After more than two years of war and civil unrest, Syria's higher education sector is facing a severe crisis, with educational and research facilities decimated, intellectual production and scientific research on hold, and thousands of students' education interrupted indefinitely. Join experts on Syria, higher education, and humanitarian intervention to examine the current state of higher education in Syria and amongst Syrian refugees and to explore what programmatic interventions the international higher education sector and donor communities might pursue urgently to support Syrian academics and students.  

 

Event speakers will include an IIE-SRF Fellow from Syria and the University in Exile Scholar at Parsons The New School for Design who has been active in the country's higher education sector. Dr. Allan Goodman (President and CEO, Institute of International Education), Mr. Mark Angelson (Chairman, IIE's Scholar Rescue Fund), and Dr. David Van Zandt (President, The New School) will also offer remarks.      

 

The Institute of International Education, a private not-for-profit organization founded in 1919, is a world leader in the international exchange of people and ideas. IIE designs and implements over 250 programs of study and training for students, educators, young professionals and trainees from all sectors with funding from government, and private sources. It has a network of 18 international offices around the world and more than 1,000 college and university members.

IIE's Scholar Rescue Fund provides fellowships for established scholars whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. These fellowships permit professors, researchers, and public intellectuals to find temporary refuge at universities, colleges, and research centers anywhere in the world, enabling them to pursue their academic work in safety and to continue to share their knowledge with students, colleagues, and the community. In its first 10 years, IIE-SRF has provided fellowships to over 500 remarkable scholars from 50 countries, including leading an effort of historic proportion to save the intellectual capital of Iraq. 

The New School is a legendary, progressive university comprising seven schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its more then 10,500 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. In addition to its 92 graduate and undergraduate degree-granting programs, the university offers certificate programs and more than 650 continuing education courses to 5,619 adult learners every year.

The New School's Center for Public Scholarship, under the direction of Arien Mack, seeks to promote free inquiry and public discussion, bringing the best scholarship in and outside the academy to bear on the critical and contested issues of our times. CPS is dedicated to engendering and enhancing freedom of inquiry, not merely as an intellectual exercise but as a lived imperative. In this spirit, all of our activities and initiatives are intended to foster dialogue within and beyond the academy and to enhance public understanding of important social and political issues.