Scholars in Prison Engagementship (2024W UBC-Based)

This program is part of the Global Experiential Education Program (GEEP) and is informed by ORICE values. GEEP aims to strengthen the bridge between classroom learning (theory) and application (practice) to address pressing global issues, in this community-based praxis initiative. Students who participate in GEEP can participate in experiential education projects designed and led by global community partners.

Details at a Glance

Application Deadline: September 15th, 2024

• Program Type: Co-curricular (Not-for-credit)
• Project Type: Advocacy Project with the Scholars at Risk Network
• Placement Location: In-person, UBC-Based
• Duration: 7 months starting in October 2024
• Eligibility: Open to UBC-V Undergraduate with 60+ credits (exceptions outlined below)

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Project Description

This co-curricular opportunity is a collaboration between the UBC Human Rights Collective (HRC), which is part of the UBC Office of Regional and International Community Engagement (ORICE), and the global Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network. Students will engage in research and scholarly informed activism in support of SAR’s Scholars in Prison Project– which seeks to support and free wrongfully imprisoned scholars and students around the world. This year’s case will focus on imprisoned scholars in Iran and Belarus. 

This is a two-semester engagement. In semester one, students will spend time learning about their assigned scholar, with the goal of understanding the political, legal, and social contexts related to their imprisonment. They will engage in two forms of human rights research and produce two deliverables for SAR. The first will track key advocacy already undertaken by other stakeholders who have also advocated in these cases. Secondly, students will establish media monitoring protocols to aid SAR in their human rights monitoring and reporting. Both of these will be included in the scholars’ file at SAR.

In semester two, students will engage in a scholarly informed mode of advocacy on behalf of their scholar(s) and complete monitoring and evaluation of their work. Decisions on the mode of advocacy will be made based on analysis from semester one and in consultation with SAR, HRC staff, and faculty. Previous examples of advocacy include the submission of reports to the federal government’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights, formal petitions to the Canadian government, film screening and letter-writing events, and awareness-raising webinars. In some cases, students may work with students working on SAR projects at other universities. 

In both semesters, students will spend a fair amount of time reflecting on important critical discussions such as power, positionality, neo-colonialism, and other debates related to ‘Western’ discourses of human rights.

Participating students will be invited to attend an immersive opportunity around the spring of 2024 to engage with other students, faculty, and a community of activists working to promote and protect academic freedom and the human rights of wrongfully imprisoned scholars. Students may be partially supported financially for this opportunity.

See this interview of past program participants about their experience.

Focus areas: academic freedom, arbitrary detention, human rights, prisoners’ rights, diplomacy, international relations, civil society, advocacy, scholar-activism

Deliverables and Outputs: Human rights monitoring and reporting, advocacy tracking, reflection on scholar-activism, advocacy for imprisoned scholars, project monitoring and evaluation.

Organization Details

Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network

Scholars at Risk (SAR) is an international network of institutions and individuals whose mission is to protect scholars and promote academic freedom. Scholars at Risk provides advisory services for scholars and hosts, campaigns for imprisoned or silenced scholars in their home countries, monitors attacks on higher education communities worldwide, and leads in deploying new tools and strategies for promoting academic freedom. Through their Practitioners-at-Risk program, Scholars at Risk offers safety to scholars facing grave threats by arranging temporary academic positions at member universities and colleges so scholars’ ideas are not lost and they can keep working until conditions improve in their home countries.

The UBC Human Rights Collective housed under ORICE has been partnering with Scholars at Risk for many years on various collaborative projects to support SAR’s learning and advocacy goals including academic courses, co-curricular research projects, directed studies, and student advocacy seminars. In the Spring of 2022, UBC HRC hosted the first Canadian Student Advocacy Days to bring together students who participated in SAR Student Advocacy Seminars and other SAR-related student-focused learning and advocacy activities.

Program Overview

Between October 2024 to April 2025,  the selected team of students will spend 3-5 hours weekly working collaboratively towards completing the objectives of this project. Students will be required to participate in weekly scheduled in-person meetings (on the UBC Vancouver Campus) to ensure collaboration and accountability goals are defined and met. However, the remainder of the allotted time will be self-directed or in small work teams as per agreements with teammates.

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