Legal scholar Maimul Khan is 8,000 miles from home -- and a world away from the political dangers that made him flee Bangladesh.

Once threatened for fighting for academic freedom at the University of Dhaka, he is now exercising it at the University of California, Davis, and UC Berkeley as he teaches and writes a book on Muslim and black militancy.

He's the first "endangered academic" to come to UC Davis through a network of more than 70 universities and colleges that finds host institutions for foreign scholars who have been persecuted, harassed, imprisoned or threatened of their life. UC Davis was awarded one of the first five grants from a partner organization that helps pay the salaries of such relocated professors, and this quarter the campus will explore establishing a formal program to assist other threatened scholars.

Two years ago, representatives from UC Davis and other campuses established the Scholars at Risk Network. And $15,000 provided by the campus to pay part of Khan's salary helped leverage a $20,000 grant from the Scholar Rescue Fund of the Institute of International Education.

Since June 2000, the national Scholars at Risk program has received applications for assistance from about 235 professors in 63 countries and across 45 academic disciplines. It's been able to assist about 25.

"From the beginning, UC Davis wanted to demonstrate its commitment to this important international program and provide systemwide leadership by establishing a UC Davis program," said Dennis Dutschke, associate vice provost for international programs.

Khan was already in trouble with the Bangladeshi government for his outspoken criticism of its policies. But when he used the courts to resist the government's attempts to parachute four people into the university law department he chaired, things turned ugly.

"I got serious messages from the law minister that I was engaging in a very dangerous game," said the professor, who had colleagues who had gone missing or died in strange accidents.

In the late 1990s, Khan's troubles in Bangladesh were compounding. "Most of the Muslim governments are not only undemocratic, they are thoroughly corrupted as well," Khan said. "Scholars with serious intellectual integrity are in the crossfire of corrupted secularists and religious fanatics."

In that dangerous situation, Khan left the country in 1998 to use his sabbatical for a yearlong Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In short order, he was told he hadn't had permission to leave. Without legal grounds, Khan's sabbatical was cancelled, and his salary and benefits were cut off. His job was in jeopardy, and he knew his life was too.

"All this was shocking to me," said Khan, who did have a letter authorizing him to leave the country. "I didn't know what to do. Once I had, for practical purposes, lost that position, then I didn't have any protection."

While Khan pressed his case for asylum in the United States, the University of Illinois could not employ him. At the professor's urging, however, the campus agreed to let him teach and pursue his scholarship without a salary. "I love teaching," he said. "I love doing research."

After being granted asylum in June 2001, Khan received a one-year at Urbana-Champaign. And that summer, he came to UC Davis to study in its Master of International Commercial Law program.

Khan also came to the attention of Beth Greenwood, responsible for international programs for the law school and UC Davis Extension. "It was serendipity," she said. "We got involved in a conversation.

"I knew we were interested in the Scholars at Risk program," Greenwood said. "Professor Khan, it turns out, was the scholar the program was most interested in placing."

Dean Rex Perschbacher said it was natural for the law school to partner with UC Davis Extension to bring Khan to UC Davis. "For many years our faculty (members) have been involved in human rights initiatives," he said.

A constitutional scholar -- with expertise ranging from human rights to Muslim legal issues and the law and politics of the Middle East -- Khan taught a fall seminar on law and economic development. He's now teaching a course on human rights and Muslim countries at the UC Davis and UC Berkeley law schools; for Asian American studies, he's teaching a course on human rights in Islamic political thought and Muslim culture.

In addition to writing a book while he is here, he has another book, "Human Rights in the Muslim World," forthcoming from the Carolina Academic Press.

Khan will complete his one-year appointment at Davis in June. He's searching for another appointment, and with a change in government in Bangladesh, he's working toward an eventual return to his country.

Meanwhile, Greenwood is looking at how UC Davis can assist other threatened scholars in a formalized program. In addition to hiring professors to teach, Greenwood said, the campus might help endangered scholars by sponsoring shorter visits and writing letters of support. She plans to establish an advisory committee to make recommendations on such activities.