Sarina S. Rosenthal’s scientific contributions

While academic mobility has generally been positioned in the literature as a ready, at-will movement of people and ideas, this chapter demonstrates how significantly the conditions of mobility and immobility ‘all at once’ impact knowledge production and exchange. By offering a more nuanced window into the experiences of scholars in exile, this chapter challenges dominant discourses of academic mobility and draws on lessons learned from within liminal spaces of knowledge production to advance more responsive higher education communities. In these context-rich examples, the experiences of scholars in exile reveal the interpersonal tensions and cultural shifts—including gender, ethnic and race-based stereotypes and discrimination—that affect their intellectual outputs, further problematizing the conceptualization of knowledge production in human capital terms. Lessons gleaned from Scholars at Risk (SAR) and other programs supporting at-risk scholars suggest support structures that amplify scholars’ agency. More broadly, higher education should consider ways of adapting to its diverse knowledge producers, rather than supporting opportunities to acclimate to its current climate. While a subset of a larger population of marginalized academics, the experiences, and perspectives of exiled scholars offer valuable insights for broader initiatives that seek to support marginalized groups operating in third spaces in U.S. higher education and more equitable exchange of ideas.