inextricably linked to the existence of legitimate spaces for dissenting voices, controversial opinions, and the clash of different worldviews, the talk wrestled with the paradoxical fact that open societies also depend on political stability, social solidarity, and respect for democratic institutions.
 
Panelists examined the role of conflict and polarization in open societies and asked whether they provided existential threats or productive and progressive phenomena in such societies. They also asked if a reengagement with the concept of “open society” might help to assess conflict and polarization and their role in what is often called the “contemporary crisis of democracy.”
 
Each panelist approached these questions from rather different perspectives but there was broad agreement on two fundamental points: while conflict and polarization are inevitable phenomena within open societies, they can also be destructive and dangerous. Speakers expressed that the challenge, in both theory and practice, is to distinguish between productive and destructive forms of conflict. Apart from agreement on these basic points, they diverged on the drivers behind conflict and polarization.
 
One speaker portrayed economic inequality as the root cause of democratic backsliding. Throughout Europe, citizens have been disillusioned with politics, disappointed with its unwillingness to tackle rampant material inequality, and have, as a result, turned away from political participation. The major task, then, of an open society is to confront the problem of economic inequality and to defend open societies against those with power, while welcoming those without power. Another speaker shared this sentiment but emphasized the potential dangers of political order and stability. Arguing from a more radically democratic perspective that established a link between conflict and justice, this panelist asserted that while stability, social solidarity, and respect for democratic institutions are important values, interlocuters must be aware of who pays the price for such ideals. In many cases, the already marginalized members of a society must bear the brunt of dominating impositions of order imposed by the majority, they said. A major function of an open society, then, is to provide channels for participation and struggle for oppressed individuals and groups.
 
Another speaker focused on the high levels of affective polarization in the US, where an “us vs. them” mentality proliferates and a discourse of stigmatization pits one political camp against the other, inflaming healthy disagreements until they become explosive conflicts. In such an environment, the concept of “open society” can play a particularly important role by foregrounding procedural and structural elements rather than substantive values. Emphasizing the importance of preserving openness over political aims can help to harness disagreement and deescalate dangerous forms of polarization.
 
As with OSRP’s inaugural panel discussion, “Does Open Society Travel Beyond the West?” “Conflict and Polarization in Open Societies” elicited cautious optimism: There are good reasons to be critical of the concept of “open society” and its discourses, yet the concept also has considerable potential to be harnessed for progressive purposes.
 

The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) announced that Nadine Fattaleh and Oscar Humberto Pedraza Vargas have been selected as the first recipients of the Center’s fellowship in human rights and the arts. 
 
The goal of the fellowship program is to support outstanding engagement in human rights and the arts by scholars, artists, and activists. Fellows are appointed for a one-year period to pursue their own research projects while contributing to the curriculum of the new M.A. program in Human Rights and the Arts. 

Both Fattaleh and Pedraza Vargas will be in residence at Bard during the 2021-22 academic year. In addition to teaching, they will offer lectures and organize workshops at the Bard campus in New York’s Hudson Valley as part of OSUN. The fellowships further CHRA’s mission of supporting multidisciplinary and collaborative knowledge production on the intersection of human rights and the arts.

“The fellowship program allows our MA Program to complement the course offerings of our permanent faculty,” said Ziad M. Abu-Rish, the program’s director. “Nadine and Oscar are talented young researchers with daring intellectual, political, and aesthetic practices. They will explore with our students a range of investigative and documentary strategies, theoretical frameworks, and case studies that will bring the frontlines of the struggle for rights into our classrooms.”

Nadine Fattaleh is a writer and researcher from Amman, Jordan. Her work focuses on spatial practices through cartography and film. She received a B.A. in Middle East, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University, and a M.S. in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP. She previously worked on projects at Columbia’s Center for Spatial Research and Studio-X Amman, as well as the MMAG Foundation, Amman. Fattaleh describes her practice as “using the map to render visible structures of oppression in flagrant contradiction with human rights,” while also “remaining attentive to the realities of everyday life and the need to listen to the voices of activists and advocates that are inevitably silenced by the abstractions of data and visual representation.” Her research at Bard will concern issues of food sovereignty and agrarian rights in the Arab World.
 
Oscar Humberto Pedraza Vargas is a historian and anthropologist with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from CUNY Graduate Center and a BA In Anthropology and MA in Social Anthropology from Universidad de Los Andes. He has worked extensively with grassroots movements associated with indigenous, farmer, labor, and victim communities in Colombia and Latin America. Pedraza Vargas specializes in the analysis of transnational human rights institutions, discourses, and practices that define the value of life and death in cases of coal-related violence in Colombia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He has also served as a main researcher for a collaboration between Forensic Architecture and the Colombian Truth Commission. During his fellowship at Bard, Pedraza Vargas will produce work for a book and an exhibition on the Truth Commission. He will also write several articles addressing technological and aesthetic approaches to producing evidence of environmental violence and war in situations where information is missing or difficult to detect. His courses will be informed by his experience mediating between a justice institution and an academic/artistic research group.

“Nadine and Oscar embody the scholar-activist-artist nexus. Their research and praxis on spatial justice, truth and reconciliation, and food justice are of particular relevance to CHRA’s programming. We are pleased to support their research while they inspire our students, faculty, and the public,” said Tania El Khoury, Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights and The Arts at Bard College.

Details on the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts and other CHRA activities can be found at www.chra.bard.edu.

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives and UNHCR recently hosted a panel discussion with refugee students from OSUN and partnering organizations on “Global Student Engagement in Refugee Access to Higher Education.”

Hubs partners work to expand access to higher education for students in areas affected by crisis and displacement through the delivery of contextualized and technically innovative connected learning opportunities. 
 
Rebecca Granato, Director of the Hubs and Associate Vice President for Global Initiatives, Bard College, gave the introduction and Arash Bordbar, Associate Education Officer, UNHCR, moderated the panel of five students. Panelists included Simon Rutarondwas, of the OSUN Hub in East Africa; Olivia Issa and Miriam Cing, co-chairs of Student Voices for Refugees (SVR); and Ella Ininahazwe and Ehab Badwis, Global Leads for the Tertiary Refugee Students Network (TRSN). Over 70 participants from across the network tuned in.
 
Citing the alarming statistic of only 3% of refugees being able to access higher education, as compared to the global average of 37%, panelists highlighted the urgent need for more college-level opportunities for displaced youth. The speakers from TRSN and SVR discussed their institutions’ response to the crisis and how they used global advocacy to identify pathways for refugee learners to successfully navigate access to higher education. 
 
Students on the panel spoke in depth about the unique barriers refugee youth face in accessing higher education. These include practical obstacles, such as lack of access to a strong internet connection, laptops, or mobile phones, as well as a dearth of information on higher education opportunities. Panelists explained that these factors contribute greatly to a high dropout rate among refugee learners.
 
Speakers also pointed out how important it is for better-served students from across the globe to mobilize in support of expanding refugee access to higher education opportunities. Sharing information about higher education opportunities with refugee students is helpful, as many lack an understanding of the relation of education to the improvement of their livelihoods, they said. The speakers also emphasized that student groups could advocate with faculty and administration to promote opportunities for refugees at their institutions. 
 
Miriam Cing, of SVR, explained that college students across the globe could support refugees who have settled in their institutions by helping to orient them culturally so they might better understand challenging new academic environments. Cing, a refugee herself, emphasized that culture shock is a leading factor in refugees not succeeding as students.
 
Panelists not only explained the diverse challenges many refugee students face in connecting to higher education but also provided practical examples of what students in less precarious situations could do to improve access for all.

The OSUN Civic Engagement program is pleased to welcome a new cohort of Global Engagement Fellows for the 2021–22 academic year.

Global Engagement Fellows are undergraduate students from across the network who are selected for their interest in and commitment to civic engagement. Fellows promote and coordinate civic engagement projects with other students on their campus, lead workshops in project management and development, and help to coordinate the annual Get Engaged: Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference.

This talented and ambitious set of fellows was chosen based upon their leadership skills and the development of their own community-based projects. 

Welcome to the new Global Fellows:
Ahmed Omar Abdi (Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya)
Amina Ahmed (American University of Central Asia ’23)
Sundus Al Fararja (Al Quds Bard College ’23) 
Abdul Walid Azizi (American University of Central Asia ’22)
Nelo Dlamini (Central European University ’25)
Mohamed Omar Farah (Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya)
Wisdom Tochi Kalu (Ashesi University ’22)
Lorraine Makuyana (Ashesi University ’22)

Several of the outgoing Global Engagement Fellows shared words of wisdom for the incoming class. Most discussed how the program helped them to elicit and nurture the skills needed to transform their aspirations into actions benefiting their communities. Their guidance centered on meeting inevitable challenges by remaining flexible and drawing on the support of their fellow travelers.   

Viktar Filipenka (European Humanities University ’21):
“I'll quote Samuel Beckett: ‘Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.’ Communicate and cooperate; that's the way.” 

Oceanne Fry (Bard College Berlin ’21): 
“Take your time planning, budgeting, and scheduling before diving in. At the same time, once your project or event gets going, don't be afraid of last minute changes and necessary adaptations to unexpected factors.”

Adeeb Hadi (Bard College Berlin ’21): 
“My advice is to remember that the limit of creativity is the sky and the road is long. Do not expect your path to be easy, but your persistence will lift you up.”

Wisdom Tochi Kalu (Ashesi University ’22): 
“The journey of civic engagement will not be smooth and there will be times when you'll doubt everything. Don't be scared when those days come because resilience, like an anchor, will hold you firm.”

Shadin Nassar (Al Quds Bard College ’21): 
“In a world where the issues are clear but the solutions are not, my advice to this diverse group of leaders is to see challenges as opportunities. Strive to establish an environment of continuous improvement by putting new ideas into action and working together to empower others so they can cultivate civic engagement projects that are crucial for societal development.”

Our thanks and congratulations go out to all of the 2020–21 Global Engagement Fellows, who exhibited unwavering determination and commitment to civic engagement during a very challenging year. Not only did their efforts produce real community impact, but they set the bar high and inspired a new group of Fellows who will build their own impressive collaborations.

On June 28 at 12 pm New York time, members of OSUN’s Solve Climate by 2030 initiative will participate in an international panel during the opening plenary of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) 2021 virtual conference on “Community, Commitment, Collaboration: Moving Toward a Just Future.”
 
Solve Climate by 2030, led by Eban Goodstein, Director of the Bard College Center for Environmental Policy, is an initiative focused on globally coordinated climate education. The project creates and promotes templates for educational initiatives, highlighting ambitious local and regional climate solutions, and ways in which students and other citizens can engage with communities to support these solutions.
 
At the AESS event, educators from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), Central European University (Lithuania), BRAC University (Bangladesh), University of Rhode Island (US), and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (Thailand), will discuss their participation in the Solve Climate project and how it enhanced efforts to expand teaching about climate solutions and climate justice. The opening plenary panel will be followed by a virtual discussion where all conference participants can communicate with the speakers.

During the panel, Goodstein will describe how the initiative organized more than 110 Global Dialogs that reached more than 15,000 students across the globe in April 2021. He will also talk about the #MakeClimateAClass campaign, which enlists faculty to assign their students to watch local Global Dialog webinars and then follow up with a class discussion using subject-specific teacher guides.
 
Goodstein also plans to inform AESS members on how they can get involved in the Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice on March 30, 2022, where over 1,000 colleges, universities, high schools, and K-8 schools around the world will engage over half a million people in a 24-hour seminar on climate solutions and justice during the transition. 
 
The list of OSUN speakers participating in the June 28 panel includes:
Solve Climate by 2030 overview – Eban Goodstein, Bard College Center for Environmental Policy, New York, US
Solve Climate by 2030 in Latin America – Felipe Castro, Carla Panyella and Sofia Garces, Centro ODS para América Latina y el Caribe, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
Solve Climate by 2030 in Central Europe – Michael LaBelle and Dora Almassy, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
Solve Climate by 2030 in the US - Ann Salzarulo-McGuigan and Norbert Mundorf, Harrington School of Communication and Media, University of Rhode Island, US
Solve Climate by 2030 in Bangladesh - Philipe Foret, Masnoon Khair and Ayesha Abdullah, BRAC University, Bangladesh

The Council of Europe recently announced that OSUN’s Global Observatory on Academic Freedom (GOAF) and partnering institution Central European University’s Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education were awarded a contract to study the relationship between the fundamental values of higher education and quality assurance.

The central question the Council of Europe asks in the study is “What role do the fundamental values of higher education play in the framework and practice of quality assurance?”

The inquiry involves case studies of 49 European Higher Education Area (EHEA) member states, investigating the regulatory frameworks and practices of external quality assurance agencies that have been included in the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education, along with a meta-analysis at the overall level of the EHEA. 

The country case study approach will enable a precise understanding of the concrete consequences of quality assurance procedures where fundamental values are and are not respected. The approach will also look at interconnectedness between the overall national policies towards higher education and quality assurance procedures. 

Questions to be addressed include “Are there concrete provisions sanctioning the lack of respect of academic freedom by the institutions that are being evaluated? How is the participation of students and staff reflected in the evaluation procedures? Is accreditation affected by the lack of respect of fundamental values?”

The fundamental values of higher education are understood as being those outlined in the 2020 Rome Communiqué of the EHEA: institutional autonomy, academic freedom and integrity, participation of students and staff in higher education governance, and public responsibility for and of higher education.

The interconnectedness between higher education and democracy has been gaining importance in the last few years, in the midst of a burgeoning crisis of academic freedom throughout the EHEA. Identifying the existing and potential links between the quality assurance processes and fundamental values will help establish the status of those values and also help generate a variety of possible approaches for challenging them.

GOAF’s commitment to the fundamental values of Higher Education and the Yehuda Elkana Center’s extensive record of research on and evaluation of quality assurance will all greatly enhance the study, which is expected to be finalized by the end of 2021.

How can current administration, management and leadership practices in higher education be improved to foster equality, diversity, and inclusion? What good practices exist and how can inter-institutional cooperation be fostered? 

On May 9, 2021, the newly established OSUN Executive Education Hub at Central European University launched an innovative and comprehensive program for university administrators to explore precisely how to tackle these issues. The ExEd Hub was founded and launched by the Open Society University Network and CEU in 2021, inspired by their open society mission. 

The Global Professional Development Program for University Administrators seeks to improve the management capacity and practices at universities in the OSUN network and beyond, while promoting OSUN values among the higher education administrators and institutions. The courses are designed for students and practitioners across multiple campuses to ensure educational opportunities regardless of geographical location.  

The professional development program for university administrators offers a total of four courses tailored for staff in managerial roles in OSUN member institutions: Strategic and Inclusive Management of Higher Education Institutions, Advancing the Frontiers of Knowledge: Building and Supporting Research Excellence at Universities (started June 2021), Managing Community Engagement of Universities (starts Fall 2021), Managing International Cooperation in a Global Classroom: Maximizing the Impact of Mobility Programs for Universities, Researchers and Students (starts Fall 2021). 

The first intensive course offered in this framework was Strategic and Inclusive Management of Higher Education Institutions, led by Dr. Pusa Nastase.  Throughout the course, participants developed a critical understanding of advanced contemporary theories in higher education administration, access policies, diversity, and the expansion of university mission and reflected on how these can be applied to their own contexts. 

Participants received a Certificate of Professional Development after successfully completing the course. At a later stage, the Certificate can be counted towards the comprehensive Certificate Program for University Administrators, which aims to fill a gap in training opportunities for this professional group. 

The course received high ratings from participants, who commended the blend of lectures with internationally renowned guest speakers in each module, enriching each lesson with the learnings of experienced practitioners.
  
Reflecting on his experience in the course, Stephen Mucher, Director of Teacher Credentialing at UC Berkeley and Senior Education Advisor, Bard MAT, stated that “I came in really wanting to know about OSUN and to actualize project ideas coinciding with a semester spent in Nairobi and in Rwanda while working on refugee workshops for teachers. The course helped me process my on-the-ground learning experiences and introduced me to colleagues from other institutions asking similar questions. I very much enjoyed the course.” 

Find out more about the course series here: Overview | ExEd Hub (ceu.edu) and for further information, contact Pusa Nastase, the Global Professional Development Program Lead. 

 

By Hannah Baumann (Bard College ‘23)

In the final year of their undergraduate studies, students from universities and colleges connected to the OSUN global network produce senior projects and theses. During the last week of May, a number of these students came together for panel discussions about particular themes their projects shared. Students from institutions ranging from BRAC University in Bangladesh to Bard College Annandale and from American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan to Ashesi University in Ghana presented in-depth research and potential solutions for a diverse set of issues focused on the areas of arts and society; global public health; democratic practice; inequalities; sustainability and climate; and human rights. 

One virtual panel discussion on May 25 focused on human rights projects and was moderated by Kerry Bystrom, Associate Professor of English and Human Rights at Bard College Berlin. Students discussed case studies based in their countries of origin, ranging from immigration in the US and domestic violence in Belarus and Lithuania to anti-Black racism in China and longstanding human rights abuses in Israel-Palestine. Each presenter made illuminating insights on the ways in which restrictive national legal regimes can be used to institutionalize domestic hierarchies that encroach upon the rights of groups defined by race, gender, migratory and health status, or other categories. Remedies for breaking down such hierarchies were also provided. Watch an edited video of the panel here.

“The Geographical and Spatial Transition of Arab Palestinian Land to Jewish-Israeli National Land,” by Shadin Nassar from Al-Quds Bard in Palestine, focused on the protracted military occupation of Palestine by Israel. Nassar's study drew a detailed account of how Israel manipulated pre-occupation era land laws and then enacted additional laws to legalize the appropriation of Arab land for the creation of an ethnic Jewish state. Nasser said that this legal shift constituted a violation of international human rights law and that acknowledgment of the settler-colonialism at the heart of such “land grabs” was necessary before Palestinian sovereignty could be restored.

“The Myth of Immigrant America and the Federalization of Immigration Control,” by James Kim from Bard College Annandale, focused on the false narratives surrounding immigration to the United States. Kim claimed that the US does not really have an “immigrant crisis” but such a perception has been fostered by the federal government so it could create massive immigration bureaucracies for the purpose of acquiring and centralizing power.  

“Personal Data Protection Under EU Law: Special Categories of Data,” by Katsiaryna Pushkarova from the European Humanities University (EHU) in Vilnius, Lithuania, gave an in-depth analysis of the evolution of national data protection in European Union nations. Pushkarova said that in an era of unprecedented flows of digital data to government centers, some categories of data, such as information on race,  political opinions, sexual orientation, and health are vulnerable to rights exploitation. Legal protections in the EU are highly effective but additional laws are needed to safeguard the collection of such sensitive data, she said, adding that the COVID crisis has exacerbated this problem.

“International Legal Standards for Combating Domestic Violence against Women and their Implementation in the Republic of Belarus and the Republic of Lithuania,” by Konashava Viktoryia, also from EHU, highlighted domestic violence as an immense national and international problem. She emphasized the importance of applying international legal standards to domestic laws to effectively combat gender-based abuse.  

“No One Cares: African Migrants’ Lives in Cultural Discrimination. Misrepresentation of Blacks in China,” by Jijun Emily Chen from the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, examined the systemic biases African migrants face in China. Chen said that anti-Black racism in China is upheld by discriminatory government messaging and media representations. She did a content analysis of Chinese social media and government resources and found many examples of negative depictions of Africans, including portraying them as criminals or undocumented migrants. Chen said potential solutions should include enacting anti-racist regulations and using social media messaging to catalyze public support for such measures.

“Corrupted Credibility and Asylum on the Systematically Overwhelmed Aegean Hotspots,” was presented by Océanne Fry from Bard College Berlin, who worked as a translator on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos, assisting asylees who migrated from the Middle East and Africa. Fry's research revealed that the high volume of rejected asylum seekers at the EU border were due to EU governments’ systemic mistrust of such migrants and disbelief in their individual stories. In order to support migrants’ rights, she advocated for a massive reconsideration of the flawed EU-Turkey deal, which pays Turkey to relocate migrants, as well as giving applicants advance notice of the criteria necessary for asylum. 

Each project used thorough research and convincing arguments to successfully demonstrate how national legal systems can be used to restrict human rights and enforce domestic biases. Students also proposed valuable and insightful potential solutions for correcting such abuses. OSUN congratulates the human rights panelists and all the senior project presenters in the series for the high levels of rigor and scholarly analysis they committed to their projects. 
 

On May 23, Belarusian authorities forced a RyanAir flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and Sofia Sapega, a student at OSUN member European Humanities University (EHU) who was on board, was detained.

Sofia Sapega is a Russian citizen studying International Law and European Union Law at EHU. Sapega was returning to Vilnius from a holiday break in Athens with her boyfriend Roman Protasevich, an exiled dissident journalist from Belarus.  As a result of a special operation by Belarusian authorities targeting Protasevich, Sapega was also taken into custody. 

EHU reports that Sapega was detained by the Administration of the Investigative Committee for the city of Minsk on baseless charges.

EHU and OSUN call on international partners, donors, and human rights defenders to appeal to the government of Belarus to cease the unjustified detention of Sapega. EHU and OSUN also call on Belarusian authorities to honor Belarus’ international human rights obligations ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens, rights which are also guaranteed by the Constitution of Belarus. 

OSUN stands in solidarity with all illegally detained Belarusians and those under unprecedented political persecution. 

Read EHU’s full statement on the detention of Sofia Sapega here.

OSUN is pleased to offer a new round of summer courses for students from across the network. Nineteen online courses will be offered during June and July of 2021, giving students the opportunity to receive credit and participate as if they were enrolled at the member institution where the course originates. 

Summer courses in 2020 proved to be popular, so the number of new courses on this year’s roster has increased, with classes offered in four OSUN thematic areas of Democratic Practice; Inequalities, Global Public Health, and Sustainability; Human Rights and Global Justice; and Arts and Society. 

Courses  range from “Economics: Democratizing Work after the Pandemic” (Bard College Annandale); “Nations, Nationalism, and Rights” (Al-Quds Bard College) and “Extractive Industries Law, Environmental Protection, and Sustainability” (American University of Central Asia) to “Surveillance and Privacy” (Central European University); “Global Policy Making” (Ashesi University) and “Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Disability” (McGill University).

Additional courses are also offered at the CEU Summer University (SUN) program and many courses have extended the deadline to apply. The CEU courses are geared toward advanced undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty, as well as professionals, policymakers and civil society activists seeking to build their knowledge, skills, and cross-sectoral global networks in a variety of areas across the social sciences and humanities.
 

Apply by May 26, 2021
 

Registration Portal

Access the 2021 OSUN Summer Course Listing here.
Find out about extended deadlines for CEU Summer University courses here.
 

In a concerted effort to express solidarity with colleagues at Al-Quds University (AQU) and Al-Quds Bard College (AQB) following Israel’s recent intensified military operations against Palestinians, OSUN’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts, along with the Bard College Human Rights Project and Middle Eastern Studies program, organized a panel discussion on May 24 with faculty and staff from AQU and AQB.

“As a center focused on exploring and advancing the intersection of human rights and the arts, we add our voice to the international mobilizations among human rights organizations, art institutions, and practitioners to call for an end to the decades-long systematic violations of the Palestinian people’s human rights,” said Ziad Abu-Rish, Director of the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College and moderator of the discussion. Abu-Rish was joined by Munir Nusseibeh, Assistant Professor of Law, AQU; Rana Hajjaj, Program Manager, AQB; and Saida Hamad, Head of Media Studies, AQB.

“Palestine is at the heart of debates and advocacy about human rights as well as the arts, so it was only logical to invite colleagues from AQB and AQU to share their perspectives and to amplify their voices,” he added. “We see them and we stand with them.” 

One speaker explained how local Palestinian activists are “reclaiming the Palestinian narrative” by centering human rights terminology and comparative historical frameworks, drawing attention to the recent reports by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations that have claimed Israeli government policies toward Palestinians amount to apartheid. 

They also pointed out that the broad reach of social media platforms greatly magnified these activists’ messaging, allowing solidarity movements around the world to amplify their voices and narratives. Accordingly, a new generation of digital activists in Palestine and globally are actively refuting traditional Western mass media messaging on Israel-Palestine. The speaker highlighted the politics of terminology, a key terrain of struggle between traditional and social media, such as choosing between “evictions” and “ethnic cleansing” or “conflict” and “settler colonialism.”

Panelists also provided legal contexts and historical background, including that of Israel’s occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem since 1967, pointing to the forced removal of Palestinian residents. One speaker explained the particular context of Sheikh Jarrah, the East Jerusalem neighborhood that has become a focal point of such dynamics and international media attention. Another speaker pinpointed the role of international actors, most notably the British Empire and the US government in facilitating first, the establishment of Israel, and then, Israeli policies toward Palestinians. 

Upon closing, panelists asked the more than 100 attendees to further educate themselves and their students in order to actively ally with the faculty and students of AQB and AQU.
 

“In order to create new knowledge about academic freedom that is relevant in a global perspective, you must have access to the problems of other places. This work could not be accomplished without the global connectedness of the Open Society University Network,” says Liviu Matei, Vice Chancellor of OSUN and Provost of Central European University (CEU), a co-founding partner of OSUN.

Matei, a professor of higher education policy who has taught at universities in Romania, Hungary, Austria and the US, co-leads OSUN’s Global Observatory on Academic Freedom with Milica Popović, Visiting Researcher at CEU’s Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education, CEU. Matei says that the worldwide reach of OSUN’s institutional partnerships is the defining feature that enables its education, research, and civic engagement opportunities to speak to the most urgent concerns about open societies in today’s rapidly shifting academic and political landscapes.
 
As contemporary challenges to the freedoms and responsibilities of universities expand and contract across the globe, the Observatory engages in global research and advocacy activities that promote academic freedom. It also publishes an annual report documenting both the positive and negative trends in the field.
 
Importantly, the Observatory seeks to promote a new, up-to-date and adapted conceptualization of academic freedom that institutions and influential actors worldwide are embracing. While it examines empirical practices and intellectual understandings  of the concept, the Observatory also scrutinizes the range of political and institutional interpretations of it, with the goal of locating or building consensus.
 
How academics and governments understand academic freedom is a major question the project pursues, according to Matei, with a focus “not just on China and Russia, but also on France, the EU and the US.”

“Whether one looks to higher-education policies or within universities themselves, there simply is no shared definition of the concept (of academic freedom), nor any common recognition of why it is currently needed,” writes Matei in a recent article in Project Syndicate on “The West’s Crisis of Academic Freedom.” 

Alarmingly, that lack of an intellectual consensus on academic freedom within European higher education institutions has created “a situation that is used and abused by political powers,” said Matei recently during the project’s first public event, a roundtable discussion with several leading academics and human rights specialists at the Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education, CEU.

Politicians in the EU, UK or the US are increasingly condemning and attempting to stifle research in academic fields that challenge their own agendas, writes Matei. He gives the example of France’s minister of higher education, Frédérique Vidal, who has accused French universities of promoting “Islamo-leftism.” He cites as further evidence of governmental overreach Vidal’s arguably disingenuous claim that an official probe into the academic field of postcolonial studies in France was necessary to protect against potential acts of terror. 

One remedy Matei suggests is the formulation of a common regional reference for academic freedom that draws on prior human rights standards, such as the 1975 Helsinki Accords. He also supports a shift from approaching European higher education as purely a scientific or rational practice to seeing it more as a social practice that is open to the influence of many different types of people and experiences. 

With the launch of the OSUN Global Observatory on Academic Freedom, and its rigorous standards for academic research, analysis, and documentation, Matei and his colleagues are striving to map the various interpretations of academic freedom that are embraced by educators and governments across the globe. Equipped with this knowledge, they hope to lay the foundation for an allied “intellectual resistance” against forces that would erode open societies and the free flow of ideas worldwide. Judging by the caliber of the Observatory’s recent efforts, the project is fully equipped to meet the challenge. 
 

The Fountain Film Festival, a student-led project sponsored by OSUN and Bard College Berlin, has announced audience awards that were selected from over fifteen short student films screened online May 8 and 9.
 
The Best Film Award went to “Sirens” by Alina Asylbekova from American University of Central Asia and the Audience Award went to “8 de Marzo” by Ariela Madera from Bard College Annandale.

“Sirens” is a graphic retelling of the Greek myth about the supernatural creatures with bewitching voices whose vanity led to their downfall.  “8 de Marzo” is an experimental documentary combining footage of the March 8, 2021 Women’s March in Quito, Ecuador with commentary from various women describing experiences where they felt most vulnerable and most empowered.
 
Filmmakers had the opportunity to screen their films for a broad international audience and hailed from several OSUN partner campuses, including American University of Central Asia, European Humanities University, and American University in Bulgaria. All of the films can be viewed here. 
 
A small team of students from Bard College Berlin organized the festival, including Adeeb Hadi, who served as festival director; Maya Abdulqader as festival coordinator; Khalil Hamood as communications director; and Shana Shabazz as social media manager. OSUN congratulates all of the student filmmakers and organizers for their impressive efforts.

This article was originally published on Hyperallergic.

Thinking About the Intersection Between Human Rights and the Arts
In early 2021, Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish relocated from Beirut to spearhead the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College.

by Katie Kheriji-Watts

The artist Tania El Khoury has written that she is “on a constant quest to find political meaning in the artistic form.” Her installations and performances — many of which are collaborative, interactive, and site specific — have focused on a wide range of subjects, including the refugee experience, state violence, and the long history of power outages in her home country of Lebanon. She groups her multifaceted work under the label of “live art,” which the Live Art Development Agency describes as a framing device (rather than an art form or discipline) for a wide variety of experiences that embody new ways of thinking about “what art is, what it can do, and where and how it can be experienced.”

In early 2021, El Khoury and her partner, the historian Ziad Abu-Rish, relocated from Beirut to New York’s Hudson Valley to jointly spearhead a new master’s program and the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, in collaboration with longtime faculty members Thomas Keenan and Gideon Lester. Since mid-March, the team has premiered their first digital commission, launched a series of virtual talks, and begun actively recruiting its first cohort of international graduate students.

The two-year, interdisciplinary MA plans to host in-person classes at Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson campus and welcomes “current and aspiring activists, artists, and researchers” who are committed to “understanding, exploring, and furthering the growing encounter between human rights and the arts.” The center, part of the Open Society University Network, aims to explore how today’s artists, especially those who work outside of hegemonic institutions, can impact contemporary politics. Its initial month of public programming featured the Congolese choreographer Faustin Linkyekula; Emily Johson, a performer, director, and land protector of of Yup’ik ancestry; and Lorenzo Pezanni and Charles Heller, a research duo behind the project “Forensic Oceanography.”

I recently spoke to El Khoury and Abu-Rish about their aims for the center and master’s program and how their work over the last 15 years has led them to this point.

Katie Kheriji-Watts: You two moved from Beirut to upstate New York in early 2021, after a year that was particularly traumatizing in both Lebanon and the United States. What was that like?

Tania El Khoury: We arrived just after the American presidency changed and we felt hopeful, especially related to border policies that would affect us and our friends, families, and colleagues. 

It was a massive change for us. In Beirut, the situation continues to deteriorate drastically. I feel relieved that we survived last year, especially the explosion, because a lot of people didn’t. But I also have a sense of guilt, knowing that some people close to us, who would like to leave the country and see a brighter future, are stuck. 

Ziad Abu-Rish: Things are very bleak in Lebanon right now and many are feeling hopelessness and despair. The political, economic, and public health situation is increasingly uncertain. There’s no trust in the government.

TEK:  And a total lack of accountability and justice. 

KK-W: Speaking of institutional accountability, the new center and master’s program you are co-directing seeks to look “beyond art institutions and nonprofit organization industries.” Why is this so important?

TEK: We want to look beyond institutionalized venues — like universities, museums, and galleries — to support and be inspired by art that happens elsewhere. Not to exclude people who work in a traditional setup, but to not to be lazy with our curation. Same with activists. We want to look at a community level that’s rarely taken seriously in academia or in the art world.

ZA-R: A lot of scholarly research, teaching, and funding ends up reproducing existing institutions. And so, in thinking about the intersection between human rights and the arts, we want to look for it in places that rarely get a light shone on them, and to highlight and better understand them. There’s no naïveté about our own position as an institution funded by the Open Society Foundations, but there is an awareness of how to be more critical and not reproduce certain dynamics. 

KK-W: Tania, how does it feel for you to go from being an independent artist to, quote unquote, become the institution? 

TEK: So far it feels like an extension of my work, like one of the many collaborative art projects that I’ve been a part of. I enjoy bringing the point of view of an artist, which is often not fully understood by institutions when they don’t have artists in leadership roles. I’m trying to create an ethical environment in which artists feel comfortable and supported. 

ZA-R: We’re very fortunate that we’re not integrating a pre-existing institution where there are constraints that are not of our own making. We’re building this institution from the bottom up in terms of who’s involved, who it targets, how it uses its money, and what we want to do with it. 

KK-W: Speaking of what you’re building, I was wondering if each of you could point to a defining moment in your lives that really brought together for you, in a concrete way, how the arts and the principles of human rights interact with each other.

TEK: I’ve realized that the research I do is not just for sharing with my audience, but to produce knowledge that can be (and has been) used by journalists and activists to shift power dynamics. I’m inclined towards work that not only shares political opinion, but is also a research engine and tool to change narratives.

I’m part of a collective in Beirut called Dictaphone Group, which does a combination of live art and multidisciplinary research on urban space. We’ve done site-specific performances about, for example, the privatization of the seashore in Beirut, which wasn’t really understood before. And we’ve noticed that the conversation shifts when people change their relationship to public space and learn new information.

In my solo work, I made an interactive installation, “Gardens Speak,” based on 10 oral histories from people in Syria who were killed at the beginning of the revolution and buried in their gardens. A book was also published as part of the project, and it can be used to remember ordinary people’s stories of how the Syrian civil war started.

ZA-R: The turning point for me was really my encounter with Tania and her work. As someone who researches the social, cultural, and political history of Lebanon, I saw that Dictaphone Group was able to unearth histories that scholars had no idea were in existence, or were barely able to touch the surface of, because they had a very particular way of trying to approach their topic or subject matter. 

I went to a festival in which Tania was performing her show Jarideh. It’s a one-on-one performance in public space that brings up questions of state surveillance, counterterrorism policies, and racial profiling. I saw how audience members were embodying issues that I might be able to write about or lecture on, but it was through the artistic encounter that they were able to get a visceral understanding of some of these dynamics. That, I thought, was much more powerful than what a text or a lecture could deliver.

KK-W: Ziad, you’re a scholar of the modern Middle East and North Africa and, Tania, a lot of your research explores the intertwining of art and politics outside of the West. How have these positions and topics informed your joint vision for the center and the master’s?

TEK: The center is targeted to a worldwide audience because it’s sponsored by the Open Society University Network, the aim of which is to find ways for various organizations, the majority of which are in the global south, to collaborate together. To me, it feels natural because I’ve always worked in and with people from different contexts. 

ZA-R: Tania’s experience touring internationally has given us real knowledge of many artist and activist networks, which has been helpful in making sure that we don’t gravitate towards the “usual suspects” when we think of who to study, commission, or invite. So this has been at the core of our vision: to bring together,  elevate, and better understand the practices of activists and artists in different parts of the world at the intersection of human rights and the arts. 

We held a virtual information session for prospective applicants and we had people from Venezuela, Russia, the UK, South Asia, and different parts of the US. Some of them are artists, some are activists who have never created a work of art, and others want to be scholars and eventually enroll in a PhD program. I think this shows that our vision of how to bring together different types of practitioners around a single theme or topic is starting out successfully.

KK-W:  You plan on commissioning digital work and curating a public program that highlights technology as a “creative tool of resistance.” What does this mean for you in the context of surveillance capitalism?

ZA-R: Your question makes me think, for example, of the fact that Facebook is collecting data left, right, and center, and using it to shape our political discourse and silence certain people while elevating others. So, while we will post announcements on social media, we don’t hold events on those platforms, which a lot of organizations do. 

We’re still thinking about how to be digitally accessible without reinforcing problematic dynamics. It’s important because, in certain places, participating virtually in some of our events is safer than participating in-person would be. 

TEK: We’ve also been inspired by the fact that, because of the pandemic, experiencing art online has become more accessible to people who would have been otherwise excluded because of geography, money, and even language. We don’t want to focus only on programming that can be seen by people who can travel and who are mobile. 

KK-W: What is the single most important thing you want students to graduate from the master’s program having learned or understood?

TEK: For me, it’s two things: taking the multidisciplinary seriously as a tool for social and political change and taking your practice seriously.

ZA-R: I want them to understand that there are many different ways that advocacy for human rights and artistic practices intersect and to not simplify that encounter. 

Tania always says that “it’s not enough to have a political opinion.” You have to take seriously the political potential or effect of your work, and that requires intentionality. Just because you claim to be doing human rights and the arts, doesn’t mean that you’re doing good. In fact, you could be doing harm depending on how you’re conducting yourself, producing work, or engaging communities. And that means taking seriously that it’s not enough to want to do good. You also have to make sure you’re not doing harm. Because there are ways in which human rights frameworks and discourses and practices have exacerbated violence and vulnerabilities. And there are ways in which art has not been emancipatory, but has actually been silencing, repressive, and deeply problematic.
 

A version of this article was originally published on the Bard College website.

Bard College student Sonita Alizada has been awarded the 2021 Freedom Prize in recognition of her international advocacy to end forced marriage. Alizada is a 24-year-old rapper and human rights activist from Afghanistan and a sophomore at Bard College. She was chosen by 5,683 young people from 86 countries to receive the prize, which carries an award of €25,000 to support her work. The Freedom Prize, organized by the Normandy for Peace Initiative in the Normandy Region of France, recognizes an inspiring young person committed to an exemplary fight for freedom. Alizada is the third Freedom Prize laureate. The prize was awarded in 2019 to Greta Thunberg for her fight for climate justice and to Loujain Al Hathloul in 2020 for her fight for women's rights in Saudi Arabia. Normandy for Peace will present the award at the Normandy World Peace Forum in Abbaye-aux-Dames in Caen, Normandy, June 3–4, 2021.

An international panel of judges selected three Freedom Prize finalists from 251 applications in February. The panel comprised 30 young people of 17 different nationalities. Alizada was selected in addition to Agnes Chow, Hong Kong pro-democracy leader, and Omar Radi, a Moroccan investigative journalist. The Freedom Prize then invited young people aged 15 to 25 to vote for their favorite finalist by April 25. 

Sonita Alizada was born in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. At the age of 10, her family sold her into forced marriage, but the contract fell through. Her family fled the war in Afghanistan for Iran, where they lived as undocumented refugees. In Tehran, an NGO provided Alizada with access to education and a cleaning job. Her family tried again to sell her when she was 16, but she resisted. When Alizada stumbled upon a song by the rapper Eminem, she had an artistic breakthrough. She began writing to tell her story and to speak out against forced marriage and the plight of millions of children around the world. Her first single, “Daughters for Sale,” garnered worldwide attention. Having moved to the United States, she is now a Human Rights major studying law at Bard College. She plans to become a lawyer and to return to her country to defend Afghan women and children.

Alizada’s story is the subject of the award-winning documentary Sonita, directed by Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016.  Alizada has addressed the United Nations and other global forums to advocate against the practice of forced child marriage. She has been named as one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Global Thinkers of 2015, the BBC’s 100 Women of 2015, an Asia Societies Game Changer of 2017, a 2018 MTV Generation Change Award recipient, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2019, and has been featured by CNN, NPR, BBC, Buzzfeed and over 150 publications in 20 countries.

About the Freedom Prize
The Freedom Prize is an educational initiative that aims to raise awareness of freedom, peace, and human rights, inspired by the values of the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944 in Normandy, France.   

The Freedom Prize invites young people aged 15 to 25 from France and around the world to choose an inspiring person or organization committed to an exemplary fight for freedom.   What makes the prize unique is that it involves young people at each stage: from the proposals submitted to the international panel of judges, to the final selection of the winner.  

Organized by the Normandy for Peace Initiative, implemented with the International Institute of Human Rights and Peace, in partnership with the academic authorities of Normandy and the Canopé network, the Freedom Prize pays tribute to all those who have fought and continue to fight for this ideal.

The April 6 launch of the OSUN Solve Climate by 2030 webinar series on regional and local climate solutions was a resounding success, with over 10,000 viewers tuning in to more than 100 university-hosted Global Dialogs on the topics of green recovery, alternative policies, and just transitions.
 
Over half of the webinars were international—streaming from Argentina, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Palestine, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Rwanda, South Africa, Serbia, Singapore, Taiwan, UK, and Uruguay—with another 48 streaming from the US. Over 350 student and faculty volunteer organizers were engaged worldwide, along with over 50 university media professionals and over 300 climate experts.
 
While OSUN provided vital support for the project’s co-director, web design, video production, translation and internship roles, its regional coordinators in Latin America (Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá), Central Europe (Central European University in Vienna), the Middle East (Al-Quds Bard in Palestine), and South Asia (BRAC in Bangladesh) successfully organized multiple events in each area, attracting a myriad of viewers.
 
Universidad de los Andes reported that over 450 people attended its dialog on interdisciplinary climate courses while Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia logged over 1,000 viewers on YouTube. Network partner the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, had 100 attendees for its webinar and Universitas Indonesia reported that over 650 people tuned in to hear a panel discussion by Indonesian government and civil society climate experts. Al-Quds Bard’s dialog with speakers from Palestine, Iran, and Turkey attracted viewers from throughout the Middle East and as far as Europe and the US.

The Social Media for Climate Activism online internship greatly expanded Solve Climate’s virtual imprint, with over 100 students participating, representing 25 countries and collectively building more than two-dozen social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Regional accounts in Latin America, the US, Bangladesh, and Russia produced a large quantity of engaging digital content, driving sign-ups for the #MakeClimateAClass pledge, which encouraged faculty to devote one class period to discussing climate change solutions.

Eban Goodstein, project leader and director of Bard College's Center for Environmental Policy, aims to greatly augment the project next year. “As COVID recedes, we hope to expand beyond webinars, to a WorldWide Teach-in on Climate and Justice involving students at hundreds of universities and high schools across the globe. Our OSUN partners are leading the outreach to make this possible.”
 
If the positive response that occurred this year under COVID constraints is any indication, Solve Climate by 2030 has a promising decade ahead.
 

By Maya Aga (Bard College ’21)
 
What does it mean to be civically engaged? At the beginning of the eighth annual Get Engaged: Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference last weekend, Jonathan Becker, Vice Chancellor of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at Bard College, posed this simple yet powerful question to over 150 undergraduate students from sixteen institutions.
 
Over two days, student leaders explored the question by attending a jam-packed weekend of workshops, presentations, and activities sponsored by OSUN and CCE and offering a range of ideas and experiences to help develop their community leadership skills.  The large group of students in attendance drew on a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences and interests, representing OSUN’s broad global network of institutions that stretch from Berlin to Taiwan.
 
This year’s theme, “Learning Resiliency and Unity Beyond Borders,” was particularly apt, as the conference took place remotely for the second year, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite interactions being limited to Zoom sessions, student leaders and innovators still managed to strengthen connections among their colleagues, all who work with community partners to develop solutions to local and international challenges. 
 In the past, Get Engaged has been open to student leaders already immersed in their projects, but this year marked the first time the conference accepted attendees who were still developing ideas for their community- or socially-based engagements and who sought to enhance their leadership skills. 

Abdul Walid Azizi from American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan spoke about his project, Camp Afghanistan, which enables students in Ghazni to engage in English language studies and leadership-building courses.
 
Nguyen Thanh Phuong from Fulbright University Vietnam presented on Mathlish, which promotes youth engagement in Bac Lieu Province, Vietnam, to support the education and mental wellness of over 100 formerly homeless children now living in orphanages. Phuong discussed the struggles of organizing during COVID-19 and taught students how to advocate for their project’s future.

Ahmad Denno from Bard College Berlin presented her work with "Go Vote: Mobilizing Refugees and New Germans for the German Elections 2021,” which provides an information and activation platform to support broader participation in federal elections.
 
Dariel Vasquez, a Bard College Annandale graduate and conference alum, led a workshop on making projects more sustainable.  The co-founder and executive director of [email protected], an organization that seeks to mentor young men of color, Vasquez shared details of developing a successful project, including the importance of keeping records and building long-lasting relationships. He challenged his students by asking “If you were to leave your project tomorrow, would your project succeed without you?”
 
At the conference’s conclusion, Becker displayed a “word cloud” made up of the diverse set of participant responses to his initial question, illustrating the variegated definitions of civic engagement that arise in a broad community network. While each student had a different interpretation of what it meant to be civically engaged, the graphic conveyed the fact that all benefited from coming together to learn from one another’s experiences.

This article was originally published in Der Tagesspiegel on April 6th, 2021

"To Begin Anew in Exile Continues to be Difficult"

A chance for researchers in exile: the Philipp Schwartz Initiative marks its anniversary by switching from grants to temporary employment contracts. Yet, concerns remain.

By Amory Burchard
English translation by Ty Holtzman (Bard College ‘21)
 

“I am the project coordinator of an international program at Bard College Berlin.” When Aysuda Kölemen introduces herself, one can hear the pride in an academic career that led her from studying political science at Bosporus University in Istanbul to her PhD at the University of Georgia, Athens in the United States and back to Turkey as a professor at Altinbas University in Istanbul.

If, however, it had been up to President Erdogan and his power apparatus, her career would have ended there three years ago, without income and the very real threat of arrest, trial, and imprisonment.

Things went differently thanks to Kölemen’s academic standing, her international network, and her language skills—which include, after a stay in Heidelberg, German as well as English. Thanks to the Alexander Humboldt Foundation, she received a grant from the Philipp Schwartz Initiative after being nominated through Bard College Berlin.

The program was founded five years ago with funds from Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in reaction to refugee emigration from Syria and other countries in which academic freedom and the lives and work of researchers are threatened. Since then, 280 academics have received or are receiving grants through the Philipp Schwartz Initiative.

The Namesake of the Program Helped his Colleagues in Exile During the Nazi Era

175 grantees come from Turkey, 65 from Syria, six from Iraq, six from Venezuela, five from Yemen, and 17 from other countries. The grants, a minimum of 2,650 euros a month plus plenty of fringe benefits for family members travelling with the recipient, have a two-year limit with the option for a one-year extension.

The Initiative is named after the Frankfurt pathologist Philipp Schwartz, who emigrated from Germany in 1933. He formed the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad and taught at the University of Istanbul. After 1945 he was denied return to his former teaching position in Frankfurt, so he emigrated once again—this time, to the United States.

On the Initiative’s five-year anniversary, there is much for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to celebrate, including the Bundestag's decision in 2018 to offer permanent funding for the program—up to 10 million euros per year. It is also an occasion for critical revision, as program manager Frank Albrecht says.

The crucial question that the foundation faced after the first round of grants was: what options are available to grant recipients after three years of permanent integration into German academia? Around 2019, criticism was expressed at a rally in Berlin held by the Turkish group, Academics for Peace.

Intense Competition for Permanent Positions

In 2016, a number of Turkish academics signed the peace declaration “We Will Not Take Part in this Crime,” protesting the Erdogan regime’s attacks on Kurdish settlements, which led to the protesters' persecution in their homeland. Despite the academics' sponsorship abroad, grants and short-term contracts offer those in exile “no security or realistic prospects in Germany,” said a historian at a protest rally at Bebelplatz in front of Humboldt University.

Aysuda Kölemen signed the appeal for peace as well and lost her job at Altinbas University. In the maelstrom of the state purges of Turkish universities, which were partly supported from within, Kölemen’s employer tried to be fair by advising her to go on a “research trip” abroad, while not renewing her contract.

As wonderful as it has been to be taken in by Bard College Berlin and to have had for three years “freedom to research and get settled in these new circumstances,” the reality of having to compete for the few permanent positions in the system with countless German colleagues who have stronger networks and usually a much larger collection of publications is extremely stressful, says Kölemen.

On the fifth anniversary of the program, the Foundation’s response to this predicament is to sustain a “roadmap toward future funding with improved long-term prospects for at-risk researchers.” One step is the partial switch from grants to employment contracts.

The new contracts also cover just two years with the option of a one-year extension, but along with health insurance and a pension provided by the employer—a path is being forged towards a blue card for permanent residence in Germany, says program manager Frank Albrecht.

The foundation is “able to finance an employment contract for everyone” but it is up to the receiving institutions to decide on the type of funding. Many colleges and universities switched to contracts, but grants continue to be a faster way to bring to Germany those who are particularly at risk.

Attempting to Place More Alumni in the Private Sector

Further steps toward remedying the situation include increased networking at the EU level aimed at referring alumni to other European countries and more coaching with respect to the academic job market as well as the private sector. “Here, we’re in conversation with institutions and associations,” Albrecht says.

It will continue to be almost impossible for many researchers in areas affected by war and other crises to simply leave their country, let alone receive a grant or an employment contract at a German university or research institute. “Many don’t have passports, or they can’t leave their families back home. Not everyone speaks English or German—and you can’t achieve much abroad with Turkish or Arabic,” says Köleman.

Few Opportunities Due to Differing Academic Cultures

The requirements for receiving institutional appointments are in fact very high, and not only in regards to language abilities. “We prefer to support individuals with whom we have fostered academic relationships in the past,” says Ulrike Freitag, the director of the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, in an interview published in the foundation’s anniversary brochure. Otherwise, research strategies and methods of investigation would differ between academic institutions considerably.

According to Humboldt Foundation statistics, 67 of the current 112 researchers who have received the Philipp Schwartz grants for two to three years have found a follow-up job: 49 within German academia, eight outside of Germany, and another ten outside of academia.

The need for institutional sponsorship is great and is growing day by day. The situation for academics who are critical of the regime in Turkey continues to be quite dangerous and soon the first grant recipients from Belarus will arrive in Germany, says Frank Albrecht. Currently, the Philipp Schwartz Initiative can consider only a third of the nominations made by receiving institutions.

There is only one other program in Europe whose size is comparable to the Philipp Schwartz Initiative—the French program PAUSE.  The Scholars at Risk network is limited and in Berlin, the state launched its own program in 2017 through the Einstein Foundation. [Read also what Judith Butler called for in 2018 at the Scholars at Risk Congress in Berlin: “We are all Scholars at Risk”].

Another new project aiming to help at-risk scholars is the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative, which was launched in the beginning of April by the Open Society University Network, supported by the Open Society Foundations with the participation of Bard College in New York and Berlin, as well as the Central European University in Vienna.

The program is initially offering 25 grants in European countries as well as in Colombia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, and Bangladesh. Because of the extended reach of the program, languages other than German and English are in demand, says Aysuda Kölemen. She is coordinating the program at Bard College Berlin, a position that makes her one of the fifty percent of Philipp Schwartz alumni with a direct follow-up job.

“To begin anew in exile is and continues to be difficult,” says the 44-year-old scholar. Due to political persecution as well as increasing political pressure on academia even in western countries, new and fair opportunities for scholars at risk are, unfortunately, sorely needed for the foreseeable future. 
 

This story originally appeared on Central European University's website.

Since 1996, CEU’s Summer University (SUN) has been bringing academics and professionals together in Budapest to learn from CEU professors alongside leading scholars and experts from universities and international organizations worldwide. This year, SUN has collaborated with the Open Society University Network (OSUN) yielding new interdisciplinary course offerings designed through the framework and values of the network.

“OSUN and SUN have a shared mission and interest in promoting civic engagement in higher education, encouraging intellectual curiosity and fact-based research in training academics and professionals,” comments CEU SUN Executive Director Eva Gedeon. Having become part of a larger network, she notes that SUN has benefited from access to a wider range of new collaborations for courses in the program, which include both research intensive courses as well as policy and training courses.

“CEU faculty have found this new opportunity exciting and convened or joined the teaching teams of thirteen courses for 2021 within this framework. OSUN, on the other hand, has found in the CEU summer program a partner to serve the thematic and skills-building needs of OSUN colleagues and students and provide a platform for debate and collaboration across the sectors of education, policy, practice, and activism,” remarks Gedeon.

Along these lines, SUN also provides space for experimenting with new topics and initiatives and can work as a smaller-scale pilot project for larger OSUN collaborations in the planning phase. “As a next step, I can foresee the summer courses more closely aligned with some larger OSUN projects as, for instance, either an exploratory phase at the beginning or a dissemination channel at the end of a project,” adds Gedeon.

A great part of SUN’s attraction comes from the course design. This year, several offerings, such as Confronting the Crisis of Expertise, Disruptive Narratives and Liberalism Infected, explore the crisis of liberal democracies and the backsliding of democracies globally in a post-truth world from various disciplines. Another cluster of study focused on education and pedagogy illuminates topics of higher education policy and design through The Quality of University Education and Designing a Collaborative and Connected Liberal Arts Classroom. While courses deploy CEU expertise and research that can be expanded in specialized areas, SUN ventures into related, but interdisciplinary territory, for example, with courses such as Feminist Political Economy, and Commoning Art and Culture, as well as those that focus on music as intangible cultural heritage and literary journalism.

In 2021, the SUN courses will be delivered digitally. While acknowledging that online courses cannot fully replace the in-person experience, Gedeon is confident that the experience will be lively and engaging for participants: “Our courses are not solo performances conducted by one professor but there is a team of faculty, an ensemble performing together for the course audience. This in itself contributes to the intellectual variety and diversity of perspectives that students are confronted with, helping to keep them stay fully tuned in and actively participate in the online sessions.”

In 2020, SUN received an overwhelmingly positive response to the first ever online courses, which were taught digitally due to pandemic constraints, with over 150 students from more than 50 countries. The intensive courses employ a range of modes: short, live faculty presentations and pre-recorded lectures, alternating with both facilitated and independent small group discussions in breakout rooms, followed up by plenary sessions, one-on-one consultations with faculty, individual or group assignments and presentations, digital fieldwork, and more.

Those who want to participate in this year’s SUN program can still apply to several SUN courses accepting applications. Additionally, faculty interested in teaching next year can reference the 2022 Call for Course Proposals.

Two months have passed since Ahmed Samir Santawy, the Egyptian Masters student at Central European University, was arrested by the Egyptian state security forces in Cairo on February 1st, 2021. 

Five days later, Ahmed was charged with belonging to a terrorist organization and spreading false news on social media. On February 23rd, he was further charged with funding a terrorist organization. The prosecutor was unable to specify which terrorist organization or present any evidence to support the charge. 

Ahmed was denied any communication with his family and legal counsel until just a few days ago. As Michael Ignatieff, Rector of Central European University notes, Ahmed’s continued detention “on obscure charges, without evidence, in harsh and inhumane conditions, is a flagrant violation of the rule of law and of basic human rights principles.”

OSUN joins our colleagues worldwide in calling on the Egyptian authorities to release Ahmed Samir Santawy without further delay. He must be allowed to resume his studies at CEU, our sister university and an OSUN co-founder. 

The West's Crisis of Academic Freedom

By Liviu Matei, OSUN Vice Chancellor and Co-Leader of the Global Observatory on Academic Freedom

Across the West, politicians are increasingly condemning and attempting to restrict research in academic fields that challenge their own worldviews. The threat to academic freedom demands intellectual resistance, starting with an effort to develop a common understanding of the concept and why it matters.

VIENNA – A crisis of academic freedom is looming in Europe. Usually when academic freedom comes under fire in the West, people assume that it is a marginal issue, confined to countries like Hungary that have become increasingly authoritarian. But an honest reckoning would show that the problem is far more widespread than Europeans and Americans would like to admit.

Yes, things are bad in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a European Union country where constitutional protections for academic freedom have been erased, gender studies has been denied accreditation as an academic course, and a former army colonel has been appointed chancellor of the Budapest University of Theatre and Film Arts. But consider France, where Frédérique Vidal, the minister of higher education, research, and innovation, has accused the country’s universities of promoting “Islamo-gauchisme” (Islamo-leftism), and launched an investigation into the entire academic field of postcolonial studies.

And the threat is not confined to the EU. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, which have long represented the gold standard for academic freedom, lawmakers appear to want to join ranks with Hungary’s illiberal regime. In the US, Republican-controlled state legislatures are drafting bills to prevent “critical race theory” and other academic fields from being taught in public schools.

In the UK, meanwhile, the government recently released a white paper – “Higher education: free speech and academic freedom” – that appears to call for radical restrictions of academic freedom in British universities. In a truly Orwellian gesture, the government wants to install a “Free Speech and Academic Freedom Champion” in the Office for Students. While Prime Minister Boris Johnson probably won’t go so far as to appoint a former military officer to the post, he doubtless will choose someone with strong partisan credentials.

The crisis of academic freedom is partly political and regulatory, featuring threats and legal restrictions on research and education. These are, in essence, attacks against the very notion of knowledge as a public good (though they are more disguised than is the case in countries like Turkey or Russia). But there is also an intellectual dimension to the crisis, born of the absence of a shared understanding of how academic freedom should be adapted to the present.

Academic freedom is a global challenge, but Europe has a particular problem with it. In Europe, higher education has been transformed by the creation of a European Higher Education Area, a process that started in 1999. Currently comprising 49 countries, the EHEA has created a common space for higher education with shared models and standards, intense exchanges, and joint regulations and institutions, which transcend national jurisdictions and academic traditions.

Yet, despite these remarkable changes, the work of developing a shared concept of academic freedom, suited to the present, has not kept up. Instead, academic freedom has simply been neglected, with scant agreement about what it even means. Whether one looks to higher-education policies or within universities themselves, there simply is no shared definition of the concept, nor any common recognition of why it is currently needed.

The enemies of academic freedom have profited from this vacuum, exploiting it for political benefit. When the European Commission sued Hungary in 2017 for infringing on academic freedom, it pointed to the fact that Central European University (CEU) had been forced out of the country. But the Hungarian government maintained that the EU had no jurisdiction, because there was no European definition of academic freedom – legal or otherwise – upon which to base its case. In the end, what should have been a clear-cut landmark case about academic freedom turned partly into a dispute about the delivery of commercial services under World Trade Organization rules.

For her part, Vidal justified her attack on universities not only with political and legal arguments – namely, that restrictions on some disciplines are necessary to protect the rule of law and to prevent terrorism – but also with her own tendentious definition of academic freedom. Adopting a familiar tactic from the far right, the French government has tried to package its assault on postcolonial studies as a research project, as if it is simply exercising academic freedom for itself. By framing the issue in this way, the government can pretend that it is not cracking down on postcolonial studies for political reasons, but rather conducting its own “study” into the issue of “Islamo-gauchisme.”

There is a recent precedent for this strategy in the UK. In 2017, Chris Heaton-Harris, a Conservative MP, demanded that all major universities in the country submit course syllabi and the names of any instructors teaching their students about Brexit. In response to the inevitable backlash, his excuse was that he “was doing research” for a book.

Universities should not be political institutions. But protecting them from attack nonetheless requires political action, because academic freedom is a political issue. The free and open pursuit of knowledge as a public good is necessary to the proper functioning of democracy.

The crisis of academic freedom thus demands intellectual resistance, starting with an effort to develop a modern-day common understanding of the concept in Europe. Here, academics could profitably work with their allies in the European Parliament, where there has been strong support for CEU in its struggles with the Orbán regime, and for freedom of research and education more generally.

The question, of course, is what a pan-European concept of academic freedom might look like. Can we draw inspiration from the European tradition of a rationalist, “colorblind” epistemology, or do we need new, more sophisticated perspectives? After a long delay, initiatives to explore such questions are now underway. It is my profound hope that these efforts are not coming too late.

On March 25th, Belarusian Freedom Day, OSUN joins the European Humanities University (EHU) in calling for solidarity with all who have been subjected to repression by the Belarusian authorities. This includes all individuals who have been unlawfully arrested and detained, arbitrarily convicted, fired, or expelled from universities for expressing their civic and political views.

Today, 298 persons are recognized as political prisoners in Belarus and the number continues to grow. 48 students and graduates of EHU, a Belarusian university now exiled in Vilnius, Lithuania, were detained after the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus. 

Five students and alumni remain imprisoned, including:

Maryia Rabkova, a political prisoner, EHU 3rd-year student, was detained in Minsk on September 17, 2020, and will be kept under arrest at least until June 17. She faces up to 12 years in prison. 

Akihiro Gaevski-Hanada, a political prisoner, EHU 2nd-year student, was detained on August 12, 2020. It is known that he was severely beaten after his arrest. 

Mikalai Dziadok, a political prisoner, EHU alumnus (Class 2019), was detained on November 12, 2020. While in custody, Mikalai’s health deteriorated greatly. Mikalai faces up to 3 years in prison. 

Wlodzimierz Malachowski, a political prisoner, EHU alumnus (Class 2013), was detained in Vitebsk on September 13, 2020. On March 1, Wlodzimierz was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and a fine for alleged violence or threat of violence against an internal affairs employee. 

Ihar Barysau, EHU alumnus (Class 2008), the leader of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, was detained in Minsk on March 21 and was sentenced to 15 days in prison.  

Read EHU's full statement here.

 

On February 1st 2021, the military in Myanmar took over all branches of government and arrested the country’s civilian leaders and members of its democratically elected parliament. Millions across the country rose in protest to defend democracy and freedom and to prevent a return to the brutal oppression brought about by the junta that had ruled Myanmar for decades, denying its people rule of law, basic human rights, education, proper medical care, and access to livelihoods.

The nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement united people of all walks of life, occupations, ethnicities, and religions. The response of the army and security forces has been harsh and indiscriminate – over 250 people have been killed or tortured to death in detention; over 2,250 have been arrested, including 547 students currently held in prisons without charge or access to legal assistance. Over forty university campuses and many hospitals in major cities have been taken over by armed military brigades. Dozens of young protesters have been killed by sniper fire. Civil society and media organizations have been subject to devastating raids, their staff detained, and assets confiscated at gunpoint.
 
Central European University and Bard College have been resolute supporters of the revival and reform of higher education in Myanmar over the years, through study and research opportunities; development of critical thinking, modern curricula and student-centered teaching; engagement in reform policy dialogue; and vigorous promotion of academic freedom and university autonomy.

As the founding members of the Open Society University Network, and on behalf of our global university community, we appeal to the military authority to cease violence against peaceful, unarmed civilians and the persecution of students, academics and civil society. We urge the immediate release of those unlawfully detained. We stand with the students, educators and all citizens of Myanmar and call on the army, police and security forces to refrain from denying the people of their country the future of peace, liberty and dignity they aspire to. We also call on the international community for solidarity, support and protection for our friends in Myanmar, who are in peril. 
 

For Adam Stepan, some of the most exciting moments of teaching OSUN’s inaugural Visual Storytelling Workshop last fall occurred when he witnessed the powerful cultural breakthroughs students often made while watching and discussing their cohorts’ video documentaries across time zones.
 
“Statements like ‘So this is what Bishkek looks like!’ were common,” says Stepan, documentary filmmaker and Director of the Picker Center Digital Education Group, an OSUN partner at Columbia University. “And this is something that probably wouldn’t have happened with strictly Zoom-based discussions,” he adds.
 
Over three weeks, Stepan and fellow filmmaker Sean Steinberg trained students in Annandale, Berlin, Palestine, and Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), to use inexpensive tools, such as smartphones, to create “digital case studies” of the research and civic engagement projects they undertook for OSUN network courses such as “Human Rights Advocacy” and “Global Citizenship.”
 
Audiovisual case studies documenting work around social justice issues—which were not only produced by the class but also used to teach it—are very effective tools for online learning, as they provide students with a “real world” connection that facilitates meaningful class discussion, according to Stepan. In addition to acquiring the skills needed for successful field production, students were trained in basic video editing and participated in a final video festival drawing on work from all the classes involved.
 
“Despite the huge challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, students were able to work and collaborate in incredibly creative ways,” says Stepan. “The films themselves were also very powerful.”
 
Living with a Disability in Bishkek, created by students Ulukbek Batyrgaliev and Shigofa Jamal at American University of Central Asia and co-winner of the video festival’s social impact award, tells the compelling stories of people facing accessibility challenges in Kyrgyzstan’s capital city.
In the video, wheelchair user Gulbarchyn Isaeva describes the grave problems she faces due to a lack of ramps in public spaces. “Last year when I got pregnant, I wasn’t able to register in the hospital,” she says from her cramped apartment. “Doctors tried to persuade me not to give birth. Unfortunately, I had a miscarriage—I think more because of stress,” says Isaeva.
 
“There are many other things (in addition to ramps) that would make the city accessible to wheelchair users, pregnant women, the elderly, and more,” says Aiperi Aralbaeva, another subject in the video, who advocates for the rights of women with disabilities with the group Nazyk Kyz (Mama Cash). “The only thing is to ask us, and we will answer with what we need and how it should be done.”  
 
Bring Them Home: The Fight for Clemency, produced by Bard College student Seamus Heady and winner of the video festival’s cinematography award, chronicles the advocacy efforts of a group seeking a pardon for Gregory Mingo, incarcerated for 40 years in Great Meadow Correctional Facility for a crime he maintains he did not commit. While Mingo was not granted clemency in 2020, the grassroots team of family, friends and activists depicted in the video continues to advocate for his release.

Berlin College Engagement in Forced Migration, created by Imani Faber, Camila Rosales, Carla Schwingler and Milica Vuvic of Bard College Berlin, consists of interviews with students living in Berlin who are refugees from Syria and Iraq, as well as members of a student-led initiative that helps asylum seekers navigate European legal systems as they try to secure citizenship.  

Black at Bard, produced by Bard student Hakima Alem and winner of the festival’s People’s Choice Award, centers on Bard College senior Tatyana Rozetta and Theater & Performance professor, Nilaja Sun, as they discuss 2020 efforts by Rozetta and four other BIPOC students to tackle problems of racial inequity in the school’s theater department. The video interviews document students’ intense labor, which motivated the department to commit to identifying avenues of implicit bias in its practices and to creating a permanent position for equity oversight.

Stepan hopes all the videos from the workshop will be used in future classes across the OSUN network. “Even when in-person learning begins again, video case studies will continue to allow students to connect to issues and cultures in ways that classroom-based teaching alone cannot. I think the fact that these cases are made by and for students helps give them a special impact and relevance.”

The Picker Center at Columbia is working to develop a new version of the class to be run in the fall of 2021, as well as a project that would enlist students trained in 2020 to create new OSUN video cases. “Ideally we can begin a virtuous cycle of training and sharing of student produced videos around the network. OSUN is a unique organization, and it has an amazing opportunity to help us all rethink how classes are taught, and how students can connect and share their learning.”

Central European University (CEU) has been a longstanding partner in supporting Myanmar’s higher education reforms since 2012. We condemn the takeover of all branches of government by the Myanmar military and the violent crackdown on unarmed civilians who stood up to brutal, corrupt and unlawful actions of those whose very mandate is to protect the peace, security and wellbeing of the people.

On 1 February 2021, the world woke to the chilling news of a military coup in Myanmar, with the arrests of leaders of a democratically elected government, members of parliament ,and civil society leaders. A number of education officials, academics and students have subsequently been detained.

People of Myanmar of every ethnicity, religion and profession rose to speak out courageously, through peaceful protests and a civil disobedience movement that has spread throughout the country. Yet lawless detentions continue. Myanmar citizens continue to lose their lives fighting for the freedom to elect their leaders and build a better future for themselves and their children.

Founded at the time of the fall of dictatorial communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, CEU is dedicated to the cause of open society, the study of democracy and its evolutions, and to educating students from all over the world who are committed to freedom and justice. Building on its expertise in democratic transition in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the spirit of academic solidarity, CEU has supported the efforts to reform Myanmar’s higher education since 2012. During this time, Myanmar universities have begun to emerge as a force for a better future, following decades of neglect.

We have welcomed hundreds of teachers, researchers and students from Myanmar to our campus in Budapest, contributed to national policy debates and the design of new policy frameworks for higher education, supported local capacity building in curriculum reform, autonomous governance and management of universities and advancement of quality of teaching and learning in Myanmar. More recently, we have been planning beyond the pandemic to intensify our joint work with Myanmar universities and educational authorities on building university autonomy. This includes the launch of an ambitious national pilot project designed in 2019-2020, supported by the academic community as well as government officials, national policy-makers and international partners.

CEU's engagement in Myanmar began in the early days of the transition to democracy led by the quasi-civilian government of 2011-2015. It expanded greatly during the tenure of the first democratically elected government led by the National League for Democracy. As Myanmar authorities know all too well, our work of almost ten years supports home-grown educational reforms, envisaged as promoting the economic and social development of a country devastated by decades of dictatorship and isolation.

While far away in Central Europe, CEU is deeply concerned about our colleagues and partners in Myanmar. We urge the military authority to cease violence, release those who have been unlawfully detained—including student activists, academics and education officials—and work to ensure prompt restoration of a democratic political system that is based on the rule of law, freedom of thinking and expression, and supports people of all walks of life, faiths and political persuasions in building dignified lives and careers and contributing to their country’s progress.

We appeal to all international forces to play a positive role in addressing this crisis: Please, do not abandon Myanmar.

Michael Ignatieff
President and Rector, CEU

Liviu Matei
Provost, CEU

The OSUN Hub for Connected Learning Initiatives in Eastern Africa held its first Oral History and Literature (OHL) Research Seminar in the fall of 2020. The participants – from seven countries in Eastern Africa – described the program as a novel experience, combining a critical exploration of the developing role of the oral tradition in the cultures of the region with technical training and opportunities for practical research. 

The seminar was a critical first step in launching the broader research program of  OSUN’s Eastern Africa Hub, which will provide training and support for local researchers emerging from marginalized and displaced communities. The Hub expands student-centered higher educational opportunities for those affected by political crises and displacement by providing high-quality online learning opportunities that increase access to sustainable livelihoods.
 
The seminar was conducted remotely during a three-month period and culminated in a three-day, in-person meeting near Nairobi, Kenya, where participants presented their research. It brought together graduate-level students and young writers from Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somaliland, Somalia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Several participants were refugees living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya, one of the largest refugee settlements in the world. 

Participants presented on topics including urbanization in Somalia and consequent cultural changes; the politics of popular music among the Borana of the Kenya-Ethiopia border area; a multi-generational record of the women of a Keiyo lineage in Kenya; and an account of the contribution of Asian communities to cultural and economic development in East Africa. 

Although the COVID-19 pandemic and political turmoil in the region posed obstacles to attendance at the December meeting, 15 participants attended in person. One participant was cut off from telecommunications by the war in Ethiopia and had to send an account of his project – on interethnic conflict in his home province of Tigray – for discussion by other participants.
 
The OHL seminar was convened by John Ryle, Legrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology at Bard College, co-founder of the Rift Valley Institute and Tom Odhiambo, Senior Lecturer of Literature at Nairobi University, with support from the OSUN Hub Program Director, Rebecca Granato, Associate Vice President of Global Initiatives at Bard College and an Oral Historian by training. Visiting speakers included Nuruddin Farah, the Somali novelist, who is Distinguished Professor of Literature at Bard College; Ferenc Markó, a Phd candidate in Anthropology at Central European University; and Mark Bradbury, Director of the Rift Valley Institute (RVI). The meeting in Kenya was co-organized by RVI, an OSUN partner. The next iteration of the OSUN Hub for Connected Learning Initiatives Seminar will take place in April 2021, and will be followed by publication of selected research.

Open Society University Network is proud to announce the recipients of its 2020 round of microgrants for student-led initiatives in the areas of community engagement and human rights and the arts. Twenty-two awardees received grants totaling more than $17,000 for a diverse set of initiatives launching this spring and summer in Palestine, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Belarus, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Fourteen of the grants went to young social innovators and change agents who are using the liberal arts to find solutions to local and global community challenges. Individuals receiving grants of up to $2,000 include: Abdul Walid Azizi (American University of Central Asia [AUCA], Kyrgyzstan) for Camp Afghanistan, a week-long program that improves secondary school students’ English language and leadership skills; Adib Hadi (Bard College Berlin) for Fountain Film Festival, a two-day event that provides an international platform for screening works by OSUN student filmmakers; and Yuliya Mikalutskaya (European Humanities University, Lithuania) for Bringing the Names Back, a project that preserves the memory and names of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Minsk, Belarus.

For the first time, OSUN’s new Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College awarded eight grants of $1,000 each to students leading work, research, or engagement initiatives located at the intersection of human rights and the arts. Recipients include: Shadin Nassar (Al-Quds Bard College, Palestine) for Written Voices, a project that develops creative writing in Palestinian schools and institutions through workshops and classes and Pooja Krishnakumar (SOAS University of London, United Kingdom) for Transparent, an interactive website examining the violence faced by trans communities in India, in intersectional contexts.
 
Grantee Uulzhan Bekturova at AUCA is using her award to train students in photography so they can raise public awareness about the problem of domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan. This important work in the rural region of Cholpon Ata, Issyk-Kul is using photography education as a tool to inform and open up dialogue with young students about domestic violence, gender-based violence, and child abuse, all pressing human rights issues that are beginning to draw public attention. Recently, the Kyrgyz parliament made an unprecedented move by passing a bill that prevents families from pressuring domestic violence survivors to reconcile with their abusive spouses. While thousands of domestic violence cases are reported every year in Kyrgyzstan, traditional mores make it difficult for victims to file complaints against their abusers or separate from them. Bekturova’s project aims to document some of the human stories that are driving the vital legislation.  

“As an output of the project I expect our trainees to be active advocates for their families and for people in the community,” says Bekturova. “I think the first thing that we must do is to improve public awareness in more remote regions, which is the reason why I am going to do my project in the Issyk-Kul region, not in the city of Bishkek, where I live.”
 
A complete list of the 2021 microgrant winners:

Farahnaz Abdelgawad, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom: An Alternative Museum is a project creating a cultural institution for art making, training and exhibitions that emphasizes artistic autonomy, institutional transparency, and enhancing the access of marginalized groups.

Abdul Walid Azizi, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Camp Afghanistan
 
Uulzhan Bekturova, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Photography workshops in Cholpon Ata, Issyk-Kul

Aibike Bekzat Kyzy, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Exhibition on Women’s Rights in Osh is a three-day photography show and discussion concerning gender inequality and women’s rights that targets young girls in the city of Osh. 

Aizhamal Duishonbekova, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Self-Improvement Club is a project that allows students from Tendik Village to develop their extracurricular interests.

Miksa Gaspar, Bard College Berlin: Awareness Week enables student groups to build community engagement in their initiatives by partnering with related projects throughout the BCB campus and the broader network.

Adeeb Hadi, Bard College Berlin: Fountain Film Festival is a two-day event that provides a platform for OSUN students interested in filmmaking so they can screen their works for a broad international audience.

Anna Haley, Bard College, New York: The Prison Media Project is a collaboration between Bard students and men incarcerated in the New York penal system, who will build and maintain a website housing media they have created together. 

Dilshod Hamroboev, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Blogging Camp for Activists is a four-day intensive workshop focused on teaching participants how to enhance their civic engagement activism with blogging.

Nilufar Homidova, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Leadership and Educative Avail Project (LEAP) is an initiative providing high school and undergraduate students with information on college-level scholarships.

Maria Jose Sarmiento Isaac, Bard College Berlin: Latin (x) Club creates a safe and sustainable space for the Latin American community across OSUN.

Jessi Kao, Bard College Berlin: P and T Club provides free and easily accessible menstruation products for the BCB community by placing pads and tampons in every bathroom on campus.

Pooja Krishnakumar, SOAS, United Kingdom: Transparent Interactive Website

Rasym Maratova, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: A Mural to Raise Awareness about Air Pollution in Bishkek will commission street artists to paint a mural on a well-traveled bridge in Bishkek, educating citizens about the causes and consequences of worsening air quality in the city, along with potential solutions.

Begaiym Mamytova, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: This documentary film project features a 14-year-old boy from rural Kyrgyzstan whose childhood dream of becoming a boxer clashes with the impending need to earn a living through harsh physical labor.

Yuliya Mikalutskaya, European Humanities University, Lithuania: Bringing the Names Back

Janat Mukaeva, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Equal Access to Education is a project aiming to give orphans equal access to education.

Shadin Nassar, Al-Quds Bard, Palestine: Written Voices

Homayoon Sarwari, AUCA, Kyrgyzstan: Women’s Empowerment Through Photography Training equips Afghan women with photography, videography, and social media skills as means to career development and financial independence. 

Julian Thielman, Bard College Berlin: Pankumenta is an annual two-day student- and artist-led arts festival and pop-up series.

Aleksandar Vitanov, Bard College, New York: The Musical Mentorship Initiative allows students to develop mentorship skills as they explore instrumental guidance and support local communities.

OSUN and Central European University are pleased to announce the launch of the OSUN Executive Education Hub. ExEd Hub will work with CEU academic units and OSUN partners in the design and delivery of innovative executive and professional education programs, providing world-class education opportunities in fields that are central to the OSUN agenda. Its programs will endeavor to build a global dialogue and communities of innovative practice, and will be covered by a flexible financing scheme that combines fee-based enrollment with scholarship support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, focusing on those most in need of developing professional knowledge skills and leadership for their communities. Read more here.

Today marks one year since George Soros announced the creation of the Open Society University Network (OSUN)—a mere six weeks before COVID-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic. Despite the daunting challenges that 2020 presented, OSUN has held fast to its commitment to strengthen global higher education in ways that allowed us to flourish.

Building upon its unwavering commitment to democratic practices and academic freedom, OSUN is pleased to announce a new flagship program, the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative, which actively defends and advocates for scholars from around the world who face persecution or restricted academic freedom. The initiative will play a key role in integrating scholars into OSUN partner institutions through teaching and research, allowing them to share their expertise and unique perspective on standing up for academic freedom.

As Chancellor Botstein remarks, OSUN is a “pioneer in providing excellence and equity in higher education to citizens around the world.”

The Hannah Arendt Humanities Network is pleased to announce that the recipient of its inaugural Yehuda Elkana fellowship is Helga Nowotny.

The Hannah Arendt Humanities Network is a project of the Open Society University Network (OSUN), initiated and coordinated by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities.

The Yehuda Elkana Fellowship is given in cooperation with the Institute for Human Sciences Vienna (IWM), Central European University and other OSUN partners from around the world. The fellowship is awarded annually to a scholar or public thinker of international importance who exhibits a wide-ranging and exuberant intellectual curiosity touching the humanities, social sciences, and science. In the spirit of Yehuda Elkana, the Fellow should also possess a generosity of spirit as a teacher and mentor. The Fellow will be in residence for one month in Vienna at the Institüt für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and also affiliated with the Central European University. As part of the fellowship, the Yehuda Elkana Fellow will give two public lectures. They will also participate in a week-long manuscript workshop in June 2021 with faculty and students from OSUN institutions; in this workshop, faculty selected from OSUN institutions will read and prepare presentations on a book manuscript or series of essays by the Yehuda Elkana Fellow. This workshop will be an opportunity for OSUN scholars to interact intensively with each other and with a major scholar in the humanities. It will be open to CEU and IWM faculty and students.

The Yehuda Elkana Fellowship comes with a prize of $15,000 plus living and travel expenses.

Helga Nowotny is one of the most prominent scholars in science studies worldwide, an area that counted Yehuda Elkana as one of its pioneers and promoters. For several decades she has been one of the most influential institution builders in European higher education and research.
At times, she partnered with Yehuda Elkana in daring new academic and institutional endeavors.

Throughout her long and distinguished academic career at institutions in the US, Europe and Asia, Helga Nowotny has embraced and helped establish an interdisciplinary and engaged approach to the study of science, combining perspectives from the humanities, social and natural sciences - in particular from law, sociology, anthropology, history, and philosophy of science, mathematics and cognitive science - in order to be able to better situate scientific expertise, practice and impact in context. Her highly consequential research and publications focus on matters such as dealing with technological risks, coping with uncertainty, time and social theory, organization of science, gender relations in science and “the place of people in our knowledge” (the title of one of her studies). She has launched or helped establish influential new concepts or theories, such as “Mode 2” of scientific research.

More than once, Helga Nowotny has played a major role in setting up a new course for higher education and science policies in Europe - at the European, national or institutional level. For this, she has worked with European intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and
bodies, such as the European Science Foundation, governmental agencies in several countries of East and West as well as independent organizations and committees of scholars. She has taken part in, or directly led, the design and establishment of innovative new institutions, such as the European Research Council (the most influential organization in European research ever), Collegium Budapest (the first institute of advanced study in a former communist country) or Central European University (which Yehuda Elkana led for ten years as President).

Helga Nowotny is an engaged scholar and effective science entrepreneur. She has personally experienced the force of social constraints on science, on the production, dissemination and use of knowledge, including in a landmark case of gender discrimination that she was subjected to
in her early career. Helga Nowotny has made her mission not only to study science in context and contribute tirelessly to building and refining the conceptual and methodological apparatus for this study, but also to promote the advancement of science, scientists and science educators
through practical action, against the social, political, ideological or institutional odds of our times.

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY —The Open Society University Network (OSUN) today named Rahile Dawut, the prominent Uyghur folklorist who has been missing since December 2017, the first OSUN Honorary Professor in the Humanities.
 
Rahile Dawut, a professor at Xinjiang University in Ürümqi in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a folklorist and ethnographer. She created and directed the University's Minorities Folklore Research Center and is the author of dozens of articles and a number of books, including landmark studies on Islamic sacred sites in Central Eurasia. 

“Rahile Dawut is internationally recognized as a leading authority on Uyghur cultural life and practices,” said Leon Botstein, Chancellor of the Open Society University Network. “She has trained a generation of young scholars in the study of the region’s folklore and tradition, and her rigorous and illuminating work has become a portal through which the global community has been able to discover the richness of Uyghur culture.” 
 
Prof. Dawut disappeared in December 2017, after telling a relative that she was preparing to board a plane from Ürümqi to Beijing. Her current whereabouts are unknown, although it is believed that she is being held by the Chinese Government in a so-called “re-education camp,” a detention center, or a prison. 

Human Rights Watch and other organizations have reported on so-called “political education” camps in Xinjiang, where an estimated 1 million or more Uyghurs and others have been “detained without any legal process, and subjected to political indoctrination, ill-treatment, and sometimes torture.” A group of United Nations human rights experts stated, in December 2019, that “incommunicado detention, enforced disappearances and secret trials have no place in a country governed by the rule of law,” adding that “such practices go against the spirit of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed in 1998.”  
 
The Open Society University Network (OSUN) is a global partnership of 34 educational institutions across 19 nations that integrates learning and the advancement of knowledge across geographic and demographic boundaries, promotes civic engagement on behalf of open societies, and expands access to higher education for underserved communities.  The defense and advocacy of human rights and academic freedom, and the protection of threatened scholars, is at the core of OSUN’s mission.
 
In appointing Dawut to this position, OSUN expressed its support for the international movement for her release, and pledged to welcome her to a network institution to further her research and teaching when she is freed. 

Rahile Dawut was recently awarded the 2020 Courage to Think prize by Scholars At Risk. Accepting the award, her daughter Akeda Pulat said: “My mother is a scholar, not a criminal. She studies the folklore and cultural traditions of minority populations. She promoted the culture and history of her people. She has been doing research within the strict confinement of censorship imposed by the Chinese government.”

“December 12 marks the third anniversary of Rahile Dawut’s disappearance,” said Botstein. “We call on the Chinese authorities to reveal her whereabouts, to disclose any charges against her, and to allow her immediate return to her family, her classroom, and to the scholarship that has made her an essential part of the international academic community.”

The OSUN appointment came at the initiative of a group of students studying human rights advocacy and academic freedom at Bard College, a founding partner in OSUN, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. 
 

Organized by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, the internationally renowned London Critical Theory Summer School enables graduate students and academics to engage in a two-week course of study with acclaimed critical thinkers. Third-year undergraduate students as well as Masters and Ph.D. students across the OSUN network are invited to apply.

The application deadline is April 2, 2021.

Learn more and apply. 

The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) is partnering with the Smithsonian Institution’s Recovering Voices program, the EU funded CoLing project Minority Languages, Major Opportunities Collaborative Research, and Community Engagement and Innovative Educational Tools on a new initiative focused on the cultural politics of naming and being named. This call for essays, analysis, and art seeks academic and creative contributions that will be published in an interdisciplinary volume and exhibition. Learn more and submit your contribution.

On December 17, Leon Botstein joined the Future Hindsight podcast to speak about higher eduction.

Leon Botstein is president of Bard College, chancellor of the Open Society University Network, and music director of the American Symphony Orchestra. He discusses the relationship between democracy and education, the bankruptcy of American education today, and the foundational pillars of high-quality education.

OSUN invites faculty and staff from member institutions to submit a concept through the new OSUN Online Portal. Please ensure your concept follows the guidance outlined in the Call for Concepts. The deadline to submit a concept is December 15, 2020 at 11:59PM EST.
 
You can register in the OSUN Online Portal HERE
 
Registering in the OSUN Portal: Prior to submitting a concept, please register through the portal. If your concept has multiple co-authors, each person must register as a user through the portal. Only one person can submit a concept on behalf of a collaborative group. You may register in the portal and return at a later time to submit a concept.
 
Submitting a Concept: After registering, please follow the “Submit a Concept” link within the portal. Your concept cannot exceed 750 words. No formatting can be used, and you should prepare your concept in advance, so that you can cut and paste the content into your online application.
 
If you choose to include additional documents with your concept, they must be uploaded as a bundled pdf. Please include the project title and primary author as the document name and in the document header. Due to the large volume of concepts expected, we discourage lengthy additional documents at the concept stage.
 
Applicants invited to submit a full proposal will be notified by February 15, 2021. Instructions to submit a full proposal will be shared with the author(s) of successful concepts. Applicants can expect a 45 day turnaround to submit a full proposal online.
 
If you have questions or experience technical difficulties when registering or submitting a concept, contact [email protected]
 
The deadline to submit a concept is December 15, 2020 at 11:59PM EST.
 
To register in the OSUN Online Portal visit: https://opensocietyuniversitynetwork.force.com/fundingprograms/
 

OSUN is preparing the launch of the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative which aims to bring scholars at risk of persecution, war, or other life- and work-threatening circumstances to OSUN institutions and programs as beneficiaries, academic collaborators, and intellectual leaders in teaching, research, public engagement, and advocacy. The formal launch of the program is expected in early 2021.
OSUN will support residential placements and virtual affiliations with both specific institutions and OSUN cross-institutional projects. The scholars who belong to the risk groups can apply directly or be nominated by OSUN institutions. The minimal virtual affiliation is for one year and residential fellowships will be made for a minimum of two years. OSUN institutions interested and able to host scholars, or colleagues who have nominations, should contact the program's co-directors Thomas Keenan and Oleksandr Shtokvych for more information and to discuss the practicalities of engagement.
 

The Bard Experiential Learning Program and the IWT Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (CLASP) invite applications from OSUN network partners to participate in the first OSUN Experiential Learning Institute in Spring 2021. The program seeks to foster, promote, and explore the pedagogy of experiential learning by cultivating reciprocal partnerships among OSUN partners while expanding Engaged Liberal Arts and Science (ELAS) course offerings. ELAS courses seek to connect student’s classroom experiences with their local communities to enhance learning and promote co-curricular engagement. Application deadline is December 21, 2020. Contact CLASP with any questions.

Learn more and apply

On the heels of the American election, the recently established Democracy Institute at Central European University hosted its first event to discuss the broader implications of the election and how the outcome impacts democracy in the U.S. and worldwide. The online event, organized by CEU Professor and Co-Director of the Democracy Institute, Laszlo Bruszt, brought together CEU Rector and President, Michael Ignatieff, in conversation with speakers, Stephen Holmes (New York University), David Runciman (Cambridge University) and Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University), who discussed aspects of the election including the mutual incomprehension across party lines, the role of loser’s consent in Trump’s defeat, the historical significance of a single-term presidency as well as facets of institutional reform.

Learn more: www.ceu.edu
www.ceu.edu/unit/ceu-democracy-institute

CEU invites applications for the OSUN Modular Doctoral Fellowship program. The program supports junior faculty of select OSUN universities who wish to undertake doctoral studies at a leading institution of graduate education in the social sciences and humanities while maintaining their academic positions and continuing teaching at home universities. The Fellowships are flexibly structured with intermittent periods of residential studies at CEU and cover tuition, travel and living stipends for residencies. The fellowships are open for all doctoral programs at CEU; interested candidates apply through regular CEU admissions procedure. Program details, eligibility, and application guidelines available here. 

OSUN invites initial, one-page concepts from individuals or teams of faculty, researchers, or staff at partner institutions for collaborative programs that advance one or more of OSUN’s core priorities: integrate curricula, teaching, and research across partner institutions; expand civic engagement; increase access to higher education. Program concepts should envision substantive collaboration between two or more OSUN partner institutions. A list of OSUN partner institutions is included in the attached document. Concepts should address one or more of the OSUN themes or strategies.

This call for concepts is the first step in a two-step process. In the second step, OSUN will invite authors of selected concepts to develop a full proposal. Concepts should succinctly summarize the purpose, anticipated results, activities, and relevance to OSUN of a proposed program.

Learn about the OSUN Online Portal for Concept Submissions

The Common Course initiative brings together students from OSUN partners in new interdisciplinary courses designed to engage students with a unique academic experience relevant to the extraordinary global impact of COVID-19. Each of these courses addresses a critical global or local contemporary issue from interdisciplinary perspectives. In addition to enrolling OSUN students in classes at Bard College in Annandale, some Common Courses are taught at multiple OSUN institutions and all feature opportunities for students and faculty to convene over the course of the semester for lectures, panel discussions, small group work, and critiques. The three-week Visual Storytelling Workshop provides a shared module for selected courses at Bard College in Annandale, Bard College Berlin, American University of Central Asia, and Al-Quds Bard.
 

The Open Society University Network (OSUN) has been elected as cochair of the Taskforce on Third Country Education Pathways, launched by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR).

OSUN will cochair the taskforce with The World University Service of Canada, leading representatives from the Japan ICU Foundation, the Government of Portugal, Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, the Government of Canada, Unione delle Università del Mediterraneo, and the Institute of International Education, among others.
 The task force is charged with developing best practices for higher education pathways that respond to the needs of refugees, internally displaced individuals, and others displaced by crises, as well as leading the development of advocacy strategies to ensure access and the establishment of minimum standards for institutions seeking to host students.

Dr. Rebecca Granato, associate vice president for global initiatives at Bard College, will represent OSUN. “I look forward to this work as part of our wider mission to develop the OSUN Microcolleges for Connected Learning Initiatives for displaced and host-community learners.”

Learn more about the work of the taskforce in the UNHCR Doubling Our Impact Report.

Author and POLITICO contributing writer, Ben Judah, joins Walter Russell Mead to discuss how a Biden administration's foreign policy will diverge from Donald Trump's. Ben Judah is an author and journalist. He has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic and Foreign Policy. He is the author of Fragile Empire and This is London.

The Power of the Public Intellectual Series, moderated by Bard College Professor and Wall Street Journal “Global View” columnist Walter Russell Mead, is a series of virtual dialogues focused on the stakes and core issues of the 2020 US election. Professor Mead will be joined by distinguished policy experts, academics, and public servants to discuss the choice America will make this November. Over the course of several livestreamed events, the series will provide insight into both campaigns’ perspectives and the potential consequences, particularly for foreign policy, of either outcome.

Learn how to join this event

We are happy to announce that applications for the Open Society University Network Academy Fellowships at the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs are now open.

Eligibility

• Al-Quds University/Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences
• American University of Beirut
• American University of Bulgaria
• American University of Central Asia
• Arizona State University
• Ashesi University
• Bard College
• Bard College Berlin
• Birkbeck, University of London
• BRAC University
• Central European University
• European Humanities University
• National University of Political Studies and Public Administration 
• Sciences Po
• SOAS, University of London
• Universidad de los Andes
• Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen
• Rift Valley Institute
• Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research

Fields and areas of research supported by the fellowships are broadly defined as follows:

• International Law
• Global Economy and Finance
• Global Health
• Energy, Environment and Resources
• International security

Mark Steitz, Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs and senior principal at TSD Communications, will join Walter Russell Mead to discuss current polling data for the 2020 election. Looking beyond horse race politics, they will consider what the information teaches us about American society as it exists today.

The Power of the Public Intellectual Series, moderated by Bard College Professor and Wall Street Journal “Global View” columnist Walter Russell Mead, is a series of virtual dialogues focused on the stakes and core issues of the 2020 US election. Professor Mead will be joined by distinguished policy experts, academics, and public servants to discuss the choice America will make this November. Over the course of several livestreamed events, the series will provide insight into both campaigns’ perspectives and the potential consequences, particularly for foreign policy, of either outcome.

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Join this event >>

The OSUN Connected and Blended Learning Toolkit, developed by the Center for Learning in Practice (CLiP) in collaboration with the Open Society University Network and Bard College, is a living document that is open and accessible to faculty across the network, offering support for connected and blended course development. By combining learning theory with pedagogical practice, the toolkit presents a unique self-paced guide to support faculty through the planning and facilitation of online learning experiences that place liberal arts pedagogies front and center. Faculty can use the toolkit in a range of ways--as a guide to planning a course from start to finish, or as a place to turn for specific ideas related to technological tools or classroom activities. The intention is for the toolkit to continue to grow and change, reflecting the needs of faculty across campuses. We welcome your feedback at [email protected].


 

In March 2020, Wisdom Tochi Kalu from Ashesi University presented on his initiative Code4All during the Get Engaged Conference hosted by the Bard Center for Civic Engagement (CCE). Following this conference, he received a microgrant from the CCE to continue Code4All's work. Ashesi University is a member of the Open Society University Network.

“In 2019, I founded the Code4All Initiative with five international students on campus. The organization is accomplishing something similar to what Paradigm Initiative is doing – creating access to digital skills for students from under-served communities. The project currently runs on our campus and has received two international funding – one from the Ford Foundation and the other from Bard College Centre for Civic Engagement." (National Accord)

OSUN Uses RebelBase Platform to Connect Social Enterprise Students at Global Network of Universities

This fall, the Open Society University Network is using the RebelBase platform to connect social enterprise cohorts at universities in Dhaka, Bishkek, Mataró, Jerusalem, and the Hudson Valley. Bard MBA Entrepreneurship Professor Alejandro Crawford is the cofounder and CEO of RebelBase, which teaches entrepreneurial thinking as a form of basic literacy, addressing one of the most critical skills gaps of 21st-century education. “Schools use powerful Learning Management Systems to teach students how others have solved problems in the past, but fail broadly at experiential learning,” says Professor Crawford. RebelBase is designed to fix that. Crawford calls it, “The first Innovation Learning System (ILS). It guides users as they learn to attack broken systems with bold new experiments and draws energy to those experiments, the way entrepreneurs do.” (Forbes)

On Monday, August 10, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network continued COV-AID, an initiative to support universities engaged in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, through their webinar series: Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope. This series continues with the webinar "Civically Engaged Universities and the Pandemic: Student Stories of Hope."

This webinar featured five of the COV-AID Student Engagement Award winners:

• Thaís Mazzo da Costa, University of Campinas (Brazil)
• Catherine Kasungia Mumo, Strathmore University (Kenya)
• Zamima Islam Sabaa, BRAC University (Bangladesh)
• Vera Stojanovic, University College Cork (Ireland)
• Mohak Thukral, OP Jindal Global University (India)

This panel was moderated by Lorlene Hoyt, Executive Director, Talloires Network housed at Tufts University.

On July 1, The Open Society University Network (OSUN) hosted a candid dialogue with Patrick Gaspard, president of the Open Society Foundations. Moderated by Jonathan Becker, vice-chancellor of OSUN, the discussion was cosponsored by OSUN and Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The video is now available to view.

Watch

On July 8, the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network hosted the second Tomorrow Is Now conference with guest speaker Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen, as she explored Eleanor Roosevelt’s legacy in today’s global challenges. 

Hosted by Manuela Roosevelt, Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership is honored to host the Tomorrow Is Now virtual conference series in partnership with the COV-AID project sponsored by the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network. Members of Eleanor’s Circle, as well as students and faculty across the global networks, are invited to participate in the live Zoom sessions where speakers from around the world will reflect on the relevance of Eleanor’s legacy during the pandemic.

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Additional Info:

Manuela Roosevelt is the Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, a private nonprofit that works in tandem with the National Park Service for the enhancement of visitors' experience at the home of Eleanor Roosevelt, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, in upstate New York. The organization funds educational programs, lectures, and has raised more than $2.5 million for NPS to assist in restoration projects at the site. She is the Editorial Director at Callaway Arts and Entertainment, a publisher and cross-platform media company in New York City. She lives with her family at Springwood, the estate where Franklin D Roosevelt was born that now belongs to the National Park Service.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Sweater. Her second book Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World was published in May 2020. In 2001, Jacqueline founded Acumen with the idea of investing philanthropic patient capital in entrepreneurs seeking to solve the toughest issues of poverty. As a pioneer of impact investing, Acumen and its investments have brought critical services like healthcare, education and clean energy to hundreds of millions of low-income people. After supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs, Jacqueline and her team recognized character as the crucial ingredient for success; in 2020, they launched Acumen Academy to instruct others in global social change. Under Jacqueline’s leadership, Acumen also has launched several for-profit impact funds designed to invest at the intersection of poverty and climate change, and has spun off 60 Decibels, founded on the principle that serving all stakeholders is as important as enriching shareholders. Jacqueline has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, one of the 25 Smartest People of the Decade by the Daily Beast, and one of the world’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds by Forbes, which also honored her with the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In addition to her work with Acumen, she is a sought-after speaker and sits on a number of philanthropic boards. She lives in New York City with her husband.

The Open Society University Network (OSUN) and Foreign Policy Interrupted (FPI), announce the inaugural class of fellows. The FPI Fellowship is for mid-career women in foreign policy who are eager to share their expertise and engage in policy discussions.

Nine women, across a range of foreign policy disciplines, will participate in a six-week workshop focused on op-ed writing, media training, public speaking, and pitching editors.

The 2020 FPI-Bard Fellows

Adjoa Anyimadu
Molly Hayes Baril
Liliana Diaz
Aleksandra Dier
Catherine Eng
Elizabeth Losos
Haruna Minora
Susi Snyder
Audrey Kawire Wabwire

FPI started the fellowship in 2014 and has trained over 40 women, across a wide range of areas, including cybersecurity, Asian defense, conflict resolution, science, and technology. Previous FPI Fellows have been published in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, and the New York Times.

“I’m thrilled to partner with Bard College and the OSUN network on an expanded version of the fellowship program,” said FPI cofounder and CEO Elmira Bayrasli. “Bard and OSUN’s global reach and focus on building community and creating value makes it the right partner.” Bayrasli was named director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) in January.

“This is a fellowship for women around the world, from different backgrounds and disciplines. Bard and OSUN provide wonderful networks to help FPI reach more talented women whose voices and expertise can only add value to today’s pressing challenges,” said Jonathan Becker, executive vice president of Bard College and vice chancellor of OSUN.

For information about applying for an FPI-Bard Fellowship, write to [email protected].
 

On Monday, June 8, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network continued COV-AID, an initiative to support universities engaged in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, through their webinar series: Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope. This series continues with the webinar "Civically Engaged Universities and the Pandemic: Issues of Displacement and Economics."

This webinar featured a panel: 
Rebecca Granato, Associate Vice President for Global Initiatives, Al Quds Bard (Palestine)
Miklos Koren, Professor of Economics, Central European University (Hungary)
Maire Leane, Senior Lecturer, University College Cork (Ireland)
Vera Stojanovic, student leader, University College Cork (Ireland)
Agata Lisiak, Professor, Bard College Berlin (Germany)
Nieves Segovia, President, SEK Education Group (Spain)

This panel was moderated by Lorlene Hoyt, Executive Director, Talloires Network housed at Tufts University.

The Open Society University Network (OSUN) will host a candid dialogue with Patrick Gaspard, president of the Open Society Foundations, on Wednesday, July 1, from 9–10 a.m. Moderated by Jonathan Becker, vice-chancellor of OSUN, the discussion is cosponsored by OSUN and Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

On June 2, the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network hosted the second Tomorrow Is Now conference with guest speaker Joel H. Rosenthal, president of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, as he explored Eleanor Roosevelt’s legacy in today’s global challenges. 

Hosted by Manuela Roosevelt, Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, Tomorrow Is Now is the title of the last book authored by Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership is honored to host the Tomorrow Is Now virtual conference series in partnership with the COV-AID project sponsored by the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network. Members of Eleanor’s Circle, as well as students and faculty across the global networks, are invited to participate in the live Zoom sessions where speakers from around the world will reflect on the relevance of Eleanor’s legacy during the pandemic.

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Additional Info:

Manuela Roosevelt is the Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, a private nonprofit that works in tandem with the National Park Service for the enhancement of visitors' experience at the home of Eleanor Roosevelt, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, in upstate New York. The organization funds educational programs, lectures, and has raised more than $2.5 million for NPS to assist in restoration projects at the site. She is the Editorial Director at Callaway Arts and Entertainment, a publisher and cross-platform media company in New York City. She lives with her family at Springwood, the estate where Franklin D Roosevelt was born that now belongs to the National Park Service.

Joel H. Rosenthal is president of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. He is also a faculty member in the Bard College Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) program in New York City. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and B.A. from Harvard University. As a scholar and teacher, Rosenthal has focused on ethics in US foreign policy, with special emphasis on issues of war and peace, human rights, and pluralism. His first book Righteous Realists (1991) is a study of Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Reinhold Niebuhr, among other American realists. His edited volume Ethics & International Affairs: A Reader (Georgetown University Press; 3rd edition, co-edited by Christian Barry) is a compilation of essays from major figures in the field and is widely used in college and university courses. In 2016, he was appointed Dorsett Fellow at Dartmouth College. His numerous national and international awards include the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Studies Association in 2019 for his life-time achievement in International Studies and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Science from the University of Edinburgh. He is the editor-in-chief of the Carnegie Council's flagship journal, Ethics & International Affairs, published by Cambridge University Press.

On Monday, May 11, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network continued their work with COV-AID, an initiative to support universities engaged in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, through their webinar series: Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope. This series continues with the webinar  "Civically Engaged Universities and the Pandemic: Strategies that Work"


This webinar featured a panel: David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Bard College Felicia Keesing, Director of the Center for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy at Central European University Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Assistant Professor at Ziauddin University Fatima Jehangir, Associate Professor at Singapore University of Social Sciences Carol Ma, and the Dean for IMU Community Engagement at International Medical University Khoo Suan Phaik.

This panel was moderated by Erin Cannan, Dean of Civic Engagement at Bard College.

 The series is sponsored by Open Society University Network (OSUN) and the Talloires Network (TN), housed at Tufts University.

On May 5, the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network hosted the first Tomorrow Is Now conference with guest speaker Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent of The New York Times, as he explored Eleanor Roosevelt’s legacy in today’s global challenges. 

Hosted by Manuela Roosevelt, Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, Tomorrow Is Now is the title of the last book authored by Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership is honored to host the Tomorrow Is Now virtual conference series in partnership with the COV-AID project sponsored by the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network. Members of Eleanor’s Circle, as well as students and faculty across the global networks, are invited to participate in the live Zoom sessions where speakers from around the world will reflect on the relevance of Eleanor’s legacy during the pandemic.

---

Additional Info:

Manuela Roosevelt is the Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership, a private nonprofit that works in tandem with the National Park Service for the enhancement of visitors' experience at the home of Eleanor Roosevelt, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, in upstate New York. The organization funds educational programs, lectures, and has raised more than $2.5 million for NPS to assist in restoration projects at the site. She is the Editorial Director at Callaway Arts and Entertainment, a publisher and cross-platform media company in New York City. She lives with her family at Springwood, the estate where Franklin D Roosevelt was born that now belongs to the National Park Service.

Peter Baker is the Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC who covered President Obama, three previous presidents, and now President Trump. He previously worked for The Washington Post and is the author of five books, including days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. He lives in Washington with his wife, Susan Glasser, and their son, Theo Baker.

Jonathan Becker, Bard’s Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of Center for Civic Engagement, describes Bard’s efforts to respond to the COVID-19 crisis in the classroom and in the community.

Life in the era of COVID-19, as in all times of crisis, amplifies our basic instincts. Do we become anxious or confident, selfish or generous, rigid or adaptable? The same applies to institutions. And right now, at this moment of national and global crisis, Bard College is demonstrating who we are: student-focused, innovative, entrepreneurial, and civically engaged. We regularly underscore to our students the importance of critical thinking, the capacity to improvise and adapt, and the need for resilience. Our teaching is informed by a commitment to promoting in students a sense of agency and a belief that they can contribute in their own ways to society and culture and thereby help shape the future. The very nature of our close and creative approach to education is informing our development of new and effective ways to teach and support our students and engage with our communities, even as we adapt to this crisis and its impact on higher education.

In the Classroom
Our student-centered approach to teaching, combined with small class sizes typical of residential liberal arts colleges, has been pivotal in facilitating a more healthy transition to online teaching. Students are not spending class time watching a pre-recorded lecture, as often happens with larger classes, but are engaging with their professors and each other in seminar-style discussions, and working together, synchronously or asynchronously. Many Bard students and faculty elected to keep meeting during spring break, using the extra time to seek comfort and camaraderie in this transformed learning space, and to continue working together outside of scheduled class times. One professor, responding to students eager to “stay after class,” opened a separate Friday afternoon reading group on David Copperfield. Another is offering two sections of his class, one at the regularly scheduled time and another several hours later so as to accommodate students in China.

We have discovered that Bard’s global footprint and innovative liberal arts curriculum have prepared us for this crisis in unexpected ways. We have pioneered the use of connected-learning approaches (for learning, we prefer the term “connected” to “online”) in virtual international exchanges that we call network classes. For the past five years, hundreds of students at seven liberal arts institutions across the globe participated in parallel courses and interacted synchronously and asynchronously as they studied themes such as global citizenship, freedom of expression, and migration. Digital approaches paired with “low-tech” assignments have created dynamic environments used extensively in Bard programs such as Experimental Humanities. As a result, faculty in the program have been able to quickly produce a handbook and other resources to help colleagues successfully make the transition to remote instruction while maintaining the student-centered liberal arts approach at the heart of Bard’s educational philosophy. (The handbook has now been translated into five languages.)
 
Many of the teaching methods we use so effectively in person translate extremely well to a connected learning environment. Writing prompts that are part of the signature approach of Bard’s Institute for Writing and Thinking, for example, enable multiple students to post their thoughts simultaneously in chat rooms, allowing others to respond and the professor to identify where best to engage further. 

Creativity and adaptability are critical to teaching, particularly in the arts and humanities. While many colleges and universities have cancelled live performances this spring, our Theater and Performance Program mobilized students and visiting artists to use an inventive, modified version of Zoom to transform a production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest into a hybrid art form, somewhere between a theatrical performance and a live-action film, that has been conceived, rehearsed, and performed entirely online. A literature professor has offered a special one-credit class on Literature and Epidemics. Bard’s President Leon Botstein, often skeptical of the claims of technology to improve on traditional models of undergraduate education, is joining his colleagues in music to embrace the moment with regular classes, lessons, and new performance experiments with Bard’s more than 100 music conservatory students spread across the globe.

Our experience in COVID-19 has made it clear that there is no substitute for face-to-face learning, especially in the arts and experimental sciences. We also recognize that our capacity to transition swiftly and successfully to a connected learning environment is in part due to relationships forged previously in in-person classes on campus that occurred earlier in the term. It’s clear to us that COVID-19 will not result in a wholesale transition to online learning, but that liberal arts colleges such as Bard will be far better positioned to utilize the technology and platforms of connected learning than is commonly recognized. Our core strengths and traditions are compatible with and translate well to the online experience. 

Student Life
Bard’s move to connected learning this semester has included cocurricular and student life, which is so central to the residential liberal arts experience. The underlying view is that we need to continue to embrace the whole student on campus and off. Student Activities has responded with a steady stream of virtual events for our dispersed student body, be it with poetry readings, live performances, or fireside chats. Student clubs are still meeting and we are hosting online conferences, debates, and essay contests, often in collaboration with our international partners. 

Community Engagement
We have also remained engaging with our local community. The Bard Architecture and Design Program is using 3D printers to make medical equipment and the Theater and Performance Program's costume department is making masks for local hospitals. Students in Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences, Bard’s version of service learning, are working with a variety of organizations to provide support to those struggling under the pressures of the coronavirus. The Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) has drawn on student, staff, and faculty volunteers across the institution to partner with more than 40 community partners to distribute food, create online lessons for local students, and create programming with and for Bard’s Lifetime Learning Institute. La Voz, which is sponsored by CCE and the only Spanish-language newspaper in the region, continues to publish and its editor, a Bard alumna, appears regularly as host of a local radio broadcast. Brothers at Bard, a mentoring program for men of color, is continuing its support of high school students in the neighboring city of Kingston and in New York City, and is even connecting with alumni through online meetings and a book group. Nearly 100 students, faculty, and staff have volunteered to help tutor students in the network of eight Bard High School Early Colleges (BHSECs) spread across the U.S. 

Working with Partners Nationally and Globally 
As we adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, we draw on experiences, partnerships and networks that we have developed over decades. Academic affairs officers, student affairs officers, and members of offices of civic engagement across Bard’s national and international networks of partners meet regularly to exchange ideas and insights on the transition to an online world and to offer each other support. There are great benefits in these exchanges. For example, faculty at our dual-degree partners—including the American University of Central Asia, Al-Quds University, and Bard College Berlin—teach blended learning classes, which mix in-person, in-class learning with online reading and discussion, to refugees in Jordan and Bangladesh and in-service teachers in Kyrgyzstan, and are eager to share with U.S.-based faculty through a series of webcasts. Similarly, BHSEC faculty, who have amazingly diverse experience and who share common teaching values with those in Annandale, have shared experiences during the transition online.  

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), which runs the largest degree-granting prison education program in the country, has been extremely helpful in addressing the vexing issue of access because they are used to strict limits: their approach to innovative asynchronous assignments has been particularly helpful in assisting faculty to work with students who, because of personal circumstances or geographic locations, struggle with synchronous learning.

Written materials, sample assignments, and webcasts from across Bard’s networks have been posted on the Network Resources page sponsored by the Open Society University Network.

Looking Ahead
We recognize that virtual connections cannot, and should not, replace the in-person experience, and that much of our success in this transition is based on the teaching methods we have forged over the years. We also know that there will be additional challenges in the future, as the crisis continues and even as it resolves. But we remain optimistic in our capacity to work with students both within and outside of the classroom and to demonstrate that the liberal arts curriculum—more essential now than ever—can be successfully adapted. When the crisis ends, we will further adapt our connected approaches, like virtual international exchanges, and will make important contributions to the reestablishment of face-to-face learning, and, critically, the reestablishment of public life.

While COVID-19 poses many challenges to higher education, the Bard College community is leaning in to the challenge, not settling into a holding pattern. We do this in the knowledge that, by embracing what we are at our best, we will be able to maintain our commitment to our students’ learning and well-being. When we look back on this time, we will be able to say that we practiced what we preach, and we learned how to do what we do better.
 

On Monday, April 13, the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network launched COV-AID, a new initiative to support universities engaged in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The effort began with the first in a series of webinars: “Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope.”

This webinar featured a panel: Bard College President and OSUN Chancellor Leon Botstein, Universidad Veracruzana Rectora and Talloires Network Vice Chair Sara Ladrón de Guevara, and Tufts University President and Talloires Network Chair Anthony P. Monaco. The series is sponsored by Open Society University Network (OSUN) and the Talloires Network (TN), housed at Tufts University.