On April 24, 2018, in Berlin, the international organization Scholars at Risk (SAR) conferred their Courage to Think Award not to a lone scholar but to 1,128 scholars jointly. The recipient was Academics for Peace/Bariş I˙çin Akademisyenler, a group of academic signatories to the January 2016 "We Will Not Be a Party to This Crime!" peace petition (Academics for Peace 2016) urging the Turkish government to halt its accelerating violence in the Kurdish provinces and return to stalled peace negotiations with the Kurds, in conformance with national and international law. This was the first time that a sizable group of academics of Kurdish and non-Kurdish backgrounds from Turkey had come together in solidarity to make concrete demands on the politically taboo subject of Turkish state violence toward the Kurds. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reacted immediately by criminalizing the petition and the petitioners. He accused the signatories of treason and terrorist propaganda and announced the launch of a criminal investigation. With the failed coup attempt of July 2016 and Erdoğan's move to consolidate authoritarian power, mass disciplinary action by and against universities followed, resulting in suspension, criminal investigation and prosecution, arrest, and detention of the petitioners. Thousands of academics lost their jobs. © 2019 by Duke University Press.

Diversity Plurality Academics at risk Exile Neoliberalism

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