ECREA held its first webinar in a series on academic freedom, organised by the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) subcommittee of the ECREA Governing Body, on 11 November 2025. The inspiration for the webinars came from discussions held at ECREA on academia’s role in responding to mass atrocities and authoritarian threats. The webinars are imagined as a space where the community can discuss how we can support our colleagues, whose physical safety can be at risk if they are in zones of war or violence, or whose freedoms might be under attack from repressive governments or institutions, including academic institutions. It is our hope that this can help ECREA to develop a response to these issues, such as recommendations or other actions designed to support academics.

The first webinar focused on the experiences of Scholars in Exile. Invited speakers to the webinar are experts who have experienced exile, studied the issue of scholars in exile or have been engaged practically in offering solidarity and support to the exiled community - Dr. Bermal Aydin (independent scholar), Dr. Zeina Al Azmeh (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Olena Zinenko (IFHV Ruhr University and Karazin Kharkiv National University).

Bermal Aydin emphasised that the position of academics in exile is far from the romanticised image often depicted in literature or popular imagination. She described different kinds of pressures by which academics are forced into exile, as they are pushed into a precarious position by political pressures or pressured to a life reduced to “civic death”. When in exile, academics are often considered as cheaper temporary labour, and experience alienation or dehumanisation in the position of the “Other”. Furthermore, host universities tend to treat scholars in exile as “humanitarian projects”, which is often nothing more than a marketing tool to brand universities as diverse or inclusive. However, instead of offering superficial diversity, universities and academic communities should seek a profound plurality as proposed by Özdemir et a (2018).

Zeina Al Azmeh discussed the need to critically engage with the notion of scholars in exile and offer a diagnosis of what it means to be a critical scholar. Exile may bring creative potential for expanding critical thought and theory; however, one must not end up in the trap of romanticising this position. To describe this complexity, she develops the term “situational intellectual”, which acknowledges that scholars don’t have a stable identity and that their judgements are formed under various constraints and roles. She also discussed specific recommendations for the academic community to engage in dialogue with academics in exile, like offering publication opportunities, research fellow status, or micro-grant schemes, building strategic partnerships, addressing gender differences, recognising exile as an epistemological problem and advocating structural change which shifts from emergency and rescue logic to cooperation. 

Olena Zinenko discussed the position of the higher education system in Ukraine during the war, and multiple pressures on academic institutions that become, at the same time, places of knowledge production, but also spaces of shelter for scholars and students, and spaces under attack. She also discusses the uneasy role of critical scholars, e.g., feminist researchers who are sometimes misunderstood or unacknowledged. In relation to scholars in exile, they should not be seen only as victims, but scholars with agency who can produce knowledge and provide academic communication. She shares recommendations for scholars in exile not to lose agency: visible and recognised human rights position, bridges in media studies, policies to support cross-disciplinary studies, publication possibilities, an inclusive platform for safe, secure and independent discussion and networking, visibility of scholars, technical support for “travelling philosophers” and harmonisation of bureaucracy for scholars in exile.

Discussion with participants also tackled the main points expressed throughout the webinar - how to avoid victimisation, and how to transform solidarity to recognise and encourage agency, plurality and creative potential of knowledge production in exile. Different recommendations and actions from concrete situations were shared, e.g. from Ukraine, or Friends of Birzeit University publishing a call to the international academic community to react to scholasticide taking place in Gaza.