bonus EPISODE TWO
Scholars at risk: an interview with david quinn
The conversation connects directly to Vrdoljak’s own research: an Australian Research Council-funded project on the European émigré lawyers who fled fascism in the 1930s and 40s and found refuge in Australia, soon to be released as the podcast series Emergency Exit. Quinn and Vrdoljak discuss the parallels between that earlier era and today’s, the crucial distinction between academic freedom and free speech, and the stories of scholars including Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, imprisoned for defending women protesting Iran’s mandatory hijab laws, whose cases show what is at stake when that freedom is denied.
Featured in this Bonus Episode
Robert Quinn
Robert Quinn is the founding Executive Director of the Scholars at Risk Network, an independent not-for-profit corporation based at New York University, and host of the Free to Think podcast.
Mr. Quinn formerly served as a member of the Council of the Magna Charta Observatory, based in Bologna, Italy; Executive Director of the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund; on the Steering Committee of the Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR), based in London, UK; a member of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a member of the Scientific Committee of Pax Academica, an online journal on academic freedom in Africa published by CODESRIA from Dakar, Senegal; a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program in Washington, DC. He received an A.B. cum laude from Princeton in 1988, a J.D. cum laude from Fordham in 1994, and honorary doctorates from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2010 and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2023. In 2012, Mr. Quinn and Scholars at Risk received the University of Oslo’s human rights award, the Lisl and Leo Eitinger Prize, for “relentless work to protect the human rights of academics and for having inspired and engaged others to stress the importance of academic freedom.”
Ana Filipa Vrdoljak
Professor Ana Filipa Vrdoljak is a UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and International Law and Co-Coordinator of the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on Culture in Emergencies at the University of Technology Sydney specialising in international law, human rights and international humanitarian law. Her research examines the protection of culture and cultural heritage in conflict and post-conflict settings, alongside broader questions of legal accountability and reparations.
Ana is the author of International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects (Cambridge University Press, 1e 2006, 2e forthcoming), ‘Human Rights and Genocide: The Work of Lauterpact and Lemkin’ European Journal of International Law (2009). She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on International Cultural Heritage Law (Oxford University Press 2020) and The 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions. A Commentary (Oxford University Press 2024). She is general editor of the Oxford Commentaries on International Cultural Heritage Law and OUP book series Cultural Heritage Law and Policy.
Episode credits
This bonus episode was recorded on Gadigal Land, in Sydney. It was recorded by Siobhan Moylan and edited by BLAH.
Emergency Exit was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council.
History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Dr Sarah Gilbert.
Further reading and listening
‘Fighting to Protect – and Define – Academic Freedom’ by Robert Quinn
Find out about the work of Scholars at Risk and how you can contribute here.
To listen to the ‘Free to Think’ podcast link through here.