FREE to THINK 2020: Report of the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project

2020 Free to Think Report of the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project Acknowledgements Scholars at Risk (SAR) gratefully acknowledges the members of higher education communities worldwide who have inspired us through their courage and dedication. We acknowledge especially the researchers contributing to the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project by reporting and analyzing incidents, tracking down sources and witnesses, and helping to develop advocacy responses. We also acknowledge our publication partners—the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey; theUniversity of Los Andes Human Rights Observatory, in Venezuela; and Aula Abierta, also in Venezuela— for their important contributions to this year’s report. We thank the Office of the Provost and New York University for hosting SAR, as well as the many other member institutions, associations, partners, and individuals that contribute to our work beyond the monitoring project. These include especially the Vivian G. Prins Foundation for core support for services for threatened and refugee scholars, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Foundations, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Winston Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, Demoret Stiftung, the Microsoft Corporation, Newman’s Own Foundation, our anonymous donors, the members of SAR’s Board and Ambassadors Council, and the many friends of SAR who help us each day to protect more scholars. This report is the result of research conducted by the monitoring project and our publication partners, and thus may not reflect the views of individual network members, institutions, or participating individuals. SAR invites comments on this report or inquiries about our work at [email protected]. SAR depends on the generous financial support of friends inside and outside higher education communities to sustain our work. Gifts of any size are gratefully appreciated, including matching gifts and bequests. To donate, please visit www.scholarsatrisk.org. November 2020 ISBN 978-0-9994844-9-4 © Scholars at Risk 2020. All rights reserved. For use or information, contact Scholars at Risk at [email protected]. Report graphics and layout by Susannah Hainley (www.shainley.com). COVER: On August 18, 2020, students gesturing with the three-finger salute protested on Thailand’s Mahidol University campus, demanding the dissolution of parliament, the drafting of a new constitution, and an end to the harassment of pro-democracy activists and government critics. Photo: Kan Sangtong / Shutterstock.com Free to Think 2020 Report of the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Call to Action 7 Academic Freedom and its Protection Under International Law 15 COVID-19’s Impact on Higher Education 19 Violent Attacks on Higher Education Communities 25 Yemen’s Universities Under Attack 31 Wrongful Imprisonment and Prosecution of Scholars 39 Scholars in Prison 44 India’s Clampdown on Dissent 49 Global Threats to Student Expression 59 The University Under Siege: Turkey’s Academic Community in Paralysis 69 Restrictions on Scholar and Student Travel 75 Academic Freedom Repression Under China’s Central Government 83 Legislative and Administrative Threats to Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom 97 The Decline of the Venezuelan University 106 Recommendations 114 Appendix I: Table of Incidents 116 Appendix II: Methodology 123 “Higher education must be protected: for there are few institutions as crucial to the training, scientific progress, and cooperation that will move the world past its current state.” 2 The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education around the world, forcing universities and colleges to abandon on-campus teaching and discussions, and move most activities to virtual or hybrid environments. Here, mask-wearing students at the Université Libre De Bruxelles, in Belgium, participate in an in-person graduation ceremony. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com Executive Summary Attacks on scholars, students, staff, and 2020, as universities around the world shut down, students and faculty left campus, and higher education their institutions occur with alarming transitioned (where possible) to an online model, frequency. Around the world, state and the pattern changed, and the crisis revealed new non-state actors, including armed militant vulnerabilities within higher education. In the months and extremist groups, police and military that followed, SAR reported an increase in online disruption, harassment, and related attacks. Higher forces, government authorities, off-campus education communities experienced new versions groups, and even members of higher of old pressures, aware that their every lecture, education communities, among others, communication, and in-class interaction could now carry out these attacks. They harm the be monitored and recorded; universities experienced individuals and institutions directly unprecedented financial challenges; and state actors attacked scholars and students challenging official targeted. They undermine entire higher government narratives about the causes of and education systems by impairing the quality solutions to the crisis. of teaching, research, and discourse on Thus, even as university life as we knew it came to a campus. They shrink everyone’s space halt, the pressures SAR monitors and tracks continued to think, question, and share ideas freely (albeit in sometimes altered forms). The categories of and safely, constricting public discourse attack that the monitoring project captures—killings, and damaging social, political, cultural, violence, and disappearances; wrongful prosecution and imprisonment; loss of position and expulsion from and economic development from which study; improper travel restrictions; and other severe everyone stands to benefit. or systemic issues (including, for example, military occupation of campuses, and this year in particular, Through its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, online harassment of students and professors)—have Scholars at Risk (SAR) responds to these attacks by remained sources of grave concern, and continued identifying and tracking key incidents, with the aim of through the COVID-19 crisis. And indeed, while the protecting vulnerable individuals, raising awareness, circumstances have changed for the moment, the encouraging accountability, and promoting dialogue motivations behind the attacks remain the same: to and understanding that can help prevent future control or silence higher education institutions and threats. Since 2015, SAR has been publishing Free to personnel. Free to Think 2020 analyzes 341 reported Think, a series of annual reports analyzing attacks on attacks in 58 countries and territories that occurred higher education communities around the world. between September 1, 2019, and August 31, 2020. Free to Think 2020 details a continuation of a global Armed groups and individuals continue to carry pattern of attacks. However, beginning with the out severe, violent attacks on higher education global onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March communities. These include attacks in countries 3 FREE TO THINK 2020: Report of the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project experiencing extremism or conflict, where higher Venezuela; as well as broad, policy-level restrictions education communities may be targeted as perceived by governments in Israel, Turkey, and the United symbols of state authority or sources of opposition to States. These actions have frustrated the free flow radical ideologies. They also include attacks targeting of ideas across borders that is essential to quality individual scholars or students intended to retaliate higher education and to building global understanding against or deter academic activity and expression. and cooperation. Of course, with the onset of the Over the past year, SAR reported on violent attacks COVID-19 crisis, academic travel became virtually on campuses in Afghanistan, India, and Yemen; impossible, preventing or cutting short countless targeted attacks on individual scholars and students research trips, international conferences, and study in Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Colombia, Haiti, India, Iraq, abroad programs around the world. Kenya, Somalia, and Ukraine; and violent, sometimes Attacks on student expression also remained an all- lethal force against student protesters in Nigeria and too-frequent subset of the reported incidents. In the Iraq. past year, SAR reported on more than one hundred State authorities around the world used detentions, incidents involving attacks on student expression, prosecutions, and other coercive legal measures to including violent attacks, arrests and prosecutions, punish and restrict hundreds of scholars’ and students’ and disciplinary measures, with sustained pressures research, teaching, and extramural expression and found in Colombia, Iran, the Occupied Palestinian associations. These actions were frequently carried Territories (OPT), and South Africa. Such attacks out under laws or on grounds ostensibly related to threaten the future of strong, nonviolent student national security, terrorism, sedition, and defamation. movements, which are important to understanding Over the past year, in countries including Spain, contemporary issues and to the development of future Pakistan, India, Egypt, Russia, and Zimbabwe, scholars leaders. and students were arrested and/or imprisoned in Legislative and

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