The Board of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) writes this statement in recognition of the multifaceted ways that the current political, economic, and ecological crises impact our members, international students, and the field as a whole. We seek to open space for ongoing dialogue and deliberation on these issues and propose several specific actions that we can take as a society.
The CIES Board condemns the ongoing attack by the U.S. federal government on research and science, academic freedom, and international cooperation and development. Many of the goals of our society, including teaching and research in comparative and international education, advancing educational and cultural exchange, and promoting and fostering education policies and programs that improve social and economic development, have become almost impossible to achieve in this context. The current administration continues to dismantle the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Board, and the Census Bureau, among other research institutions. The related decrease in funding directly impacts the scholarship and practitioner work of CIES members and, in particular, international students, who find it increasingly risky to travel to conferences or access resources or secure grants to fund their research and programming. Furthermore, the dismantling of USAID and other institutions of international assistance has resulted in significant disruption of aid programs, increased professional uncertainty and precarity for our members, and undermined global governance as signaled by the United States’ most recent withdrawal from UNESCO.
Ongoing threats to academic freedom and freedom of expression have resulted in the disciplining and sometimes firing of faculty, teachers, and students who speak out on research topics related to anti-racism, gender and sexuality, or human rights abuses such as the U.N.-recognized genocide in Gaza. The cancellation of the Harvard Education Review’s special issue on “Education and Palestine” in June 2025, which included contributions from many of our members, is a clear example. The CIES Board recognizes that these attacks on academic freedom undermine the conditions under which educational research and practice can occur and that they reflect the rising authoritarianism and censorship that diametrically oppose the central values of our society.
As an organization rooted in the U.S., the CIES Board also recognizes the ongoing violence being wrought both domestically and globally by the current government. In the United States, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has wreaked havoc on immigrant families, students and scholars, with ICE agents surveilling workplaces, airports, and schools and holding children in detention camps. In Minneapolis, in January 2026, ICE agents killed Renee Nicole Good, the parent of three school-age children, and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, and kidnapped five-year old Liam Conejo Ramos. The terror of these actions in Minneapolis and other cities has resulted in a drop in school enrollment, among other impacts for schools and communities. Many of our own CIES members understandably fear traveling to or within the United States, resulting in direct and detrimental effects on our scholarly field.
Globally, U.S.-backed wars in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran have demolished hundreds of schools and universities and killed tens of thousands of students and teachers, termed by the U.N. in the case of Gaza as scholasticide. As educators and policy analysts debate the utilization of AI in classrooms, the use of AI-assistance in the military strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, Iran, killed 175 children, demonstrating the life-and-death stakes of new technologies. The civil war in Sudan, the Russian war on Ukraine, the ongoing instability and mass displacement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the refugee crisis in Syria, the infringement to national sovereignty and sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba, and the illegal wars on Iran and Lebanon have not only destabilized entire regions, but also devastated education systems and the very conditions necessary for teaching, learning, and intellectual life to endure. War also causes irreparable damage to the environment, accelerating climate change and intensifying conflicts over land and resources within and across nations. The abandonment of international law and universal human rights that we are witnessing poses an existential threat to the mission and purpose of CIES and to the work we as scholars, educators, and professionals can do.
Over the last five years, our CIES conferences have focused on peace in a divided world, education in a digital society, the power of protest, education for equity, and idealism and politics in education. These themes illustrate how our society deliberately draws connections between global issues and research and practice in international and comparative education. Members, however, have expressed a sense of disconnect between the debates and discussions in our society and these global events.
We hope this statement stimulates an ongoing conversation among members about how our academic society can better respond to the current moment. The CIES Board is committed to the following actions to move in this direction:
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Two processes for passing public statements: one initiated by the CIES board and a new, bottom-up process for CIES public statements, which allows members to write their own statements that initiate society-wide debates and an endorsement vote (more information to follow);
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A new pilot program for supporting educator well-being in times of crisis;
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A survey to assess the state of the field;
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A series of CIES Board-initiated virtual listening sessions;
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A commitment to engage more with allied academic societies and organizations and develop joint actions.
The details of these proposals and Board initiatives will be shared with the membership and initiated in the coming months.
Despite the challenges we face, we remain hopeful and inspired by CIES members and everyone on the front lines defending immigrant families, denouncing human rights abuses and war, and centering anti-racism and gender justice in educational research and practice. We recognize that many of our CIES Special Interest Groups actively engage in this work. The current attacks on education, science, and research underscore the fundamental role that knowledge production plays in social change and CIES can and does have an important voice in this area. Speaking up contains inherent risks, but silence does not equal neutrality, nor does it guarantee safety.