Scholar Rescue Fund

The Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) provides fellowships for established scholars whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. These fellowships permit professors, researchers and other senior academics to find temporary refuge at host universities and colleges anywhere in the world, enabling them to pursue their academic work and to continue to share their knowledge with students, colleagues, and the community at large. During the fellowship, conditions in a scholar's home country may improve, permitting safe return to help rebuild universities and societies ravaged by fear, conflict and repression. If safe return is not possible, the scholar may use the fellowship period to identify a longer-term opportunity. N.B. This is a program of the Institute of International Education.

In 2007, as a response to an urgent appeal from Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education, SRF launched the Iraq Scholar Rescue Project. The Project's goal is to rescue Iraq's most senior academics – in any academic discipline – by placing them at institutions of higher learning in countries within the Middle East and North Africa region.

The Institute of International Education has helped rescue threatened scholars since its inception in 1919, demonstrating a commitment to protecting Academic freedom. In the 1930s, IIE was instrumental in founding the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, led by Edward R. Murrow. The program assisted scholars who were barred from teaching, persecuted and threatened with imprisonment by the Nazis. Over 300 scholars were rescued, some of whom became Nobel Laureates and many whose work and ideas helped shape the post-war world.

SRF was founded in 2002, when IIE's trustees committed to making scholar rescue a permanent part of its work. Dr. Henry Jarecki, Dr. Henry Kaufman, Thomas Russo and George Soros, founded the Scholar Rescue Fund to aid threatened scholars find safe haven and continue their academic work. Since then, SRF has provided over 1000 awards with the collaboration of over 350 institutions from over 40 different nations.

The Scholar Rescue Fund formalizes an unwavering commitment to academic freedom that the Institute of International Education has demonstrated for over 90 years. At the heart of the Fund is the idea that each scholar helped who continues his or her work in safety is a beacon of hope.

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