Free to Think Podcast

The Université libre de Bruxelles has a long tradition of hosting threatened scholars from all over the world. In this conversation with SAR Executive Director Rob Quinn, Anne Weyembergh, Professor of Law and Vice Rector for External Relations and Cooperation, describes the motivations for and impact of hosting scholars, such as keeping scholarship "free from repression, persecution," given that "...

Dr. Tyrell Haberkorn and Dr. Paul Chambers join Free to Think to discuss the use of Thailand's lèse-majesté law to intimidate and silence scholars. After three decades living and working in Thailand, Professor Paul Chambers was arrested in April 2025 and charged under Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code with lèse-majesté, or insulting the monarchy. He believes he was targeted in retaliation for...

Free to Think speaks with Omar Gómez Trejo, a lawyer and human rights advocate from Mexico. Omar gained prominence as the special prosecutor leading the investigation into the disappearance of 43 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in the city of Iguala, Mexico.  From 2019-2022, Omar's team secured indictments for over 100 federal, state, and local authorities for their in...

As the first in her family to attend university, Dr. Encieh Erfani was drawn to the stars. Her interest led her to physics and cosmology, examining the origin of the universe – a rare subject in Iran at the time.  Dr. Erfani was traveling outside of Iran in September 2022 when the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement began, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. In solidarity, Dr. Erfani stepp...

Omar Mohammed first gained international prominence in 2014 as the anonymous blogger "Mosul Eye", risking his life to document daily existence in the occupied city of Mosul, Iraq. His blog was considered one of the few reliable, real-time sources of information on life under the Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh in Arabic), and proved to be a critical source of information for journalists, policy-m...

Free to Think speaks with Dr. Khoo Ying Hooi, an Associate Professor at the University of Malaya and 2022-23 Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellow, on academic freedom and coalition building in Southeast Asia.  Ying Hooi discusses her research and shares how building an academic freedom coalition across Southeast Asia – a region that spans 11 countries and represents a range of universities – can hel...

Free to Think speaks with three university students who express the profound impact of joining the SAR student advocacy community. "Being involved in the amplification of the voice of somebody who's marginalized doesn't just affect the person who's marginalized," says Samkele Shange, a SAR Student Advocacy Seminar participant at the University of South Eastern Norway. "It also affects you, the per...

Free to Think speaks with academic, policy analyst and human rights activist Mubashar Hasan. He describes how in Bangladesh certain research topics are off-limits, particularly those that threaten the power of the ruling class, and speaks from first-hand experience — Hasan survived 44 days of "enforced disappearance" in Bangladesh in 2017. Now based in Sydney, Australia, Hasan describes the 'menta...

Free to Think speaks with Katrin Kinzelbach and Lars Lott, researchers behind the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) which assesses levels of academic freedom in 179 countries and territories from 1900 to the present. Recent headlines suggest academic freedom is in retreat everywhere, but is it true? Katrin Kinzelbach and Lars Lott discuss the latest data from the AFI and how academic freedom may fit in...

Free to Think speaks with Achiro P. Olwoch , an award-winning writer, playwright, and filmmaker from Northern Uganda, and current scholar-at-risk and Weiss International Fellow at Barnard College in New York City. Achiro describes her recent play 'The Survival,' the impact of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Uganda, and how living in New York has made her a "bolder artist." She also offers advice to fellow art...

In February 2022, Artem Nazarko was in Odesa, Ukraine with his family, coming to terms with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "It was huge traffic jams everywhere, empty shops, panic and confusion" he says. "No food, no petrol. It was tough times, and dark days." Two years later, Artem is a PhD candidate and MSCA4Ukraine fellow at the University of Bergen in Norway. He is working in international c...

Emma Hartley and Jonathan Gelfond, undergraduates at UC Santa Barbara in California, weren't sure if elected officials in Washington DC would agree to speak with them. They were advocating on behalf of Patrick Zaki – a University of Bologna graduate student formerly detained for two years, in apparent retaliation for his human rights research in Egypt. Though released in 2021, authorities continue...

Free to Think speaks with Shai Reshef , President of the University of the People,  the first non-profit, tuition-free, American, accredited, online university whose mission is to help students worldwide overcome financial, geographic, political, and personal obstacles to higher education. Since August 2021, University of the People has received increasing numbers of applications from women in Afg...

Free to Think speaks with political scientist Sol Iglesias about "violence for social control" and threats to scholars in the Philippines, including online trolling, "red-tagging," threats, and violent attacks.  Iglesias, who is a professor at the University of the Philippines and contributes to SAR's monitoring of attacks on higher education in the country, believes academic freedom is the lifebl...

In Herat, Afghanistan, Zahra Hakimi was a faculty member, midwife, family planning trainer, and women's reproductive healthcare provider. She often worked in secret and at personal risk to provide treatment to survivors of sexual assault.  Within a week of taking control of her city, the Taliban raided Hakimi's home. They condemned her work as "anti-Islam." They threatened her and her husband, and...

Venezuelan higher education is in crisis. After decades of political attacks on universities, many professors struggle to survive a national economic collapse that threatens the whole society with runaway inflation, skyrocketing poverty, and mass outward migration of millions. Professors rely on multiple side jobs and foreign remittances but still can't make ends meet. How and why do they go on? ...

O n January 21st, police forcibly entered the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, arresting over 200 people including students pulled from their dormitories. Free to Think speaks with Salvador Herencia-Carrasco about his work with colleagues inside and outside Peru to free students from unlawful detention and to defend academic freedom and university autonomy.  Hernencia-Carras...

What is 'academic activism?' What responsibility, if any, do scholars have for engaging outside of academia, with the public and with marginalized communities in particular?  Free to Think speaks with Joel Mark Barredo , the Executive Director of SHAPE-SEA, the "Strengthening Human rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN/Southeast Asia" program. SHAPE-SEA is a regional programme for and b...

In 1997, Henry Reese and his wife, Diane Samuels, were at a public talk by writer Salman Rushdie, and inspired by his call for communities around the world to offer sanctuary to exiled writers. They "kicked each other under the chair" and thought, why not ? Six years later, they founded the City of Asylum, Pittsburgh, a multi-unit residency program that has welcomed exiled writers and artists from...

Free to Think talks with Roya Hakakian , a writer and founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and Sasha Gladkikh , a student activist and director of philanthropy at the Iranian Student Group at UCLA about the recent protests in Iran.  On September 16th, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died in the custody of Iran's notorious state morality police. Sinc...

Free to Think talks with Yulia Bezvershenko , a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and Liz Shchepetylnykova , a civil society activist, on the state of higher education in Ukraine after four months of war.  As Russia invaded Ukraine, and war broke out across the country, professors and students in Ukraine fought to keep education going. Even from bomb shelters, they provided lectures online...

Free to Think talks with Hadi Ghaemi , founding Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).  Why is Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian scholar and 2021 SAR Courage to Think Award winner, at risk of imminent execution in Iran? And what can advocates worldwide do to help? Ghaemi describes Dr. Djalali's imprisonment since 2016, academic hostage taking in Iran, and current...

Free to Think talks with Brian Mello , a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, where he leads a Scholars at Risk Student Advocacy Seminar. He's joined by his student, Bhavna Prakash , a biology major and political science minor at the university.  "You're 19," said Prakash's friend. "There's no way you got a meeting at the Senate's building." But she did, joining 3...

Free to Think talks with Colin Harvey , a Professor of Human Rights Law and former Head of the School of Law, Queen's University, Belfast about what UN experts described as a "smear campaign" against him for his work debating the possibility of new constitutional arrangements for the island of Ireland after Brexit.  An expert on human rights and constitutional law and former Commissioner of the No...

Free to Think talks with Dr. Aziz Mohibbi, an environmental engineer and former chancellor of Afghanistan's Bamyan University, about his recent relocation to Ireland following the return of the Taliban, and Dr. Roja Fazaeli, an Associate Professor of Islamic Civilization, Near & Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, who helped to arrange his visit.  Dr. Mohibbi shares his work buildin...