Under Threat At Home, Refugee Scholars Find Academic Havens At U.S. In response, U.S. universities have sponsored endangered scholars and recently created a consortium that offers a broader academic community to refugee scholars threatened by war and authoritarian governments. Sponsor MessageThe consortium aims to build intellectual links among the refugee scholars and their host institutions. "Even when [refugee scholars] are safe, what is painfully absent is that they don't get integrated, they are isolated, they suffer from estrangement." "We have all left everything behind," she said of the dozen refugee scholars gathered in New York for the inauguration of the consortium.