When the University Is a Refugee

My final project at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) in Kabul took place on August 1, 2021, just two weeks before the Taliban’s return and takeover of the country. As AUAF provost, I was receiving a five-member team from the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education, which had been assigned to audit our programs. Our association with former AUAF trustee and US special representative Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been at odds with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, had left AUAF caught in a political crossfire, making us subject to new criteria designed to challenge our standing as the country’s top university. As the audit commenced, we were informed that Ghani had personally requested a report by the end of the week, as if there were no more pressing issues while the Taliban rapidly approached Kabul. 

At this point in the summer of 2021, most of our international faculty and staff had been asked to leave Afghanistan in anticipation of political unrest, and only a skeleton crew remained on campus. As we sat through hours of meetings, each member of the auditing team used the breaks to visit my office in confidence, begging for a visa to the United States. They mistakenly believed that because AUAF had “American” in its name and received funding from the US government, we had the connections to facilitate their escape. In reality, AUAF was established in 2006 as a private Afghan institution dedicated to offering an American model of liberal arts education, with no direct ties to US immigration. As a French national with full freedom of movement, I had come to AUAF to work as an administrator.

Listening to the auditors’ and my colleagues’ fears, I remember wondering what I would do if I were ever in their shoes, unable to travel without a visa and sensing that the society I knew was on the brink of irrevocable negative change. A week later, I, too, would be organizing my departure from Afghanistan.

Those of us in unstable political situations plan, create scenarios, and prepare ourselves for fleeing the country, yet no one is ever ready for exile. Overnight, order becomes obsolete: the files you carefully organized for the auditors must now be burned to prevent them from revealing information about students and staff that could put them in danger. Your last hours are spent packing, destroying more files and servers, and searching for missing campus pets. You prepare to evacuate, placing your trust in your security company, which assured you that reaching the airport from its compound would be no issue. Then the Taliban are at the gates of Kabul, and on the evening of August 14, 2021, you find yourself in a location just two kilometers from the airport, deciding when to go and not knowing how the story will end. 

Today, those of us continuing to run AUAF online from various places abroad have learned that exile does not have to be solely about survival; it can be about growth in quality, enrollment, and partnerships to serve our students, especially women, so that they can continue to access quality education and, therefore, economic independence and freedom. It can be about reemerging stronger than before the crisis while also uplifting our greater university ecosystem as we move forward. Institutions remaining in Afghanistan continue to navigate drastic policy changes, such as the Taliban’s ban on women accessing higher education and requirement to integrate religious components into every field of study, including computer science and medicine. AUAF, which has always been a leader in the Afghan higher education system, must support these other institutions from afar. For example, in the summer of 2023, under the Women’s Scholarship Endowment (supported by the US Agency for International Development), AUAF relocated fifty women from various universities still physically located in Afghanistan to study in our Qatar program. Managed well and with agility, exile can be a catalyst for continuous improvement.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul. By this time, nearly all international faculty and staff had left the country, and some of our national staff, faculty, and students had also departed and were scattered around the world in places like Australia, Canada, Spain, and Italy. Many AUAF nationals, though, were still in Afghanistan. As we evacuated, our team received hundreds of emails from students, faculty, and staff fearfully pleading for a way out of Afghanistan. The most vivid email I received was in the afternoon of August 15 from a male student in Kandahar. “To say we are scared is an understatement,” he wrote, “and to say we are scared of being killed does not justify our fear. It is not just the fear of being simply dead, but the fear of being humiliated, mutilated, publicly stoned, lashed to death . . . in the presence of our families, hanged for days at intersections.”

AUAF’s leadership team, sheltering at our security company’s compound, had to make swift decisions. The window for nonmilitary flights out of Afghanistan was rapidly closing, and we did not know what the next few days would look like. Since we had destroyed our servers, we had to work with our registrar, who was based in Canada, to manually compile student and staff information for airplane manifests. A chartered plane was available, its destination uncertain, and its time in the air unpredictable. It made sense for someone from the leadership team to remain on the ground to continue the immediate tasks needed for the student relocation efforts. It was essential for AUAF President Ian Bickford to leave the country to manage the coordination of our operations. I made the decision to remain behind for only a few hours to ensure the continuity of our work streams, planning to board the next plane—which never came. 

I remained in our security company’s compound with three other staff members and four students, along with more than four hundred former security personnel from embassies and United Nations agencies. Our security team had become utterly powerless. We endured gunfire attacks on the compound for two consecutive nights before the Taliban took control and kept us under house arrest from August 16 until August 21. I was finally able to leave and eventually relocate with a small number of faculty and staff to Qatar, where I continue to serve as provost and vice president of academic affairs. Bickford continues to serve as president from the United States.

From its founding in 2006 to August 2021, AUAF produced six thousand undergraduate and graduate alumni and served students from all thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, representing a range of socioeconomic statuses and diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Pashtuns, Hazara, and Tajiks. But in the last days of summer 2021, AUAF faced the grim possibility of being dismantled for parts—students scattered across the globe, faculty “rescued” by well-meaning colleges and universities, our legacy and community chipped away piece by piece. While we are immensely grateful to other institutions for offering a haven to members of our faculty and staff, we also believe in the importance of their home institution’s survival, as this is also part of their identities. With our escape from Afghanistan, we faced two critical emergencies: ensuring the continued existence of the institution and enabling the greatest number of students to continue their studies under the best conditions possible, if at all. Our institutional fate and that of our students were intertwined. Had AUAF ceased its operations, each student’s departure would have meant their academic achievements risked vanishing into thin air, forcing them to start over somewhere new should their credits not be recognized. The same applied to our faculty, many of whom risked their positions being downgraded in foreign universities that might not recognize their past scholarly achievements should we not be able to provide them with employment verification letters or recommendations. 

As we began the academic year in fall 2021, following the final days of the US presence in Afghanistan, the AUAF leadership team, working virtually from different locations around the globe, resolved to relocate every student who had been actively enrolled at AUAF before August 15, 2021. This meant that each active AUAF student would be given the opportunity to continue their AUAF studies elsewhere. To achieve this goal, we decided to relocate students to institutions that could host students as a cohort, that existed in countries ready to issue temporary visas, and that could secure support from funding agencies or bodies to serve our students. We aimed not simply to evacuate students but to also provide them, particularly women, with an auspicious space to virtually resume their studies as a group.

Two sister universities that could meet our requirements, the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan and the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, had already committed to take in more than four hundred AUAF students in the days prior to the Taliban takeover. The generosity of both communities has been outstanding and remains, to this day, an illustration of the need for international partnerships to create built-in resilience within institutions. Bard College also welcomed many of our students to its campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In essence, partnerships enable universities to prepare for the worst, allowing them to quickly find alternatives when faced with challenges, rather than scrambling to find partners and develop solutions during a crisis. Partnerships should be an integral part of any university’s risk-management plan.  

Even as we relocated active students, we recruited new students in Afghanistan through social media and other online outreach. In this way, the bulk of our community today is in Afghanistan and continues to grow within the country, with international faculty and staff supporting operations from abroad. All instruction continues online. 

Additionally, in fall 2021, AUAF President Bickford successfully advocated with the US government for every student active in August 2021 to be eligible for refugee resettlement, allowing each student to receive a residency permit upon arrival in the United States. In practical terms, this meant that students could be relocated outside of Afghanistan to study while their applications were processed, while eligible students still in Afghanistan would also be given the possibility to leave the country. Individual cases are slowly moving toward completion, with AUAF students trickling into the United States week by week.

With so many of our community literally in transit, many assumed we would delay the start of the academic year. However, Bickford and I shared a common understanding—rooted in his experience in Myanmar helping establish Parami University and mine working with Bethlehem University in Palestine—that even a temporary closure could risk permanent shutdown. We resolved to begin on schedule, with whoever could return to online learning. 

As the academic year started, we prioritized our students’ immediate need to resume their studies—the only element of normalcy and stability in their lives. We provided students with logistical assistance, such as offering free data packages for online learning. In addition, for the first two weeks of the semester, we grouped faculty and students by academic major to discuss the impact of the new situation on their fields of study. For example, faculty and students in the law program addressed changes in the Afghan legal system. These discussions, held in the safety of virtual classrooms, provided students with a crucial space to process the traumatic events they had experienced and reengage in intellectual pursuits. 

Our immediate priority was ensuring the continuity of quality education for Afghans in Afghanistan and globally. But AUAF was facing two urgent issues that threatened its survival: accreditation and students’ mental health.

In 2018, AUAF became the first institution to obtain accreditation from the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education. By August 2021, though, it became clear that under the Taliban, the ministry would not renew our accreditation, due to lapse in February 2023. To ensure other institutions and employers would recognize our degrees, even before the events of August 2021, AUAF joined the Open Society University Network (OSUN), a global network of colleges and universities that promotes and expands access to higher education. In October 2021, we also signed a dual degree agreement with Bard College in New York, an OSUN cofounder. This ensures that all AUAF students will obtain an accredited Bard degree and remain competitive in any job or education market they choose to pursue after graduation. As we navigated the immediate aftermath of August 2021, with many members of our community transiting through refugee camps and temporary housing, and without a functioning student information system, we had to quickly adapt our curriculum to the new dual degree requirements. Though the timing was challenging, this change brought a welcome overhaul to our general education program. Without the engagement of OSUN and, more important, Bard College—whose leadership immediately understood the importance of preserving our institution and serving our students—AUAF might have ceased to exist.

We also had to address the mental health of our community. Students who remained in Afghanistan felt trapped and burdened, while many among those who had left were grappling with survivor’s guilt. In addition, the five acres of our physical campus had represented a free and democratic space in the middle of Kabul. Protected by security walls, all could interact there in full freedom. Women could play sports and uncover their hair, a significant liberty in their lives. The navigation of uncertainties was also profoundly affecting our community. We received hundreds of written pleas every day from students asking whether they could continue studying, find a job, provide for their families, and remain safe as AUAF students. 

With the support of New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, we trained our faculty in trauma-informed pedagogy. We also initiated one-on-one and group counseling sessions for students and trained faculty and staff in mental health first-aid. We then focused on wellness and well-being, creating a student peer mentoring system, an attendance early alert system at the beginning of each semester that engages with students as soon as they miss one class, and revived a robust virtual community through strong cocurricular programs, such as student book clubs and poetry readings. Throughout the first weeks of the semester, students who missed class received a phone call or an email asking how they were and if they needed any specific assistance to succeed. Additionally, we established articulation agreements with graduate programs abroad and businesses both within and outside Afghanistan to ensure our students would be directly enrolled or employed after graduating. The ability to envision themselves beyond graduation, anywhere in the world or within Afghanistan, through our enhanced programming has enabled our students to remain focused on their studies.

When the Taliban reclaimed power in Afghanistan, it banned women from obtaining a secondary education (generally junior high through high school). This meant that we would soon run out of eligible female Afghan students to recruit to our online programs as they would not be able to attain the proper schooling to apply. A few months later, the Taliban banned women from receiving a higher education.

To address the secondary education ban, we created an online program for high school-age women to become university ready. While female students cannot physically attend schools past sixth grade in Afghanistan, they can access programs online. While not intended to replace high school, the program introduces students to English, STEM, and digital literacy subjects through a series of intensive modules. The program began with 350 students in 2023 and will soon expand to accommodate 1,000. Demand far exceeds our capacity—we received more than 10,000 applications within two days of promoting the program on social media. After completing the program, students receive a university-readiness certificate and are encouraged to apply for university. We believe that the motivation and community reestablished by this initiative will enable learners to own their learning process, redouble their efforts to succeed, and remain hopeful for their future and that of their country. 

The next step has been to create the Alliance for the Education of Women in Afghanistan, in partnership with Education for Humanity at Arizona State University and the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. The alliance aims to support access to education and to develop a collective response to the education bans. During our first year in 2023, our initial fifteen members included a range of online and face-to-face providers of education to Afghan women and girls, from community-led groups to United Nations agencies. Today, the alliance has sixty-five members that together currently reach an estimated one hundred thousand students. While ensuring educational access is paramount, maintaining and uplifting the quality of education is crucial to keeping women and girls motivated. To this end, our goal is to establish a clear set of criteria for credentials in secondary and higher education that will be recognized by all alliance members, offsetting the loss of support and accreditation from the Afghan government. Once members recognize one another’s learning standards, programs, curricula, and student achievements, we will be able to engage with even more students. 

We hope this collaborative endeavor will benefit other institutions in countries facing similar challenges, such as the lack of a government accreditation system. Eventually, our alliance may pave the way for an international recognition system for higher education institutions, which could be led by agencies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and operate like the United Nations Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons, which determines eligibility and delivers certificates and travel documents to refugees.

Today, AUAF continues as Afghanistan’s only coeducational liberal arts institution, operating fully online. AUAF offers 100 percent financial aid to all students thanks to the generosity of the US Department of State and US Agency for International Development. While our faculty and staff are scattered across twenty-two time zones, in August 2022, with support from the Qatar Fund for Development, AUAF obtained space in Qatar’s Education City for living accommodations and classrooms for two hundred AUAF students, mostly women, with some faculty members on site. (Education City, a twelve-square-kilometer campus, is home to several educational and research institutes.) 

The Chronicle of Higher Education has dubbed AUAF a “university in exile.” Yet, we are not the Romanovs of Afghan higher education, frozen in past glory. Like other institutions facing similar circumstances—such as OSUN members Parami University in Myanmar, which now operates online, and the European Humanities University in Belarus, whose students now cross the border daily to attend classes in Lithuania—we must redefine what exile means for higher education in times of emergencies and crises. While AUAF no longer physically operates in Afghanistan nor in a single location, it continues to serve the needs of Afghanistan, particularly our students. Indeed, institutions successfully operating in exile must continue to serve the populations in the countries where they once physically existed. In this sense, being in exile does not mean being exiled; it means thriving as a globally recognized entity and being there for our students. If our students continue to show up to learn every day despite the obstacles they face, we owe it to them to persevere.

Lead photo: Victoria C. Fontan and American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) students arrive at the Kabul airport on August 20, 2021. (Courtesy Victoria C. Fontan)