2023 OSUN Three Year Report

2 22/23 s

The Open Society University Network (OSUN), animated by the values of open society, is building a unique and vibrant model of global higher education. This model embodies the shared commitment among OSUN partners to learn from each other across geographic and demographic boundaries, promote academic freedom, critical thinking and evidence-based inquiry, and explore innovative solutions to the fundamental challenges of our time. OSUN both builds on and fosters a diversity of perspectives, which provides a vibrant source of learning and is integral to all that we do.

OSUN has embarked on a journey toward deep, cross-institutional partnerships and integration. We are embedding collaborative teaching, curriculum development, research, and civic engagement in our institutions. This collaboration is evident in the emerging OSUN curriculum focusing on many of the greatest challenges facing society, taught by faculty across the network in classrooms that bring students together from around the world.

OSUN is crafting new initiatives to advance the creation of knowledge through collaboration across continents. These initiatives draw on a diversity of scholarly traditions and research contexts to generate fresh insights on fundamental global challenges, such as political repression, inequality, technology’s impact on society, and the survival of our planet.

In addition, OSUN centers the public purpose of higher education — bringing rigorous higher education to marginalized communities, including prisons and refugee camps; providing opportunities for students across the globe, regardless of background, to integrate into global OSUN classrooms; and creating pathways for students in adverse circumstances to earn a university degree.

Finally, OSUN demonstrates the resilience of networks, supporting students, faculty, and institutions around the globe who are under assault, often because they value the principles of academic freedom and open society.

We take pride in how far we have come as a network in three academic years and affirm our shared commitment to forge further ahead in building our unique model of global higher education.

A NEW VISION FOR COLLABORATION

The Open Society University Network is building deep institutional partnerships among diverse institutions. These partnerships span a range of collaborative activities—curricular, cocurricular, and research—that provide distinct opportunities for students and faculty to broaden their perspectives and learn from each other across geographic and cultural divides.

OSUN partners have embarked on a path of deeper integration by building a shared curriculum and embedding cross-institutional collaboration in their respective institutions. OSUN’s approach to integration transcends internationalization in higher education and provides students with collaborative learning and engagement experiences uniquely suited to the global challenges of our time.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND RESILIENCE

Since its inception, OSUN has responded to crises in Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. As academic freedom came under assault, and as authoritarian takeovers and war disrupted lives and the continuity of universities, OSUN was able to provide networked and institutional responses. OSUN partner institutions continue to develop and deliver a wide range of online courses, provide extensive academic and psychosocial support for students, and create pathways for displaced students to complete university degree programs.

The network has both addressed immediate needs and demonstrated resilience by sustaining opportunities for crisis-affected students to pursue rigorous higher education grounded in critical thinking and open intellectual inquiry. In summer 2023, in response to restrictions on New College of Florida’s academic freedom, OSUN welcomed the College’s students into OSUN courses.

OSUN Student Government/Association Fellows at a leadership conference held at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

Photo by Jose Mauricio Gonzalez.

Student activists protesting assaults on academic freedom at New College of Florida.

Photo courtesy of D.E.F.Y. (Defending Educational Freedom for Youth).

Leon Botstein Chancellor, OSUN Bard College

OSUN COURSES AND CERTIFICATES: DEEP CURRICULAR INTEGRATION

Integrating students from multiple geographies and educational backgrounds is an excellent way for encouraging open, critical discussion of various issues pertaining to the field. Having students from various OSUN institutions definitely counteracts intellectual monocultures. It stimulates inter-cultural communication, helps to develop critical thinking skills, and contributes to raising a new generation of responsible leaders.”

Begaiym Esenkulova, Faculty, American University of Central Asia

OSUN offers students the opportunity to take two types of courses with peers from across the network. An OSUN Online Course is a single course offered at one institution that is taught fully online in a synchronous format and enrolls students from multiple OSUN campuses. OSUN Network Collaborative Courses are co-designed by faculty from multiple OSUN partners and taught in person on each of those campuses, with students coming together online and offline throughout the semester to collaborate on assignments and projects. These unique but connected OSUN courses embody efforts to integrate teaching and learning across the network. The vast majority of students and faculty participating in OSUN courses believe that they enhance learning outcomes and help students to gain unique insights into some of the most important challenges facing humanity. They also provide opportunities for displaced and marginalized students to participate in dialogue with students from across the globe and to contribute to and benefit from a dynamic and rigorous learning environment.

Both kinds of OSUN courses focus on OSUN themes and many are components of OSUN Academic Certificate Programs, which provide structured curricular and co-curricular pathways through the themes. Academic certificate programs further curricular integration, sequence coursework, and allow non-degree students, such as refugee and displaced learners, to obtain credits and a transferable micro-credential. Each certificate requires 3-6 courses and may include co-curricular activities. There are currently six OSUN Certificate Programs – in Public Policy and Economic Analysis, Civic Engagement, Global Educational Development, Social Enterprise and Leading Change, Food Studies, and Human Rights.

In addition, OSUN offers courses through Summer University at CEU (SUN). SUN courses serve advanced students, scholars, and professionals interested in curricular experimentation and professional advancement. These intensive courses feature interactive learning and foster ongoing faculty collaborations across the network.

OSUN also supports the Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU), an online program for junior and senior undergraduate and graduate students from Ukraine, whether residing in Ukraine or in refuge, whose studies have been affected by the war. The program offers an intensive learning experience on the role of Ukraine in changing European and global contexts, with a transnational comparative perspective.

2022-2023 OSUN COURSES BY THE NUMBERS

3,854 STUDENTS

205 FACULTY

160 STUDENTS ENROLLED IN CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS

This course, taught by Al-Quds Bard faculty, blew me away. The other students introduced me to things I never knew about and it was really powerful and beautiful to listen and hear their personal reflections.”

Elena Thompson, Student in OSUN course, Dislocated Identities in a Fragmenting World

STUDY ABROAD OPENS NEW DOORS

The OSUN Student Mobility pilot program was launched in the fall of 2022 and has served over 100 undergraduate and close to 30 graduate students through semester exchange, summer programs, and/or research at an OSUN partner institution. Based on the successful pilot, 90 students will receive OSUN support in fall 2023. The program’s Steering Committee comprises 14 partner institutions and is working to expand available and accessible international study options, most importantly through connection with global majority institutions as both sending and hosting partners.

Evaluations have shown an increase in participants’ open-mindedness and tolerance of new perspectives, cultural fluency, curiosity about the world, adaptability to new situations, and self-confidence.

THREATENED SCHOLARS INTEGRATION INITIATIVE

The Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative (TSI) supports scholars who suffer as a result of their critical academic work and resistance to oppression – individuals whose academic careers, and sometimes lives, are endangered by authoritarian regimes. TSI formulates its mission not only in humanitarian terms, but also in terms of value for OSUN students and faculty, who have the chance to learn from talented scholars’ unique perspectives and stories. Beyond providing safe havens to threatened scholars, TSI takes advantage of the commitment to shared values and the multitude of programs across OSUN to enable integration of fellows in their host academic community and in the network.

OSUN programs offer opportunities that support and enrich the skill sets necessary for fellows to succeed in the pedagogical and research cultures of their new academic homes. Moving into a global network of like-minded academic peers of vastly different backgrounds helps them overcome intellectual isolation so they can thrive.

TSI FELLOWS

FROM

23 COUNTRIES

80% EXPERIENCED A NOTICEABLE IMPROVEMENT IN THEIR PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS

83% REPORTED CLEARER CAREER GOALS

88% BELIEVED THEIR JOB PROSPECTS HAD IMPROVED AS A RESULT OF THE MOBILITY SEMESTER

• Afghanistan

• Bangladesh

• Belarus

• China

• Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Egypt

• Ethiopia

• India

• Iran

• Kyrgyzstan

• Morocco

• Myanmar

• Nigeria

• Palestine

• Russia

• Serbia

• Sudan

• South Sudan

• Syria

• Turkey

• Ukraine

• Uzbekistan

• Venezuela

TSI has supported 166 individual fellowships since the start of the program in 2021. This includes 70 residential and non-residential academic affiliations hosted by 18 OSUN institutions. In response to the fall of the democratic government in Afghanistan and Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, TSI provided over 90 emergency fellowships for academics, professionals and students displaced from their home countries. The TSI Afghanistan Challenge Fund is placing over 50 Afghan scholars, professionals, and civil society activists at host organizations in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

“ It was a life changing program for me!”

Begimai Azizbekova, Student, American University of Central Asia

student Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo received an OSUN mobility grant for research workshops with high school students in Cajicá, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Manuel Rubio Arévalo.

IMPACT STORIES

“

As I advance toward graduation in Spring 2024. I can reflect and see that OSUN has given me experiences that have not only improved my education, but also greatly enhanced my leadership skills and expanded my view of the world. “

—Aaron Masuba

AARON MASUBA Student, BRAC University

“My journey with OSUN began in 2021, when I took the Network Collaborative Course on Visual Storytelling for Civic Engagement. Now I’m helping to develop the first curriculum for the Social Impact Lab at BRAC University, a student-led platform that supports students as they create their own innovative social entrepreneurship projects. As an OSUN Global Media Fellow and a contributor to the Global Commons, I’m honing both my video production and writing skills. I am also attending multiple conferences and workshops around the world, where I present on the tech-based social impact projects I love.”

THE CONSORTIUM FOR THE LIBERAL ARTS IN PRISON BROUGHT TOGETHER GLOBAL GRANTEES TO DISCUSS PROGRESS AND CHALLENGES OF MAKING HIGHER EDUCATION ACCESSIBLE FOR INCARCERATED PERSONS

Above: Photo by Mohammad Mahedi Hasan.

Left: Photo by Social Impact Lab.

OSUN’s support gave me opportunities and community ties that have been instrumental in shaping my journey of self discovery, and I look forward to using the skills and knowledge I’ve gained to make a positive impact in my community and beyond.”

—-Uulzhan Bekturova

OSUN’s Global Commons has provided me with invaluable international experience and it’s energized me to work on more innovative projects centered on youth empowerment. Now I can honestly say I believe in the strength of our generation, not just as leaders of tomorrow but leaders of today.”

—-Hephzibah Emereole

ALI HUSSEIN ALADAWY OSUN Human Rights and the Arts Masters Student

“Through the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts MA program, I learned about important issues concerning borders and Indigenous struggles, and the tradition of Black radical struggles to develop a transnational solidarity network between scholars, activists, and artists connected to global grassroots work. I also had the key opportunity to frame my research on intersections between human rights and contemporary art, not only in terms of financialization infrastructures, but also in the context of struggles for political agency, critique, and autonomy.”

HEPHZIBAH EMEREOLE Alumna, Ashesi University

“OSUN’s Global Commons started out as an unformed idea for an online student publication. With two successful issues under our belt, it has become more about the power of collective action and the immense impact that youth can have when working together towards a common goal. As the founding Student Managing Editor, I worked hard with a dynamic team to create something that is successful and growing. Young people have so much to contribute when given enough support and the right tools and platform. Working on this venture has been a transformative experience for me, boosting my self-confidence and helping me to realize my potential as a global leader and my ability to inspire the best in others.“

UULZHAN BEKTUROVA Student, American University of Central Asia

“OSUN has played a significant role in both my academic journey and my personal growth. Originally, I received a microgrant from OSUN to implement my civic engagement project organizing youth workshops about domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan. My passion for social activism sparked, I then studied for a semester at Bard College, where I gained new perspectives on social justice issues. Upon returning to AUCA, I took the Network Collaborative Course on Visual Storytelling for Civic Engagement, which taught me how to create films that address social issues. Now I plan to use my artistic skills to promote gender equity.”

ELENA KIM Visiting Associate Professor of Psychology Bard College Annandale

“My experience as a Visiting Faculty Fellow from American University of Central Asia now at Bard College has provided me with an enriching mix of expanded learning, pedagogical experiments, and a growing network of colleagues and collaborators whose values I share. Being able to develop and teach content based in decolonial psychology, with an eye to diversity and inclusion, has transformed me as an educator, researcher, and activist. I have collaborated with colleagues across OSUN to develop six new psychology courses. I’m integrating social-justice-oriented pedagogy and insights from experiential learning in my teaching. I have also collaborated on an interdisciplinary study of memory,

trauma, and imperialism which I am now presenting at universities in the US. Joining the advisory board of a proposed OSUN doctoral program in the humanities and society has allowed me to contribute to curriculum programming and developing research methodology. All of these opportunities have given me the chance to greatly enhance my personal and professional growth. “

Photo by Doris Selassie Kamasah

Photo by Nour Annan

FELIX KAPUTU

Visiting Faculty in Literary Studies, Bard College

Simon’s Rock

Originally a professor at Lubumbashi University in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kaputu was illegally imprisoned for political reasons by government security forces and is now unable to return to his country. Since then, he has served as a lecturer in the US, Japan, Belgium, and Poland before being awarded his current Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative fellowship.

“This has been a very good experience. I’ve had time to teach, read, write, and publish my research. Not only do I feel like I am part of educating and teaching students but I am also truly a part of the college community here. This makes me feel like I’m not away from home and the people and things I’m used to. In many ways, I find the same kind of people and relations around me. I also enjoy teaching the OSUN classes because they address large audiences from around the world. For someone who is far from home, it’s like an opening to the continent and the entire globe. I find I’m not only connected to people on campus but I’m also connected to students and organizers from all over. I am working with students who are ambitious about obtaining knowledge and meeting others from all around the world. Their desire to talk and have discussions virtually is so impressive and attractive. I can’t imagine what would have happened without this opportunity to both survive and to thrive academically.”

GALINA YARMANOVA

Bard College

Berlin Fellow (Ukraine)

“I participated in two or three online seminars for the Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative this winter, and it was such a fantastic experience for me. I especially loved the Writing to Learn workshop. It helped me consider including writing techniques more in my teaching. It was so great that the workshop was experiencebased and organized right before my Intro to Queer Theory course for graduate students. I decided to incorporate writing into all seminars, and both my students and I enjoyed it a lot. I used freewriting in the classroom before, but not in a systematic way. This semester, we used freewriting at each class’s beginning and end. For many of my students, that was the first time they used this technique, and many told me that it helped them with more focused participation in class and with their papers for other courses.”

OSUN’S REACH

675,000+ STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS have participated in OSUN curricular and co-curricular activities

516 FACULTY taught OSUN courses at 26 PARTNER CAMPUSES

400% INCREASE since inception in the number of partner institutions participating in OSUN courses

31,000 REFUGEE AND DISPLACED LEARNERS have participated in higher education and research opportunities through the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives

217,000 FACULTY AND STUDENTS supported by workshops and trainings through the Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy

29,000 READERS engaged with the Democracy Institute’s Review of Democracy journal

373,000+ STUDENTS AND SCHOLARS have joined Solve Climate initiatives

10,000+ TEACHERS AND STUDENTS impacted by ENTEC through online and on-site workshops

16,000 STUDENTS have learned from Global Teaching Fellows

Photo by Ibrar Mirzai

NEARLY 10,000 STUDENTS HAVE PARTICIPATED IN OSUN COURSES SINCE INCEPTION

Photo by Emily Berge-Thielmann.

A GROWING RESEARCH AGENDA

DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE

The Democracy Institute (DI) continues to serve as an active incubator of innovative research and public engagement on open society, democracy and academic freedom. The DI’s new flagship project, the OSUN Forum on Democracy and Development, is a three-year research project that brings together partners in Bogotá, Johannesburg, and Budapest to collaborate on a multi-disciplinary study of social exclusion, patterns of mobilization, populism, and state development linked with the decline and revival of democracies. These research efforts will be translated into innovative teaching and disseminated across the network via the DI’s widely read Review of Democracy, now featuring regional editors highlighting intellectual contributions by scholars from the Global South. Building on links with the OSUN Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative, and other academic freedom initiatives, the DI also launched Academics Facing Autocracy - a fellowship that rethinks the relationship between academic freedom and democracy.

GLOBAL OBSERVATORY ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Through rigorous academic research that addresses the urgent need for rethinking the concept of academic freedom, the Global Observatory on Academic Freedom (GOAF) has focused on new challenges to the definitions and safeguards of academic freedom amid the resurgence of authoritarianism and illiberal threats to critical academic practice. GOAF published an acclaimed global report on Changing Understandings of Academic Freedom in the World at the Time of Pandemic and a survey on Academic Freedom in Hungary, and edited a special issue on Reimagining Academic Freedom in the journal Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, to be published in 2024. GOAF’s director Milica Popović was awarded the “Fundamental Academic Values Award’’ by the German Academic Exchange Service after leading GOAF’s Study on the Relationship between the Fundamental Values of Higher Education and Quality Assurance for the Council of Europe. GOAF also completed a Global Mapping of Regulatory Frameworks--a searchable database of legislation on academic freedom--and created a repository for its comprehensive overview of literature on academic freedom.

OPEN SOCIETY RESEARCH PLATFORM

The Open Society Research Platform (OSRP) has continued to map ongoing debates on open society’s intersection with global technological and educational transformations, as well as making the findings available to academics and the general public. The OSRP successfully launched an online database of sources on open society, which is the most comprehensive to date and is freely available to the public. The collection seeks to facilitate academic research and boost public awareness to foster the advancement of research and academic debate on the concept of open society. An open access volume and a special issue on New Perspectives on Open Society in the journal New Perspectives extended OSRP’s analyses.

GLOBAL CORRUPTION OBSERVATORY

The Global Corruption Observatory (GCO) addresses corruption through research, access to unique data, and training. With the belief that the rule of law is under threat in old and new democracies by corrupt elites, fueling widespread anti-elite and populist sentiments, the Observatory uses data, indicators, and analytics to understand and better fight corruption by tackling such hardto-measure phenomena. The GCO has assembled an immense novel dataset containing more than 62 million government contracts and 300,000 bills and laws from over 40 countries around the world. Based on this data, the project has developed a set of actionable risk indicators to enhance anti-corruption efforts. To better hold governments to account, and to bring stateof-the-art data science to a wide group of stakeholders, all data and indicators are made publicly available on the GCO website, globalcorruptionobservatory. com. With these tools, the project team has supported policy analysis and policy decisions by diverse organizations such as the World Bank and Transparency International. Ongoing activities couple novel data and indicators with training and skills development for students, NGOs, and journalists seeking to strengthen government accountability.

Editors of the Democracy Institute’s Review of Democracy holding a rare in-person meeting. Seated, from left, are Managing Editor Michal Matlak and Editors Ferenc Laczo and Kasia Krzyzanowska. Photo courtesy of DI.

“Community partners –in our case Amnesty International and the local schools – are best regarded as co-designers, not as targets of the research. Their ideas and insights on how to organize the field work were essential.”

—Inna Melnykovska, Science Shop project leader and Central European University assistant professor

ENGAGED RESEARCH Science Shop

The Science Shop initiative, consisting of collaborations that integrate higher education coursework and research with the efforts of civil society organizations, continues to build new partnerships through community-based co-curricular student research initiatives with BRAC University, Central European University, and European Humanities University. Participants are seeing how the Science Shop model can help transform partnerships into aspirational and impactful real-world projects, engaging in mutually beneficial and collaborative learning that enriches each course and research project. The number of new institutional opportunities connecting community partners with faculty and students has almost tripled, increasing from 12 in the academic year 2021-22 to 33 in the 2022-23 academic year. Researchers adapting their projects to the specific needs of engaged community partners has consistently led to stronger commitments for everyone involved.

Center for Human Rights & the Arts

Through the Ruins, the first volume published in the Center for Human Rights and the Arts (CHRA’s) series Talks on Human Rights and the Arts, offers eight provocative pieces by activists, artists, and scholars engaged in rethinking both fields of practice by placing themselves at their intersection. The book draws on CHRA’s year-long series of talks hosted by colleagues across the network and featuring probing posttalk conversations. “Art can help us understand what human rights mean,” says photographer Marcelo Brodsky in one of the discussions, and the book demonstrates the significance and necessity of this double reimagining. OSUN colleagues also contributed to Common Ground, an international festival on the politics of land and food, culminating in an exhibition showcasing work produced during the last year on four continents–collaborations between local curators, artists, activists, faculty, and students at Al-Quds Bard, The University of the Witwatersrand, and the Universidad de los Andes. The first graduating class in the MA in Human Rights and the Arts presented Tracing Apparitions, a multi-disciplinary thesis exhibition with research-based projects taking the forms of lecture-performances, installations, performances, video, comics, and a reading room on a wide range of topics. Issues included the ethics and politics of community-based art, colonial archives and sexuality in mandate Palestine, the politics of nostalgia in Lebanon, pre-colonial mask making in Mexico, Indigenous textile labor in Guatemala, theoretical perspectives on human rights and contemporary art, humanitarianism at the U.S.Mexico border; and graffiti and the battle for public space in Amman.

EXEMPLARY ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP:

Collaborating to Decolonize Research and Promote Well-being

Diana Ordóñez Castillo, a doctoral student at Universidad de los Andes, has known war, as have the women belonging to the Colectivo de Comunicaciones de María (Collective) and the Collective’s Travelling Museum of Memory and Identity of Montes de María (El Mochuelo) – where Ordóñez Castillo has built deep relationships that exemplify engaged scholarship.

Though she has lived through decades of the armed conflict, Ordóñez Castillo did not see battle and its aftermath. Her praxis, however, overcame this conceptual distance by working from within a decolonialized and engaged research methodology that requires her to position herself, as much as possible, within the life world of the people she seeks to understand and engage with. “It requires the researcher to stand shoulder-toshoulder with the people they are studying and the issues they are concerned about; to learn their ways of thinking and being,” she notes.

Ordóñez Castillo is one of the 25 engaged scholars from 17 countries that the Talloires Network and OSUN Civic Engagement Initiative are supporting with grants to further their community engaged research, as well as a Community of Practice. Engaged research goes beyond academic study and includes a commitment to long term sustainable community partnerships that incorporates and centers the expertise of the researchers’ collaborators. “We have discovered that an online global community of practice is a third space, beyond the local community

and the university, where durable relationships of common knowing and cause may be cultivated across geo-political boundaries. It is a space for engaged scholars around the world to reflect on their civic experience, acknowledge the political dimensions of complex challenges, and deconstruct oppressive systems of power. Simply, this emerging global community of practice is a vehicle for movement-building,” says Lorlene Hoyt, Executive Director of the Talloires Network.

—Excerpt from an article by University World News, in partnership with the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities. April 3, 2023. “

(Engaged Scholarship) requires the researcher to stand shoulder-toshoulder with the people they are studying and the issues they are concerned about; to learn their ways of thinking and being.”

—Diana Ordóñez Castillo

Nour Annan’s installation on the politics of nostalgia in Lebanon was one of several Human Rights in the Arts MA thesis exhibits on view at Bard College Annandale. Photo by OSUN.

The Travelling Museum of Memory and Identity of Montes de María in Colombia. Photo courtesty of the International Center for the Promotion of Human Rights.

PARTNERSHIPS

LEADERSHIP FROM THE MARGINS: SAMIA HUQ, DEAN, SCHOOL OF GENERAL EDUCATION, BRAC UNIVERSITY

OSUN embarked on a new project on “Development in the Global South and Leadership from the Margins” that is based at BRAC University, in partnership with other Institutions located in the Global Majority, including the American University of Beirut, Al-Quds Bard, Ashesi University, and Universidad de los Andes. The project seeks to understand how transformation and development have evolved in the Global South, with an eye to recognizing home-grown solutions to a range of social and environmental challenges that emerge from a deep understanding of ground level realities, such as the living conditions of those affected, specifically the poor and the marginalized.

Numerous initiatives and organizations have achieved monumental developmental and transformative gains for their communities, yet these experiences and practices are seldom critically examined, conceptualized, and developed into usable models for globally acceptable knowledge contribution. This project centers and documents such practices and experiences. The second aim of the

project is to better understand the initiators of these development and transformative practices–including their visions and aspirations, and the challenges and strategies they encountered along the way. Through a deep dive on dynamic doers and ground mobilizers, the project captures overlooked leadership models that originated in the Global South, in a framework that is not dominated solely by politics and business. Presenting these cases in the forms of a white paper and a course allows OSUN to bring to the table a living understanding of community-based transformative work in the Global South, potentially inspiring students and educators to create similar visions of change in the region.

FRONTLINERS COLLABORATION: LORLENE HOYT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TALLOIRES NETWORK

Increasingly, and out of necessity, universities are responding to local emergencies. Engaged universities are adapting their research, teaching, and service missions to meet the needs of rapidly changing societies around the world. Our two global networks—OSUN and Tatlloires—have joined forces to support and learn with these “frontline” leaders by listening to and documenting their stories.

While we are bringing together voices and perspectives from civic leaders in Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, and Pakistan, they are creating the path forward by way of cross-border dialogue and exchange. Throughout the year, they are reflecting on their practices together and co-developing a call to action for the international higher education community.

Raquel Bernal, Rector, Universidad de los Andes

As Academic Vice-Rector and then as Rector, I have been able to perceive firsthand that OSUN is a very dynamic, innovative, and proactive network that listens to its partner institutions and is not afraid to experiment. As a result of these important features, which are all fundamental to our conception of higher education and the training of active and critical citizens, at Universidad de los Andes we participate actively in OSUN and have achieved notable visibility within the network. It is very satisfying to see so many individuals at Uniandes, including leadership and managers, faculty, students, and administrative staff from virtually all schools and administrative units participating and leading on several academic, research, creative, and civic engagement initiatives. We not only submit proposals to receive funding, we actually contribute our own ideas, leadership skills, and capabilities to different working groups, both thematic and administrative. We feel we are being heard. A global network such as this, where we learn and share, is the kind of partnership we want to truly engage with and commit to.

Samia Huq (second from left) and colleagues from Ashesi University, Bard College Annandale, and BRAC U at Ashesi to discuss a course on leadership.

Photo by Brian Mateo

The new OSUN Civic Engagement Initiative Steering Committee met in Budapest for a strategic planning session.

Photo courtesy of Universidad de los Andes.

ACCESS: THE OSUN DIFFERENCE MAKING EDUCATION ACCESSIBLE TO MARGINALIZED POPULATIONS

Thanks to RhEAP, many refugees in Kakuma have a hope of joining university. Normally, chances of going to university in Kakuma would go to a few students who managed to get above a B-, almost impossible in our very crowded school classrooms. The program is largely inclusive as it has accommodated students of all academic capabilities based on interviews and an application, not only from their high school grades. Personally, it has given me an opportunity to redeem myself in order to achieve my dreams of joining university to pursue my ambition.”

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives (Hubs) have a clear mission to advocate for increased educational access for displaced populations and to do so on a global stage. OSUN serves as the co-chair of the UNHCR-founded Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways. The Task Force promotes and supports the expansion of complementary education pathways and has opened up a multitude of collaborative possibilities with global actors across the refugee education space, including key government and European Commission representatives, major donors, and other university networks, all working to develop solutions for the world’s displaced populations to access higher education.

The Hubs fill a major gap in the education in emergencies space, including Kenya, Bangladesh, Jordan and East Sudan, where many scholarship opportunities for displaced students go unfilled because they are not university ready due to interrupted education and the impact of their trauma.

The Hubs Refugee Higher Education Access Program (RhEAP) is the only sustained bridging program in displacement contexts that trains the most marginalized students in university readiness, critical thinking, reading, writing and upskills content knowledge. Those affected by displacement are often impacted by educational disruptions, lack of access to formal

secondary school, overcrowded classrooms, underprepared teachers, and rote learning environments. RhEAP offers a comprehensive bridge-year program that prepares learners with the needed skills to be successful in university or to create their own livelihood pathways. Since its inception, the Hub has provided higher educational and research opportunities to 31,610 refugee and displaced learners.

THE COLLABORATIVE FOR LIBERAL EDUCATION FOR ADOLESCENTS

The Collaborative for Liberal Education for Adolescents (CLEA) brings intellectually inspiring opportunities in the liberal arts and sciences to students who are younger than the traditional undergraduate. CLEA’s premise is that opening doors to authentic postsecondary study at a younger age is a powerful way to prepare them for collegiate critical thinking and academic writing, connecting education and the classroom to issues of civic and social importance. With a focus on working with young people who face significant structural barriers to higher education, CLEA is a collaboration between Al QudsBard College (AQB), Bard Early College (BEC), and the American University of Central Asia’s Technical School of Innovation (TSI). Within secondary schools and public systems of learning, CLEA creates direct pathways to postsecondary study. This year, 159 students in eight West Bank high schools took seminars on critical thinking and 120 students participated in civic engagement workshops that allowed them to meet in person and exchange ideas. The program received a U.S. State

Department grant to support the work, a recognition of the importance of creating and sustaining these opportunities in Palestine. TSI and BEC have built a faculty mentorship program with 12 BEC faculty fellows paired with early college faculty at TSI, designing eight community engaged liberal arts and sciences courses. CLEA has extended the core element of the program to high schools across Bishkek, reaching 300 under-resourced students in over 40% of the city’s public high schools.

CONSORTIUM FOR THE LIBERAL ARTS IN PRISON

The Bard Prison Initiative’s (BPI) Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison is growing a global communityof-practice with 22 programs participating across 14 nations and six continents, including educators from Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad, Australia, Italy, Mexico, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Community partners share knowledge and experiences through virtual webinars and a popular online lecture series organized by BPI’s first Global Research Fellow, based in Argentina. The series features leading international scholars and practitioners working in fields related to education

in prison in the international or transnational context. Some global grantees have also participated in The BPI Summer Residency at Bard College Annandale and attended the first global meeting of its kind in Buenos Aires in April, hosted by the University of San Martin CUSAM. The Consortium has also awarded capacity-building grants to eight domestic partner institutions and 12 international associates, in an effort to boost local practitioners’ ability to foster, sustain, and grow educational endeavors in carceral spaces based on their specific needs.

Robert Claudio, RhEAP participant, Kakuma Camp, Kenya

Photo of a RhEAP student by Juan Glass

OSUN MEMBERS

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Al-Quds University/Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine)

American University of Afghanistan (Afghanistan)

American University of Beirut (Lebanon)

American University in Bulgaria

American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan)

Arizona State University (United States)

Ashesi University (Ghana)

Bard College at Simon’s Rock: The Early College (United States)

Bard College Berlin (Germany)

Bard Early Colleges (United States)

Birkbeck: University of London (United Kingdom)

Bocconi University (Italy)

BRAC University (Bangladesh)

European Humanities University (Lithuania)

European University Institute (Italy)

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Switzerland)

Hertie School (Germany)

Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine)

London School of Economics (United Kingdom)

National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan)

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania)

Parami University (Myanmar)

Sciences Po in Paris (France)

SOAS University of London (United Kingdom)

Tuskegee University (United States)

Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

University of the West Indies (Jamaica)

University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Bard Prison Initiative (United States)

Black Mountains College (United Kingdom)

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (United States)

Chatham House (United Kingdom)

Haitian Education and Leadership Program (Haiti)

Institute for New Economic Thinking (United States and United Kingdom)

Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade (Serbia)

Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Austria)

Picker Center for Executive Education, Columbia University (United States)

Princeton Global History Lab (United States)

Rift Valley Institute (Kenya)

The Afghanistan Project at the Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh (United States)

The Talloires Network of Engaged Universities (United States)

University of California, Berkeley Human Rights Center (United States)

University of Connecticut Human Rights Institute (United States)

OSUN PROGRAMS

Birkbeck Critical Theory

Summer School

Center for Human Rights & the Arts

Center for Liberal Arts and Science Pedagogy

Chatham House Academy

Fellowships

Civic Engagement Initiative

Co-designing Accessible Cities

Collaborating For Rural Sustainability

Collaborative for Liberal Education for Adolescents

Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison

Democracy Institute

Developing Teaching Professionals for Global Higher Education

Economic Democracy Initiative

English Learner Success in Content Classrooms

Enhanced Network Teacher

Education Capacity

Experimental Humanities

Collaborative Network

Faculty Mobility

GEOHub

Global Corruption Observatory

Global Debate Network

Global Health and Human Rights

Global History Lab

Global Institute of Advanced Study

Global Observatory on Academic Freedom

Global Studies Program

Global Teaching Fellowship Program

Hannah Arendt Humanities Network

Hubs for Connected Learning

Initiatives

International Early College

Commons and Press

Interruptrr

Liberal Arts and Sciences

Collaborative

Library Resources Program

Microcollege for Just

Community Leadership

Open Learning Initiative

Open Society Research Platform

Open to Health

OSUN Certificate Programs

OSUN Courses

Policy Labs

Population Health Informatics

Professional Development Program for University Administrators

Rethinking Economic Policy to Address Inequality

Roma Equity in Higher Education Science Shop

Socrates Project

Solve Climate by 2030

Strengthening the Core

Student Life Initiatives

Program

Student Mobility

Summer University

Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative

Participants celebrating at an OSUN student leadership retreat at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Photo by Jose Mauricio Gonzalez.

info@opensocietyuniversitynetwork.org opensocietyuniversitynetwork.org