Director, Research and Learning Scholars at Risk

Position

Scholars at Risk is seeking a highly‑organized, proactive and detail‑oriented researcher/educator and team leader to lead SAR’s research and learning activities. The Director will play a key role within the SAR’s leadership team by building out a new project focused on responding to recent threats to higher education in the US and abroad. The project will focus on producing reports, models, and guidance to address recurring patterns of threats to higher education, as seen throughout SAR’s twenty‑five years working with thousands of at‑risk scholars from over 100 countries.

The project will aim specifically to “move the needle” with activities that go beyond one‑off engagements to those that can be widely disseminated and scaled, domestically and internationally. This means grounding activities in international, universal standards supporting academic freedom and related values, reaching higher education leaders and administrators who make decisions on institutional policy, and connecting them with international peers.

It also means reaching wider audiences—including faculty, students, policymakers, media, and the public—to demonstrate the connection between higher education, knowledge production, and the greater public good. Working with SAR’s membership, protection, and advocacy teams, the project will bridge domestic academic freedom activities and discourse with the conversation, networks, and experience in SAR’s global network through a combination of activities focused on mobilization and convenings, thought leadership, and experience‑sharing (including reports, training materials, models, case examples, and research developed collaboratively with partners and project participants through workshops, working groups, and fellowships).

• Conceptualize and produce project reports, including reports on student expression/protest on campus and institutional autonomy/neutrality, and other reports as warranted.
• Develop assessment tools to advance academic freedom protection in practice, designed for maximum scalability and impact, including a rubric and complementary audit tools.
• Create additional reports, models, case examples, and guidance instruments that meet project and SAR goals.
• Lead the convening of expert working groups to research, draft, edit, and deploy reports and related materials, drawing from faculty at network member institutions, advocacy partners, and coalition partners.
• Develop project activities, conceptualizing strategies and outputs, recruiting partners and contributions, and delivering and disseminating outcomes to maximize impacts.
• Coordinate communication across all SAR teams, inviting input on the project and specific activities.
• Cultivate opportunities for participation by faculty at network member institutions, advocacy partners, coalition partners, or others in project activities and dissemination of outputs.
• Supervise researchers, offering direction, feedback, and guidance toward project goals and staff development.
• Report to SAR leadership on progress toward project goals, obstacles, and strategies for overcoming them; prepare updates for SAR leadership, the SAR board, funders, and prospective funders.

• Develop and deliver trainings, workshops, webinars, and other outreach efforts aimed at widely disseminating project outputs, with an emphasis on scalability and maximizing impacts.
• Increase the visibility of the project and SAR through conferences, webinars, social media, press outreach, e‑blasts, mailings, website updates, audio/video outputs (e.g., podcasts), and additional communications‑related activities, as warranted.

• Develop appropriate data tracking systems to demonstrate project reach and impacts.
• Develop appropriate team member goals and performance metrics, consistent with SAR‑wide practices and the SAR strategic plan goals.
• Lead and/or contribute to project or SAR‑wide administration and operations as required.

• Graduate degree in a related…