The Spring 2017 issue of IIE's Networker magazine is now online, featuring the work of IIE team members as they join with partners around the world to expand international opportunities for all. IIE-SRF Director Sarah Willcox, in her article entitled Seeking Safe Havens: National Responses to Scholar Persecution, provides an important overview of the program from its inception to present day, noting particularly the steps that countries are taking to keep their doors open as safe havens to scholars duing times of uncertainty.

The Syrian and Iraqi higher education sectors and the lives of their researchers and students have been upended due to conflict and war. In oppressive regimes, the academic pursuit of knowledge is commonly seen as a threat. These at-risk individuals often have a lot to contribute to human intellectual advancement. In Finland, among much discussion on the issue of refugees, a novel partnership is connecting some of these individuals to higher education institutions that can host them.

New Research Voices (NRV) is a community platform for researchers to share their work, opinions, and ideas with other researchers from around the globe. In this inaugural issue, NRV features contributors who “have all faced persecution for their work and have sought sanctuary at universities overseas where they continue, despite the many obstacles they have faced, to strive for a better world through their academic endeavors.” Including articles by IIE-SRF fellows from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Syria, the issue explores academic freedom in sites of oppression and the ordeals faced by scholars violently driven out of their native countries.

In this report, IIE and the University of California, Davis look at the conditions and educational needs of Syrian university students and scholars in Turkey. As few as 1–2 percent of Syrian university-age students in Turkey were successfully enrolled at Turkish universities last year, including less than 1 percent of young women. These enrollment rates, however, increased by more than 300 percent between 2012–13 and 2013–14.

The report identifies:

• The educational needs of Syrian faculty and university-age students in Turkey, including the barriers they face in accessing higher education.
• Recommendations for increasing Syrians' access to higher education in Turkey.
• Opportunities and challenges for the international community to support Syrian university students and scholars in Turkey.