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On July 15, 2016, Turkey experienced a violent coup attempt, staged by a faction within the Turkish military seeking to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The episode resulted in over 240 deaths and 2,100 injuries, prompting a government crackdown on individuals suspected of having connections with the coup. A subsequent purge, which saw the dismissal of 130,000 public servants, including 7,000 academics, raised alarms over human rights and academic freedom violations.

At the time, Zahra Jafarova was residing in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, where she witnessed first-hand the repression faced by academics at Ankara University. Living nearby, she immersed herself in observing and reading about their experiences.

“I was moved by their stories of living under constant fear, feeling as though they could be arrested at any moment,” she recounts. “It was sad and painful to watch. Yet, it motivated me to delve deeper to better understand their struggles and take action.”

Today, Jafarova is a doctoral candidate in OISE’s department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education, focusing on the comparative politics of higher education, and academic freedom. Her academic journey has been deeply influenced by her observations in Ankara, which ignited her passion for researching academic freedom and those impacted by its erosion.

Recently, she was awarded the Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network’s 2023-2024 Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellowship to do just that. SAR is a global network of higher education institutions and individuals that works to safeguard threatened scholars, defend higher education, and advance academic freedom.
 

“The fight never stops”

Jafarova’s SAR project will examine the dynamics of academic freedom in the context of rising authoritarianism, illiberalism, and populism, specifically focusing on how higher education institutions respond to political pressures.

She will use Turkey as a case study to examine how different universities within the same system respond to political pressure. In addition, it will explore how the actions of scholars and students within these institutions influence the protection of academic freedom amidst such pressures.

This project was inspired by extensive interviews she conducted with exiled scholars from Turkey during her fieldwork in Europe last winter. Through these conversations, she gained a deeper understanding of their challenges in exile, such as constant relocation, unfamiliar academic environments, temporary and precarious employment, and the ongoing struggle to secure funding to sustain their work.

“For these scholars, the fight never stops. Yet, they are still producing knowledge, writing, and educating. They are so resilient, and I want to be a part of creating meaningful change [for them],” says Jafarova.

Jafarova sees the SAR Network as a valuable platform for amplifying the stories of scholars in exile and creating policy change that serves them. As part of the fellowship, she intends to write policy and research papers to highlight scholars' difficulties in exile. Her goal is to cultivate a greater understanding among policymakers, ultimately paving the way for the creation of new policies and opportunities that alleviate these hardships.

Professor Elizabeth Buckner, Jafarova’s doctoral supervisor, sees the fellowship as a well-deserved recognition of the importance of Jafarova’s research.

“Zahra is an enormously talented and creative scholar who has been exploring the relationship between higher education and democratic backsliding throughout her doctoral program. Her research comes at a time when we have seen a major wave of authoritarianism and erosion of democratic norms, which are impinging on universities and scholars around the world,” says Buckner.

Across the globe, academic freedom has deteriorated significantly over the last two decades, says Jafarova. In the United States, she points to the challenges around teaching critical race theory in classrooms and the rise of conservative and far-right governments in Europe that have exerted mounting pressures on universities.

She says that conditions are “even more dire in authoritarian contexts and countries experiencing democratic backsliding,” where governments are increasingly seeking to control higher education, using tactics such as surveillance and changes to funding to make it increasingly difficult for scholars to teach and produce knowledge without fear of repercussion.

Despite these challenges, Jafarova finds hope in the resilience of the scholars in exile she has met.

“The purpose of repression is to silence, but for the scholars I’ve met, it has had the opposite effect. They have been open and vocal despite the risks. They have been fierce and fearless, and this resistance gives me a lot of hope for the future.”