In February, after 21 months with TU/e, Foad Sojoodi Farimani’s contract with the Mechanical Engineering department ran out. His advisors were very pleased with his work, but there are simply no more funds available to keep him at the university. Because his passport is about to expire and it’s too dangerous to return to his native Iran, Sojoodi Farimani and his wife have applied for asylum and moved to an asylum seekers’ center on April 21. This is where they’ll stay until they receive official permission from the Dutch government to live in the Netherlands. Until then, Sojoodi Farimani is in limbo - without a country, without a job, and fearing every day that Iranian government officials will continue intimidating his mother and siblings in the hope that it’ll force him to return home.

“Even at a technological university (in Iran, ed.) we have theology courses and you have to pass them. Out of 140 credits, approximately 20 will be in theology”, explains Sojoodi Farimani. “My main activity was fighting against religious superstition. You think students must have very open minds -that they must have read a lot about their history, their culture- but they haven’t.”

Sojoodi Farimani is a man with many sides. He’s a mechanical engineer specializing in medical robotics and an inventor with two registered patents. But he’s also an activist, fighting to defend what he believes are basic human rights - the right to organize, to read what you want, and to think independently and express your opinions. It was this role that drew his government’s scrutiny. “I decided to create an online library with all the forbidden books. I tried to collect books from everywhere. Cyber places were a kind of shelter for us activists. Even though there’s a lot of censorship in Iran -we don’t have access to Facebook, for example- there used to be a service called Google Reader. A lot of activists gathered in this place. I helped people to reach my books and read them.”

“I just asked them to help me to not kill myself”

In September 2010, Sojoodi Farimani was walking to his university -Tehran’s Amir Kabir University- when a man approached him and said his name. He immediately recognized the man as a low-ranking Basij member (a paramilitary group).  Fearing he’d be arrested and possibly never found again, he sprinted for his university grounds hoping that being on university property would force the officers to arrest him legally. But before he could reach the gates, another plainclothes agent tripped him. He was hit in the head, dragged and thrown into a waiting car where the officers forced his head between his legs. He later arrived at Iran’s infamous Evin Prison where he spent 105 days in solitary confinement and was subjected to both physical and psychological torture. “They try to break you. They try to make you feel ashamed of yourself. They ask you some really nasty questions. It’s disgusting. That was the worst part. I was a research assistant. I had about 15 women as students. They were just my students but they tried to make me confess that I had some relations with them.” 

Sojoodi Farimani was accused of numerous activities including insulting Islam and having connections with the Mojahedin, an Iranian leftist revolutionary organization. But in reality, his only crime -what inflamed the wrath of his government- was his human rights activism on social media. Sojoodi Farimani was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison for his activities and it’s this sentence that forced him to flee Iran in November 2011.

“After they released me, I had to go to a mental hospital for 10 days. I just asked them to help me to not kill myself. I was hopeless. I was really hopeless. Scholars at Risk found me. I have no idea how they found me but without them, I would maybe be in a jail in Iran right now. They helped me a lot.”

Scholars at Risk is a U.S.-based international network of academic institutions hosted by New York University. Its main goal is to bring scholars facing severe human rights abuses in their own countries to positions of sanctuary at 250 participating institutions worldwide. “What’s unique about Scholars at Risk”, explains Sinead O’Gorman, its European director, “is that we also do a lot of work preventing attacks and promoting academic freedom. We don’t only want to help the ‘emergency cases’ -people who need to flee their home countries- but we also want to address the root causes of intellectual suppression.”

In 2009, Scholars at Risk partnered with the Netherlands’ Foundation for Refugee Students (UAF) in the hopes of broadening their reach in Europe. Says O’Gorman, “Because of this strong partnership, our European network really blossomed. And here in Holland, there’s a strong network of Dutch universities that are very committed to this work. They’re really leading by example and other countries are looking to the Netherlands as a model.” Since 2009, 57 academics have been placed at universities in the Netherlands and Belgium and, today, a full third of all scholars placed in the network are working right here in Holland or neighboring Belgium.

Ella de Lange is the Scholars at Risk project coordinator at UAF and helped place Sojoodi Farimani at TU/e, the university’s first such placement. “It takes a lot of financial means to host someone. On the other hand, the university receives the researcher’s knowledge back. It’s not only a good cause - the university also benefits.”De Lange is also helping Sojoodi Farimani in his quest to find a new placement but she explains UAF’s goals also go beyond job assistance. “In the Netherlands, we aim for protection but we’re also now working a lot on promotion. We want the academic world to know that this is a problem. We try to convince universities that they should invest in these scholars. We also promote our work to scholars so they know that they’re not alone.”

The Freedom to Think

While offering sanctuary abroad is sometimes a necessary step, Scholars at Risk and UAF ultimately hope that one day their network won’t be needed. “These scholars are outside of their countries. They’re away from their families”, says Ella de Lange. “Part of them is very happy that they can continue their work but, of course, they’d like to continue it in their home country.” Sinead O’Gorman explains further, “The first placement buys the scholar some time to think about their next step. We hope that within five or ten years they can return, not necessarily to their home country but at least to their home region. We work to bring them closer and closer to home.”

But for Sojoodi Farimani, Iran will probably never again be home. “It’s not just the government. I hope the government changes. As a reformist I hope it changes gradually. But I’m an atheist, an ex-Muslim, so even if it changes there’s a threat from the society for me. Iran is one of the most secular countries, but I would still be in danger there.”

And though his future is uncertain and he still struggles daily to heal from the abuse, he says he doesn’t regret fighting for human rights. “You will die one day anyway but then you ought to question yourself --  what have you done with your life? If I want to live in a free world, I have to fight for it. I’m alive and I’m fighting for my life. I’m continuing my war against the Iranian government here in the Netherlands.”