Academic Freedom – Solidarity – Responsibility
The "Garden of Refuge" Walk is a temporary exhibition within the Botanical Garden of Ruhr University Bochum. It celebrates the fundamental right to academic freedom and honors the courage, resilience and contributions of scholars who are wrongfully imprisoned or who have been forced to leave their homelands due to war, persecution, or political oppression.
Nestled in the serenity of the RUB Botanical Garden, the Garden of Refuge Walk invites you to pause, reflect, and engage with one of the most pressing issues facing scholars, academic institutions, and societies around the world today.
Where stories of refuge, resilience, and research bloom alongside nature.
It offers a space to contemplate the meaning and fragility of academic freedom – as well as the courage and shared responsibility needed to help it take root, and flourish, on campus and beyond.
As you walk the path through the Botanical Garden, you trace the journeys of scholars in exile—individuals who walk among us and have faced threats to their freedom and lives for thinking, teaching, and seeking truth.
Date: 27 June 2025 | 14:00-16:00
Venue: Foyer Greenhouses | RUB Botanical Garden
Language: English
Join us for the opening of the Garden of Refuge Walk – a guided tour where scholars at RUB share powerful stories of refuge, resilience, and research, and reflect on what academic freedom, solidarity, and responsibility mean to them.
Academic freedom is a fundamental academic value and is protected by human rights. It is a cornerstone of universities as well as open and democratic societies. Around the world, however, academic freedom is more and more constraint and scholars are increasingly silenced or persecuted for their research or public engagement.
At RUB, our dedication to academic freedom, solidarity, and social responsibility is deeply rooted in our values. This commitment is reflected in our Codex for Freedom and Diversity, the endorsement of the principles of the Magna Charta Universitatum, and our Scholars at Risk program.
As a member of the Scholars at Risk Network and the New University in Exile Consortium, and with the generous support of the Philipp Schwartz Initiative, the Fedor Stepun Fellowship Program and related programs, we promote academic freedom and support scholars, who are at risk due to persecution, conflict, or repression.
The Garden of Refuge Walk was created by students in collaboration with scholars in exile and Philipp Schwartz Fellows at Ruhr University Bochum as part of the Scholars at Risk Advocacy Seminar 2025, a key initiative of the Scholars at Risk Program of Ruhr University Bochum.
The idea for the Garden of Refuge Walk builds on the symbolic tree planting in the RUB Botanical Garden that took place during the first Scholars at Risk Seminar in 2021, which marked a commitment to academic freedom and solidarity with at-risk scholars. The Walk continues this engagement and expands on it – as a space for remembrance, reflection, and the recognition of academic lives in exile.
It was made possible with generous support from the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
