Physics professor Mustafa Bahran is a human who intuitively cares for those around him. On a bright Wednesday afternoon, when he sat down for an interview with the Charlatan, he instinctively knew a chocolate chip muffin and a joke involving gladiators, lions and presentation anxiety would enhance the discussion.
His love for life and people is perhaps most evident while in the classroom.
“I am an expert in teaching physics for those who hate physics,” Bahran said. “Teaching is the prime time of my day. I’m in class, on a wonderful trip to see things of the universe [and] the macro universe. I’m in a beautiful place, so I shine. That is contagious.”
Bahran describes himself as someone who has “worn so many hats.” A physics teacher for more than 30 years, a political prisoner at age 22 and a former science advisor to the president of Yemen, Bahran first arrived at Carleton University in 2018 as a visiting professor.
The former advisor fled Yemen with his family in the summer of 2015, fearing for their safety after he refused to work for the militant government. The Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) and Scholars at Risk (SAR) Carleton chapter sponsored Bahran to teach at Carleton. Now in his sixties, he is an active voice in advocating for the rights of at-risk and diaspora scholars.
“All of my life, I have been a rebel against the establishment,” he said.
SAR Carleton, part of the international SAR Network, provides an academic haven at the university for displaced, at-risk or fleeing scholars to continue their research, teaching or activism. The university currently hosts four scholars. SAR Carleton also remotely supports five scholars overseas.
Alongside the ongoing work of SAR Carleton, this year a fourth-year law class titled Academia and Activism campaigned for the release of imprisoned scholars through awareness events and two petitions. At a time when academic freedom is facing global declines, these efforts are fuelled by the belief that academic freedom is pivotal for societal health and the sustenance of fundamental human rights.
SAR Carleton sponsors academics amidst ongoing adaptation
Andrew Johnston, an associate professor of history at Carleton and SAR Carleton co-chair, said hosting an at-risk academic at Carleton is different for every case.
“Scholars who are coming here are chosen because of their need,” he said. “There’s no standard response to how we mentor an academic who comes in because their stage of career can be very different.”
Every July, SAR Carleton works alongside the SRF and the SAR Network to select a new scholar and potentially their family to host for approximately two years. SAR Carleton selects scholars whose academic and situational needs can be fused well with the university’s resources. Depending on the scholar’s unique needs, they are provided with a faculty mentor, research support, workshops, access to library databases, teaching opportunities, and familial ESL and emotional aid.
“We in the international higher education community have a real responsibility to support our colleagues. [They] bring great benefit to our communities,” James King, director of the SRF, said.
“You are here rightfully because there is a worth in your work,” Shuchi Karim, a former at-risk scholar, said at an advocacy event organized by the Academia and Activism class. “[The SAR Network] has to be very closely connected to a sense of dignity and a sense of purpose for exiled and at-risk academics.”
The transition for these academics is not simple. There are tangible obstacles for visiting scholars.
Within two years, academics relocate their family to a new climate, handle immigration matters, care for their mental health, work at the university and prepare for a new job market that may not be synchronized with their scholarship.
“You get the sense that scholars are very grateful that they’re safe … at the same time, they’re also very frustrated with the circumstances,” Johnston said. “We’re frustrated that we can’t do more. We’re just a committee with a budget we get year by year.”
SAR Carleton receives $130,000 from the university, $40,000 from relevant faculty deans and fundraising revenue from the community annually. The SRF provides one-year $25,000 fellowships with one-year renewal to scholars they jointly sponsor with SAR Carleton. These fellowships cover a portion of a scholar’s annual salary.
Visiting at-risk scholars receive an annual salary of $80,000 if they are teaching and $65,000 if they are not, with $5,000 grants available to those conducting research. With an increased number of scholars currently hosted at Carleton due to the pandemic and global political crises, these numbers reflect a temporarily increased budget. SAR Carleton said it’s unsure when the budget will decrease again, due to the unpredictability of the ongoing political crises.
The SAR Carleton budget covers the salaries of visiting professors. Four scholars are currently hosted at the university, double the usual two.
Recently, SAR Carleton took the first steps to introduce benefits into visiting scholars’ salaries.
“The things that are often needed, particularly mental health support [and] day-care, are horrendously expensive,” Johnston said.
Law class advocates for imprisoned scholars
“All of us advocate for something in our lifetime, be it small or big,” Melanie Adrian, SAR Carleton founder and professor of the Academia and Activism course, said. The full-year course centres around developing advocacy skills, which this year, has included students organizing events throughout the second half of the term to raise awareness about imprisoned international scholars.
Bruna dos Santos Leite da Silva, a master’s student at the University of São Paulo and a lawyer in Brazil, is the teaching assistant for the course through an Emerging Leaders in the Americas scholarship. She said she’s thrilled with the collective work the students have fostered.
“The most meaningful thing about the class is being able to work with 14 female students and see their brilliance,” she said. “When you see the power of people who want to do good, it’s so energizing.”
The course combines human rights theory with practical skills development. In addition to organizing 12 events, the class is also writing an advocacy toolkit book to serve as a living document for future student advocacy seminars.
“What I hope I’m part of is creating a [group of] more informed social justice advocate[s],” Adrian said.
Students split themselves into four groups, each learning about and promoting the case of an international scholar imprisoned abroad, either Marfa Rabkova, Ilham Tohti, G.N. Saibaba or Niloufar Bayani.
Between 2021 and 2022, the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project documented 83 cases of scholars engaging in nonviolent academic activity who were imprisoned without cause. This statistic only accounts for reported, verified cases.
Anissa Gandhi, a fourth-year law and legal studies student, led the organization of Jailed for Thinking, a panelled advocacy event held in downtown Ottawa on March 21. During this forum, Academia and Activism students brought awareness of these cases to parliamentarians.
Gandhi said she grew as an activist while creating this event.
“There’s no simple route [to advocacy],” she said. “Organizing this panel, there wasn’t a map that was given. I had to visualize my goal and how to get there. It took a lot of critical thinking, meetings, brainstorming, negotiation and diplomacy.”
Two days after the forum, the law class and Bahran hosted a Free to Think Conversation at MacOdrum Library. Moderated by Bahran, the event featured the insights of SAR and SRF members, once again allowing the law class to raise awareness.
During the presentation, student Jenna Randall shook while reading a breaking news announcement that imprisoned scholar Niloufar Bayani had been temporarily released to spend Nowruz, the Persian new year, with her family.
Bayani, an Iranian biologist and environmental conservationist sentenced to 10 years in Evin Prison, was studying endangered Asiatic cheetahs when convicted of espionage by the Iranian government in 2019. Her voice has persevered from behind bars, due to her ongoing hunger strikes and penning letters about her experiences of torture and threats of sexual violence.
Given that Bayani has previously been temporarily released, Adrian reminded event members that advocating for Bayani’s research and ongoing safety from re-imprisonment is important.
Clare Robinson, a SAR Network advocacy director who creates comprehensive portfolios of severe academic detention cases, said advocacy work for wrongfully imprisoned academics is vital in sustaining hope.
“We have heard time and time again from scholars and students who are released from prison that they knew there were student advocacy seminars at places like Carleton,” she shared. “The fact that they knew they were not forgotten gave them the power to continue. It is a booster in a way that we could never fully appreciate.”
Robinson informed the Charlatan that Bayani’s commitment to science has not waned in prison, as the scholar recently began teaching a course on climate change to women in her ward.
Bahran said Cases like Bayani’s exemplify the resilience that is present in the minds of thinkers.
“They can incarcerate me, but they cannot incarcerate my mind [or my] ability to think, to write, to innovate and express our minds,” he said.
The canary or the arrow
“Good scientific research has methods. It’s fact-based. And there’s a whole body of information you’re delivering when you give your research,” Santos said.
More than 50 per cent of the world’s population is experiencing decreased levels of academic freedom compared to 10 years ago, with 22 countries, including the United States, experiencing significantly less academic freedom this past decade. The Index Index, formed with 2021 data, visualizes the academic freedom openness ranking for countries around the world.
Johnston said declines in academic freedom coincide with the loss of economic health, human rights and other fundamental freedoms.
“We tend to think of the harassment and imprisonment of scholars as the canary in the mineshaft, as the sign that civil freedoms in a society are not going well,” he said.
Citing capitalism, religious extremism, states’ reputations and socio-political disintegration as potential threats to free speech, Adrian stressed the necessity of protecting facts.
“Facts are very inconvenient, and it’s only through a democratic system that has checks and balances that society can tolerate, support and respond in nonviolent ways to a critical stance,” she said.
Bahran agreed. Without scholars to publish, promote and advocate for the facts, he said humanity could become stuck in the present.
“If humanity is an arrow, the head of the arrow, pointed towards the future, are scholars. If these people are not free to think and create and have academic freedom, there’s no arrow,” Bahran said.
Advocating for the freedom of scholars, he said, is not just about developing and advancing human knowledge—it’s also about preserving it.
“You’re maintaining the minds of the universe,” Bahran said.
Featured image by Kyra Vellinga.
