Kurdish scholars attend key confab at University of Ottawa on August 27, 2025. Photo: Screengrab/Rudaw
OTTAWA — From the outside, the university building seemed unremarkable, but inside, behind modest lecture hall doors, a rare scene unfolded this week: a gathering of some of the world’s most prominent Kurdish scientists.
The scholars presented their research, which spanned areas from particle physics to philosophy, from atomic science to medicine, pushing against a global narrative that too often frames Kurds only through the prism of war.
“Yes, Kurds are great fighters, great allies — for defeating Daesh,” said Jaffer Sheyholislami, a linguist of Kurdish origin at Carleton University. “But very few people, if you ever hear it at all, would say that Kurds are also scientists.”
Among the conference’s most prominent voices was Caucher Birkar, who won the Fields Medal - the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for math - in 2018. The Cambridge-based scholar’s presence, though only virtual, lent the conference prestige and poignancy. People quietly listened as he explained “the beauty of math” in his mother tongue, Kurdish, which continues to be suppressed in his home country of Iran. Lawmaker Leyla Zana spent more than a decade in prison for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish parliament in the 1990s.
“Education in general, and science in particular, can play a vital role in protecting Kurdish culture,” said Birkar, addressing the audience in Kurdish as the listeners were largely members of the Kurdish community in North America.
“Take architecture — the traditional way of building Kurdish houses is disappearing at an alarming pace.”
A shared story of exile
Kurds are estimated at more than 40 million, living mostly in adjacent parts of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. They are widely considered the world’s largest ethnic group without a country of their own. In all their countries they have for decades been fighting for self-rule or independence for nearly a century.
For many of the scientists that gathered at Ottawa University’s Desmaris Building, the journey to academic prominence began with forced exile.
Almost every participant carried a variation of the same story. They left their home country out of fear of persecution by authoritarian governments that treated Kurdish identity as a threat to national unity. But although their departures were often painful, they opened doors to the freedoms of the West and that allowed them to thrive in universities and laboratories, even as the societies they left behind continue to struggle.
“When you see multiple generations of Kurds who are able, in whatever adoptive home they go to in the West, that they can be successful - that they become scientists, they become business owners,” Tom Kmiec, deputy speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, told Rudaw.
A Canadian backdrop
The four-day conference was organized by Hojan, a Kurdish institute, in partnership with the University of Ottawa. The university’s president, Marie-Eve Sylvestre, highlighted the role immigrants have played at the school and in society at large.
“Universities - and I mean this country - have been made by immigrants and immigrants’ contributions,” Sylvestre told Rudaw.
The atmosphere was both academic and festive with some attendees draping Kurdish flags over their shoulders or wearing traditional dress, not making any attempt to hide their cultural identity. In parts of the Middle East, open expressions of Kurdish culture remain risky.
More than a symposium, many viewed the event as a declaration of existence and an insistence that Kurds not be defined solely by war, displacement, or geopolitics; they also play a role in advancing both science and the Western societies that have embraced them.
The scholars presented their research, which spanned areas from particle physics to philosophy, from atomic science to medicine, pushing against a global narrative that too often frames Kurds only through the prism of war.
“Yes, Kurds are great fighters, great allies — for defeating Daesh,” said Jaffer Sheyholislami, a linguist of Kurdish origin at Carleton University. “But very few people, if you ever hear it at all, would say that Kurds are also scientists.”
Among the conference’s most prominent voices was Caucher Birkar, who won the Fields Medal - the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for math - in 2018. The Cambridge-based scholar’s presence, though only virtual, lent the conference prestige and poignancy. People quietly listened as he explained “the beauty of math” in his mother tongue, Kurdish, which continues to be suppressed in his home country of Iran. Lawmaker Leyla Zana spent more than a decade in prison for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish parliament in the 1990s.
“Education in general, and science in particular, can play a vital role in protecting Kurdish culture,” said Birkar, addressing the audience in Kurdish as the listeners were largely members of the Kurdish community in North America.
“Take architecture — the traditional way of building Kurdish houses is disappearing at an alarming pace.”
A shared story of exile
Kurds are estimated at more than 40 million, living mostly in adjacent parts of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. They are widely considered the world’s largest ethnic group without a country of their own. In all their countries they have for decades been fighting for self-rule or independence for nearly a century.
For many of the scientists that gathered at Ottawa University’s Desmaris Building, the journey to academic prominence began with forced exile.
Almost every participant carried a variation of the same story. They left their home country out of fear of persecution by authoritarian governments that treated Kurdish identity as a threat to national unity. But although their departures were often painful, they opened doors to the freedoms of the West and that allowed them to thrive in universities and laboratories, even as the societies they left behind continue to struggle.
“When you see multiple generations of Kurds who are able, in whatever adoptive home they go to in the West, that they can be successful - that they become scientists, they become business owners,” Tom Kmiec, deputy speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, told Rudaw.
A Canadian backdrop
The four-day conference was organized by Hojan, a Kurdish institute, in partnership with the University of Ottawa. The university’s president, Marie-Eve Sylvestre, highlighted the role immigrants have played at the school and in society at large.
“Universities - and I mean this country - have been made by immigrants and immigrants’ contributions,” Sylvestre told Rudaw.
The atmosphere was both academic and festive with some attendees draping Kurdish flags over their shoulders or wearing traditional dress, not making any attempt to hide their cultural identity. In parts of the Middle East, open expressions of Kurdish culture remain risky.
More than a symposium, many viewed the event as a declaration of existence and an insistence that Kurds not be defined solely by war, displacement, or geopolitics; they also play a role in advancing both science and the Western societies that have embraced them.
Updated at 6:11 pm
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