As Riza graduated three years earlier than the regular duration of the studies the lyceum's director Leon Perre suggested him for the annual scholarship of the ministry of education.
Selman Riza was arrested by the Italian authorities in the protest of Korçë held in the national day of Albania, on 28 November 1939.
In October 1941 he was released and moved to Durrës and in July 1942 to Kosovo, where he founded the Irredentist Antifascist Movement, an anti-nazi and anticommunist organization.
Yugoslav authorities asked for his extradition, which was initially accepted but later the decision was overturned after the intervention of the minister of justice Manol Konomi.
[3] His 1952 study on the Serbo-Croatian grammar is regarded as a work of contrastive analysis,[4][1] although that theory was not formulated until five years later by Robert Lado.