Nominees for the BRISMES Committee on Academic Freedom (2025-2028)

Ilyas Saliba

Ilyas is a political scientist with extensive experience defending academic freedom in North Africa. He is the author of numerous of publications on academic freedom and university autonomy in North Africa and co-developer of the global Academic Freedom Index, a pioneering tool for measuring academic freedom worldwide. He is currently working on a study of self censorship amongst German social and regional science scholars funded by the Mellon Foundation. His research focusses on authoritarianism and shrinking civic space in North Africa. Beyond academia, Ilyas has also worked for human rights groups. Ilyas has experience in advocacy and casework and is a member of the advocacy advisory board of Scholars At Risk Europe and advises UNESCO on the development of an SoS Assessment Tool to assess academic freedom in member states. Ilyas serves as a speaker and a board member of KriSol, a German civil society group dedicated to protecting academic freedom and university autonomy he co-founded with +400 scholars in September 2024.