Scholars at risk in their own countries find a new home at Penn

When the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan in 2021, Jawad Moradi feared that he would be put in prison, or worse.

Five years earlier, he had earned his master of laws degree at Duke University. Because of his U.S. legal education and interaction with colleagues in the United States and elsewhere, he was at risk. And as a member of a minority population that had been targeted by the Taliban, he was even more vulnerable.

“I had to hide myself in my house,” he said.

But one day, dressed in drab clothes to escape detection, he and his wife traveled a risky route lined with Taliban checkpoints, from Kabul to a northern province, where an evacuation flight arranged by a deputy director at a U.S. university collaborative awaited him.

He found himself in a refugee camp in the United Arab Emirates and nearly a year later in the United States, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School.

“What would I do if I didn’t have this support from Penn?” Moradi, 35, often wonders.

Moradi is one of six “at-risk scholars” that Penn has brought to campus since its Penn Global office launched a new program in 2021. The university had previously helped scholars, but the crisis in Afghanistan showed the need for a more coordinated, concerted effort, said Scott Moore, practice professor of political science who oversees the program.

The other five scholars come from Afghanistan, as well as Venezuela and Ukraine, Moore said.

Penn Global provides $30,000 annual stipends for up to two years, and the school or department hosting the scholar is expected to match it. The approximately $60,000 helps with housing and other expenses; they also get office space. Penn Global also assists with visa applications.

“You can’t do lots and lots of people, but you can make a difference,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives.

Bringing in the scholars also benefits Penn faculty and students, he said, giving them a “wider view of the scholarship happening in other countries.”

The scholars don’t necessarily have to be students or professors; they can be public intellectuals, musicians, artists, journalists, politicians, “anyone whose presence would add to the teaching, research and service missions of the university,” Moore said.

The Penn program fits into a larger effort by universities to offer refuge to scholars whose lives or work are endangered in their home countries.

The Institute of International Education, based in New York City, runs the largest program in the nation funded through a $52 million endowment, grants and donors. Started in 2002, it has helped 1,106 scholars from 62 countries find new academic homes at 502 institutions worldwide.

In 2023, the institute received nearly 750 applications and awarded 127 fellowships, said Mark Angelson, the institute’s board chair.

But even before that, the institute on a less formal basis was helping scholars, including those persecuted by the Nazis and targeted by the Bolshevik party in Russia, he said.

“We always had the idea that the crisis would be over, the war would be over,” said Allan E. Goodman, the institute’s chief executive officer. “It really wasn’t until the millennium, we realized this is a permanent state of the world. We better get ready to do this globally and permanently.”

The institute at any given time is supporting about 125 scholars, who most often come with their families. They receive visa and travel support, a stipend and assistance with finding housing and adjusting to their new community. About half return to their countries after the threat passes, Goodman said.

But some stay. Salam Al Kuntara, an archaeologist who advocates for the protection and preservation of cultural heritage sites in her home country of Syria, became an assistant professor of classics at Rutgers after her time as a scholar at Penn.

Other Philadelphia-area colleges that have hosted scholars through the institute’s program include Penn, Rutgers, Drexel, Temple, Arcadia and Villanova, Angelson said.

Pavel Golubev, 39, a Russian art historian, had been head curator at a museum in Ukraine when Russia invaded in 2022. He had left Russia after publishing the diaries of Konstantin Somov, highlighting the painter’s homosexuality, a part of his life that had been silenced in Russia.

He had been invited to the Odessa Fine Arts Museum in Ukraine, where he created an exhibition on Somov and was later offered a full-time position there.

Golubev already knew Jonathan D. Katz, an associate professor of practice at Penn in history of art and gender, sexuality and women’s studies. Katz had contacted Golubev when he was putting together “The First Homosexuals,” an exhibition that opened on a small scale in Chicago a couple of years ago and will have a larger debut next year. He was marshaling a group of scholars from around the world to help with the exhibition, which chronicles the earliest appearances of sexual difference in art.

Katz was worried about Golubev in the Ukraine and offered to bring him to Penn. Golubev was hesitant to leave until he could assure the works at Odessa were safe, but eventually came to Philadelphia in August 2022. Golubev found an apartment, and Katz’s colleagues provided the necessary furnishing and supplies.

“I have furniture with a history and provenance,” Golubev said proudly, sitting in the history department office he shares with Katz.

He presented his research on Somov at a Penn colloquium that December and continues to work with Katz on the upcoming exhibition. He also conducts a reading group for doctoral students on queer studies in art history.

“The program did what it was supposed to do, which was to get scholars at risk out of danger,” Katz said.

Katz said that, through Golubev, he has learned about the large Russian Slavic neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia: “It really was wild,” he said. “I felt like I was somehow in Eastern Europe.”

Golubev was amazed at the access to a wide array of materials through Penn’s libraries. “I can order almost anything,” he said.

He hopes to find work and stay in the United States after he completes the scholar program.

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, a professor of economics, heard about Angel Alvarado from a mutual friend when he was visiting a university in Spain. Alvarado, his friend told him, was a Venezuelan congressman and economist who had been advocating for democracy and improved economic policy in the country. Venezuela, Fernández-Villaverde said, has had the world’s largest collapse of gross national product in the last 100 years in a country that was not at war.

“It was not going well for him,” Fernández-Villaverde said.

Alvarado, 43, had been beaten by police and a friend died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody in 2018, he said.

“I thought maybe I should do something,” Fernández-Villaverde said.

Alvarado has spent two years at Penn. He has co-taught an online course on the economic history of Latin America and interviews Spanish-speaking economists for a podcast. He also finished his dissertation.

Alvarado wants to return to Venezuela if there is a regime change.

“Philadelphia for me has been heaven, in a sense,” he said. “Penn is a top university ... with top academic professors, researchers ... and the students are top students in terms of achievement and ideas, people who want to change the world.”

For Moradi, it was Karen Hall, deputy executive director at the Rule of Law Collaborative at the University of South Carolina, who helped arrange his time at Penn. She was assisting several dozen scholars get from Afghanistan to U.S. universities. She reached Eric Feldman, deputy dean for international programs at Penn Carey Law.

Feldman said Moradi “showed up with a smile on his face” and asked how he could repay Penn. Moradi thought he would have to do research or complete other scholarly duties.

“We said, ‘What you can do is study for the bar [exam] and do your very best to pass the bar,’” Feldman said.

It was the only way for Moradi to remain in the United States and work as a lawyer.

Moradi passed the New York bar exam last year and got a job at a financial company in Delaware. He’s already been promoted and serves as corporate counsel. He and his wife live in Philadelphia.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I think maybe I’m just dreaming.”