This year’s Academy in Exile annual conference will focus on critical thinking in current academic settings from various perspectives. The conference will take place on January 16 and 17 at the Max Planck Society’s Harnack House in Berlin. Academy in Exile offers scholars who are threatened in their home countries because of their academic or civic work for human rights, peace, and democracy the opportunity to resume their research abroad. The program was founded in 2017 at the University of Duisburg-Essen. In 2018, Freie Universität Berlin became a partner institution of the program, which receives funding from the Volkswagen Foundation and the Mellon Foundation among others. The conference, entitled “Dire Times: Critical Thinking Then and Now,” will be held in English. It is open to the public, but participants are asked to register in advance by email to academy-in-exile@fu-berlin.de.