Gresham College LectureMonday, December 9, 2013 – 6:00 p.m.

On the occasion of:The 80th Anniversary of CARA (Council for Assisting Refugee

Academics)

Scientists Should Act to Protect and Promote Human Rights—for Both

Scientific and Humanitarian Reasons

Carol Corillon

As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall only live in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.

Eleanor Roosevelt holding text of Universal Declaration of Human Rights

John C. Polanyi

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1986

Portrait by Brenda Bury

Lipman Bers, mathematicianColumbia University

Lipman Bers at NAS with Andrei Sakharov after Sakharov’s release from Gorky

From left: Gerard Debreu, President - Supreme Court of Chile, Baruch Blumberg, Eric Stover, Carol Corillon, Maximo Pacheco

Lawrence Klein, EconomistUniversity of Pennsylvania

1987 CHR Mission to Somalia

Mission report

1987 CHR Mission to Somalia

Release of Somali prisoners, 1989

1987 CHR Mission to Somalia

Communication code used by Somali prisoners

CHR Missions to Guatemala1991, 1992, 2002

Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang

Stabbed to death in front of her office in 1990, a day after she published a report with Georgetown University on the plight of the indigenous peoples at the hands of the military forces.

CHR Missions to Guatemala1991, 1992, 2002

Mission delegates Robert Curl and Arjuna Aluwihare with Mrs. Sen, lawyer, and colleagues

Dr. Sen’ rural clinic in Chhattisgarh

Founding Members: Pieter Van Dijk (Netherlands), François Jacob (France), Eduardo Vesentini (Italy), Torsten Wiesel (USA), Max Perutz (U.K.)

Executive Committee:

•Arjuna Aluwihare, Sri Lanka

•Dorairajan Balasubramanian, India

•Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, France

•Abdallah S. Daar, Oman/Canada

•Felton Earls, United States of America

•Belita Koiller, Brazil

•Pedro León Azofeifa, Costa Rica

•Dong-Pil Min, Republic of Korea

•Ida Nicolaisen, Denmark

•John Polanyi, Canada

•Alenka Šelih, Slovenia

Human rights is an eternal struggle in which a final victory can never be won.

-Albert Einstein

Thank you.