As she watches the uprising in Iran, where thousands have taken to the streets to protest the beating death of Masha Amini, Nasim Niknafs, a University of Toronto (U of T) professor of music, finds herself thinking back to her own experiences fleeing the regime in 2013. "It's an embodied situation for me," muses Niknafs, who is associate dean of research and a member of the U of T Faculty Association's External Affairs Committee.
Her efforts to leave Iran were complicated by restrictions on exit visas, as well as the cost and difficulty of securing a flight. Four years later, by then established at U of T, she witnessed what was happening to graduate students from Iran who found themselves trapped by the Trump Administration's immigration clampdown. "The Muslim ban wasn't at the forefront of a lot of discourses," she recalls. "I remember that the university had a townhall and I broached the subject, and they were thinking about it. It was basically the first time that you're thinking about bodies, scholarly bodies, that have to deal with visa issues."
Niknafs says academic staff associations and scholars-at-risk groups are working to support academics who are fleeing war zones, civil unrest, and police coercion. She adds, however, that scholars who manage to escape must put their research on hold as they struggle with more practical and immediate concerns such as securing the safety of family members, finding housing and dealing with paperwork. "We need to use all our channels," she says, adding that the university could do more in terms of providing financial resources.
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