Published by Mother Jones on November 23, 2022
The doctor strides through Greenwich Village at rush hour on a December afternoon as if leaning into the wind. He is tall, lean, young—34—with longish wavy dark hair, charcoal eyebrows, a Roman nose. Carrying a raincoat and backpack, he appears vigilant. If violence were to erupt, he would be more likely to sprint towards a car crash or gunshots than away, in order to render first aid. Deferential and polite, a fellow who cherished and was cherished by his mother, who led the funeral prayers at her town mosque and hated to place great distance between himself and her final resting place by leaving Syria for America. Salim (a family name he is using to protect his privacy) refrains from bringing up his personal history unless asked.
Few Americans ask.
If someone does ask, he gives them time to reconsider and wander off, perhaps under the pretense of seeking a coffee refill. He understands that, for most Americans, the complexity and the preposterous cruelty of the narrative will feel overwhelming.
While a medical student, Salim served as a paramedic treating commonplace cases like heat stroke and ankle sprains until, in 2011, the country exploded with demonstrations and state repression. In time, he made it to the US and began a public health graduate program. Now a doctoral candidate, he focuses on health systems and population health in conflict and post-conflict settings.
On this early evening in mid-December, Salim has accepted an invitation to a small holiday party on a tree-lined street near Union Square. His host, Arien Mack, is the Alfred J. & Monette C. Marrow Professor of Psychology Emeritus at The New School, which is down the block and where she has taught since 1970. Barely five feet tall, she’s described by many as “formidable” and for the last half-century has had an up-close view of the tribulations and griefs of imperiled intellectuals. She has invited Salim and a dozen other endangered scholars to her home this evening in her capacity as founding director of the New University in Exile Consortium. It’s to be their first in-person gathering since the onset of Covid. Mack launched the Consortium in 2018 as an in-person and virtual meeting place for members of the intelligentsia peeling away from repressive countries. All her guests tonight fled their homelands to avoid imprisonment, assassination, or (in Salim’s case) orders to join the perpetrators.
In the four years since its launch with fewer than a dozen member institutions, the Consortium has expanded to 60 colleges and universities in North America, Western Europe, the UK, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa–including 29 in the US—all committed to hosting endangered scholars and enabling them to participate in the online weekly seminars. Over 100 lawyers, doctors, artists, and academics have come from 22 countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen. Though Mack conceived of the program to sustain scholars in exile rather than literally rescue them, that role has changed since the fall of Afghanistan.
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