In this chapter, the authors use the narrative essay as a device for providing insight into the experiences of legal scholars, with a spotlight on the personal journeys of two Afghan scholars whose lives and livelihood were put in jeopardy when their country's law professors and lawyers were abruptly thrust into a struggle for academic freedom, vigorous advocacy, and personal safety. They also share the reflections of two US-based legal educators who helped to secure the engagement of Afghans with American law schools at the time their own government was in the midst of a chaotic retreat and the Taliban had regained total control. This series of vignettes examines challenges faced by educators, lawyers, and students in Afghanistan and the United States and the profound impact of the Taliban's totalitarian takeover on academic freedom, human rights, and the pursuit of education.
TopPrologue
In this chapter, the authors discuss efforts to facilitate the arrival of Afghan scholars at-risk after the August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. To add to the existing literature on so-called “scholar rescue” is a multi-perspective view on the role and response of American academic institutions, bringing together the contemporary voices of two Afghan scholars and two United States faculty members in a unique exploration of the collaboration that resulted from the crisis. Academy in Exile’s founder Kader Konuk has written:
“Historicizing the figure of the ‘refugee scholar,’ a figure that has been referred to as exile, émigré, refugee, expatriate, displaced scholar, pariah, or, as is the trend now, simply person ‘at risk,’ is helpful in identifying the intellectual traditions that inform current international aid efforts in higher education.” (Konuk, 2020, p. 277).
The aid effort chronicled here includes at-risk Professors Ghazi Hashimi and Negina Khalili, both Afghan lawyers, who eventually were welcomed at U.S. law schools as visiting scholars after evacuating from Afghanistan. The other two authors are Professor Stephen Rosenbaum, University of California, Berkeley, who helped to lead efforts to bring Afghan scholars to the U.S., and Professor Davida Finger, Loyola New Orleans, who responded to Rosenbaum’s outreach and worked to secure a position at her own institution for Professor Khalili. Although scholar rescue programs in the United States and Europe “remain the most important and enduring response to safeguarding and restoring the scholarly freedoms of academics whose intellectual rights have been threatened” (Adebayo, 2022, p. 1818), the effort reported here falls outside the domain of these formalized initiatives.
The four authors’ perspectives are woven together to describe the initial period of the urgent evacuation of Afghan scholars starting in August 2021. Taken together, these perspectives provide a novel view of the crisis and the role of U.S. academic institutions and faculty by bringing together Afghan and American. academic perspectives. Throughout the chapter, each author offers their own viewpoint as the evacuation process unfolded during a time period when many in the United States were seeking a way to lend support to Afghan lawyers, judges, and scholars, and some academic institutions were able to find ways to open their doors to Afghans forced to flee.
After an overview of the Afghan crisis situation that prompted the effort to create visiting positions for Afghan scholars at-risk, Professor Rosenbaum anchors the chapter by providing context for his engagement with Afghan scholars. Professors Hashimi and Khalili share brief remarks about their own escapes from Afghanistan. Professor Finger offers her perspective as a faculty member following Professor Rosenbaum’s lead to place scholars at-risk as visitors, which was a significant step toward securing evacuation and arrival in the United States. The account of the Afghan scholars’ departures and arrivals highlights issues, obstacles and a path forward. By centering on the perspectives of the scholars at-risk, together with those of U.S. faculty during this challenging time, and drawing from the literature on the historic and contemporary émigré scholar experience, the chapter reflects on collective lessons learned, at both the individual and institutional levels, especially in light of the likely need to replicate similar situations for other scholars in the future.