If there is no strategy we can put pressure to make one.

- Estonia lacks national guidelines, but there are examples at university level.

- Decrease in total number of collaborations ("to much to handle"), to diminish the risks

- No mosques in Estonia, and a resistance towards to muslim students. Islamic countries are often considered a threat.

- "Universities don't do foreign politics - we are universities"

- The faculties and the central office may have different points of view - difficult to get on the same page

- The nature of the academic world is to allow different points of view, which makes a common approach within the same HEI very difficult

- Important to realize the threats. It is easier to be "all-open" and "all-progressive" as long as the risks are theoretical.

- Can be a resistance from partners to share information to enable risk assessment

- The students needs to be prepared and taught about eg. academic freedom before going out, but do we do that? Could there be a national (or Nordic?) online preparatory course?

If there are sanctions on the country you are looking in to.

Equality and human rights issues in the collaborating countries.

If coordinating a larger collaboration, all partners need to be checked.

• Currently no role, wondering what is the right thing to do, to make everyone aware. Will bring up topic when discussing other policies in the next months.

• Role of looking through partnership agreements. Wanting to learn about tools (e.g. AI). Investigate: How are we working/thinking about threatened incoming students? To have preparedness for the situation.

• Involved with writing international strategy writing, good opportunity to include better risk assessment general strategy.

• Working more with education than research, partnership agreements.

• Work with alliances and networks. Also including incoming visits. Difficulties with changes in ongoing partnerships (e.g. China, UK), balancing ask.

• Close work with senior management, setting the support structures including due diligence. Formalizing a new diligence process. Difficult to have an overview with processes in research. Problem with information getting into the faculties, managers, research advisors (needing more awareness for risks).

Question 2 (A or B):

A:

• The country

• The subject/area of cooperation

• Academic freedom

• Background/quality checks

• Deeper assessment if something comes unsolicited, or when there is suspicious urgency. Also when the political situation changes during the partnership formation.

• Mutal benefit

B:

• Trips being fully funded -> what is the intention?

• For US partners: involvement with ICE on campus, potential privacy breaches

• Courses, housing, etc.

- Not just China, also Ukraine.

- Development of the political situations, we want to be open but at one point we have to stop.

- tension within HEIs - faculty heads might have different ideas from rectors and then the IROs

- Israel is high-lighted as a problematic partner ethical-wise eg. in Norway

- Russia is cancelled to a large extent, even individual student exchange is stopped.

- Russian students enrolled in study programmes in other European countries, are often denied student exchange

- Collaboration with European partners, can result in a surprise when it gets obvious that they have a large portion of students from the Middle East or China