Wednesday, March 02, 2022
ASEEES Initiatives to Support Displaced Scholars and Students from Ukraine
Dear Colleagues,
We, members of the ASEEES Executive Committee, are deeply moved by the herculean efforts our association members have made, practically overnight and in emotionally devastating circumstances, to support our students, inform our communities, and denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
We have been in broad discussions about concrete steps ASEEES as a scholarly society can take to support and supplement your efforts. At this point we are concentrating on three main initiatives:
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Providing an institutional home for collating information and resources:
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The ASEEES Board Statement page now has a list of statements made by other organizations and institutions
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We will keep up to date a resources page for information to help displaced scholars and students
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We have set up a unified calendar of events – webinars, forums and teach-ins – on the war on Ukraine. This is a google calendar that you can add to your other google calendars.
WHEN YOU ANNOUNCE YOUR EVENT, PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO ASEEES@PITT.EDU SO THAT WE CAN PUT THE EVENT ON OUR UNIFIED CALENDAR.
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Providing guidance and a road map for concrete steps our members can take to solicit emergency humanitarian funding and support for the students and scholars from Ukraine at their colleges and universities and host vulnerable students and scholars from Ukraine. There are a number of guidelines beginning to circulate on-line that are keyed to different types of institutions; we will shortly make this information available HERE.
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Offering webinars on practical matters, such as evolving visa and immigration situations, working with organizations such as Scholars at Risk and the Scholar Rescue Fund, helping displaced scholars and students find the support they may need, and helping administrators work with supporting institutions.
We are working with the newly created International Task Force for Displaced Scholars (ITFDS). Please review the minutes from its inaugural meeting held on Sunday, February 27 for some concrete steps on how you can take action within your institution to begin mobilizing support for displaced scholars and students. If your institution is interested in being part of the task force, please contact displaced.scholars@gmail.com
In the meantime, you might want to begin by encouraging your institution to become a member of these organizations, if they are not already.
Also, we acknowledge HURI for its tremendous work in sharing information on Ukraine and the war and offering support. A rich supply of resources is available on its website.
For above and other additional resources, please see ASEEES’ resources page.
We will send more information about these initiatives in the next days and weeks. If you have resources we should add or have suggestions for concrete steps that we all can take to support displaced scholars, please contact Lynda Park at lypark@pitt.edu
Sincerely,