The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is a matter of huge concern for the future of culture and academia in the country. This roundtable will present first some elements about the immediate situation and insights from different perspectives that may help understand what could happen in Afghanistan and finally ways to support our endangered colleagues.

Roundtable Chair
Philippe Peycam, Director International Institute for Asian Studies

Roundtable Participants
Willem Vogelsang, Afghanistan Expert
Vogelsang discusses the latest news about Afghanistan. The situation is still very blurred. The Taliban’s first declaration suggests they would choose a less strict rule than during their previous time in power. Only time will tell. Yet in this time of confusion with the world media spreading sensational images, it is important to get information from the spot. This presentation will try to draw a grounded picture of the current situation.

Tobias Marschall, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Marschall talks about the Wakhan, nomads’ latest move to Tajikistan, their rebuttal and its wider significance plus on the shortly created project at Brown’s, On the Costs of War in Afghanistan, compiling an annotated bibliography plus other initiatives

Abhilash Medhi, Mount Holyoke College
Medhi speaks on the historical imagination of Afghanistan, the imperial bogey, and how this cruel moment represents the possibility to finally shake off the urge to read Afghanistan through imperial eyes.

Aditya Kiran Kakati, International Institute for Asian Studies
Kakati connects in his presentation the two frontiers of British Empire in India - Afghanistan and Myanmar - the problematic rhetoric of failed states, and frontier governance as epistemic categories which have served warfare and conflict making these places 'remote' and dangerous.

Jean-Baptiste Clais, Musée du Louvre
Clais discusses on how to help endangered colleagues – programs for scholars in exile. The recent conflicts and rise of populists over the world have endangered many scholars in humanities. This in return prompted the development of protection programs for scholars in exile. We will briefly present here the “PAUSE” program created in France and the “Scholars at risk program” and open a discussion on how to help a country’s academic world to survive in exile.

Photo by Sohaib Ghyasi on Unsplash