Scholars at Risk Network!

Hello from the exotic port of New York City!
I greatly apologize that my first post is coming so late in the summer.

This summer I am working at Scholars at Risk Network (http://scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu). The organization is based out of NYU but is basically independent from the happenings at the University.
The organization is an international network of higher education institutions banding together to promote and protect academic freedom. The primary activity of the organization is to assist scholars who are under threat in the country in which they are working by providing them with sanctuary. SAR works to place scholars who are being threatened or have suffered violence because of their academic work at a temporary position at one of the Network’s many partner institutions of higher education across the globe. The scholar may be a given a position such as a visiting researcher or a visiting professor.
My internship, however, is more aligned with the education and advocacy activities of the organization. As the legal intern at the organization, my role is to help coordinate the organization’s work with international legal and quasi-legal standards and mechanisms. The goal is to promote and protect academic freedom as a principal, value, and legal norm at the international level. As far as I understand, the field of academic freedom in international human rights is relatively new; it is exciting to be working on a legal principle just beginning to come into its own.
Since I received my Masters Degree in Human Rights from the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway (a proud member of SAR) before I came to Fordham Law I have a strong background knowledge in the workings of the international human rights legal system. Having this background knowledge is of great help in my work at the organization because it allows me to navigate relatively easily though the UN and regional systems. This is of particular importance because at the moment I am working on several projects requiring just that type of skill.
Currently I am working on creating and editing sections of a online curriculum geared toward NGOs, academic freedom advocates, victims of attacks on academic freedom, higher education institutional staff and faculty and other important stakeholders. The section I just completed locates all the legal and quasi-legal standards of academic freedom. It tracks academic freedom rights through the UN system, the Council of Europe, the Inter-American system, the African system, as well as regional documents unconnected with the international human rights institutions. This type of work helps to show the outline (outer limits) of the principle of academic freedom as it stands today and helps to point to the possible directions the principle could take in the future. It also gives substance to the principle through the already established working methods and standards of the systems in which it is situated. Since academic freedom seems to be in a definitional stage, having a map of its placement within the field of human rights could be a very helpful tool for the shaping of the principle in the near future.
I am currently working on a section of the website which describes the various complaint mechanisms available in the human rights world which could be used to push the principle of academic freedom further as a norm but can also, and perhaps primarily, be used as a way to give justice to victims of intolerance and abuse. Once again, I am so happy to have had my background knowledge in this subject. I am relatively familiar with all of the complaint mechanisms (yay for the new CESCR OP!) and so am able to push the project forward at a good pace.
My future projects include helping to either edit or reshape (it is yet to be seen) a policy paper grounding academic freedom in some type of already developed human right (or rights). This is a highly conceptual task and is a challenge for any human rights activist. It is nice to be in a position in which human rights advocacy is at work at a very basic level, in this case at the definitional level. I am not a person who is usually comfortable taking a protest-like stance in regards to advocacy; rather I enjoy the type of practical and collaborative advocacy that takes place at the legal level of international human rights.
Another future project will be, and I am working on it now as I while-away at my other work, to formulate and organize the role a “legal officer” that SAR will hire at some point in the future. So if anyone reading is interested in a job in the future…keep SAR in mind (smile).

That is all the updates I will give you for now. I will hopefully write more soon. I know perhaps you don’t believe that I will write because it has taken me so long to contribute now….again my apologies. The problem is, at this point, that after a series of housing mishaps I am still without internet at my apartment (but at least I have a place to live!). I am up late at the Fordham library (ahhh the air of first year still lingers here) writing this since I don’t have time to do this type of thing at work. Soon, very soon, I shall have internet where I live and I will be better at keeping in touch. Sorry for the delay and my apologies for my somewhat lame excuse.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with thinking of how much we all have benefitted in our lives from the market place of ideas, how it takes courage to say what one thinks and knows, and how it may take even greater courage to respect a scholarly viewpoint one doesn’t agree with…

Best wishes! Happy travels to all the other Leitner interns!
-Crissy