Refugees welcomed with grant

Academics who have fled persecution or the ravages of war could find a lifeline in Canada if the University of Toronto raises the cash for refugee fellowships.

The fund will provide invited professors and fellows with "an academic home" at the university. The fund, proposed by Michael Marrus, graduate studies dean, is seeking donors this autumn to raise Can$1 million (Pounds 445,000).

Mr Marrus, an historian who has written primarily on the holocaust, says waves of refugees have helped to shape academia, especially the influx of Europeans to the United States in the 1930s.

Canada, whose refugee laws at that time were severe, is now more welcoming to displaced populations but cutbacks make it difficult to hire new staff. "That !s why we need to raise this money," Mr Marrus said.

Toronto already has a programme called Writers in Exile, which sponsors one academic a year and provides housing, an office, a stipend and lecturing opportunities. Reza Baraheni, an exiled Iranian writer and professor of English and Persian literature was a participant. She works as a part-time lecturer at both York University and Toronto.

Massey College, which hosts the four-year-old programme in conjunction with the Canadian arm of PEN, may be able to dovetail Writers in Exile into the refugee scholarship fund, said Massey master John Fraser.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, there are 12 million refugees and another ten million recent returnees, asylum-seekers and people displaced inside their own country's borders.

The UNHCR and World University Service Canada said the Toronto initiative will be the only programme for professors and senior academics. WUSC sponsors 30 to 40 refugee students a year at universities. They are given landed immigrant status.

UNHCR representative Nanda Na Champassak said: "It is often a question of starting life over again. Chances are usually not high that they will be given an opportunity to continue in their field," she said.