New EU-funded programme to support threatened academics

Together with three European partner organisations, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is launching a programme to offer international academics who are at risk opportunities to continue their research in the European Union.

SAFE – Supporting at-risk researchers with fellowships in Europe – aims to enable up to 60 threatened academics in the EU in its initial phase. It is being funded up to 2027 with around €12 million (US$13.39 million) by the European Commission. SAFE is conducted in cooperation with Campus France, the Collège de France and the Mediterranean Universities Union (UNIMED).

“We are observing academic freedom increasingly coming under threat across the world. This is why programmes run in the EU to support academics at risk are getting more and more important,” said DAAD president Joybrato Mukherjee.

“We have already established a successful scheme for threatened undergraduates and doctoral students with the Hilde Domin programme. We are now very pleased to be able to further extend this important European pillar of protection measures for threatened or persecuted academics together with partner organisations from France and Italy,” he added.

According to the Academic Freedom Index (AFI), academic freedom is currently severely restricted in 27 countries, resulting in around 3.6 billion people across the world living virtually without academic freedom.

The AIF project was launched in 2019 by researchers at Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, the V-Dem Institute, the Scholars at Risk Network and the Global Public Policy Institute.

SAFE provides researchers threatened in their home countries with a protective framework to continue their research at European universities or research institutions. In its pilot phase, up to 60 researchers will be supported at European institutions across the EU for two years.

SAFE has started early this month, with the first researchers then coming in spring 2025. The academics outside the EU can be nominated by European universities.

Non-EU citizens who already have refugee status in the EU can also be proposed for the programme by an EU university or research institution.

Contact the writer at michael.gardner@uw-news.com