Academic Freedom at the Royal Society: Part 1

In today’s violent and war-torn world, and even in peaceful countries, many issues of academic freedom and human rights in academia loom large again. The Royal Society’s long-established involvement in helping at-risk academics has come to the fore with renewed involvement as set out in the Strategic Plan (PDF). Although a new role was designated in early 2024 to appoint a Society Fellow as Academic Freedom Representative, the Society had been extremely lucky to have Robin Perutz knowledgeably and assiduously fulfilling this role for the past 10 years, without the title. When invited to take on the academic freedom representative role for three years, I was eager to profit from Robin’s long experience.

His interests in human rights began in early life. He is a child of Cara, the Council for at risk academics: his father Max Perutz (Nobel Prize 1962) met his mother, Gisela, at the offices of Cara’s precursor organisation. Max, himself a 1930s immigrant to the UK from Austria, had worked and interacted with many Cara-supported scientists and in 1993 was one of the founders of the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies (IHRN) in association with the Royal Society. When Robin’s PhD contemporary Martyn Poliakoff became the Society’s Foreign Secretary, Robin expressed surprise that academic freedom and human rights matters were not officially part of Martyn’s job-description. Martyn asked Robin to pursue that role, including representing the Society at the IHRN from 2013. Robin himself has hosted in his lab, and championed, scholars at risk from the Balkans and the Middle East, who later became UK citizens.

For some time, we have discussed how much such incomers contribute to the progress of science and scholarship in their host country, perhaps through the diversity of thought and experience that they bring. In fact, a significant proportion of the Society’s current Fellows are incomers to the UK. As related under Cara’s history, of the roughly 2,000 scholars supported by the original organisation in the 1930s, 16 won Nobel Prizes, 18 were knighted, and over 100 were elected Fellows of the Royal Society or The British Academy. What fantastic enrichment this brought to the UK’s excellent academic foundations.

It was fascinating to hear Robin describing some of the ways in which the work of Cara has been evolving. The name itself has changed a few times from the original Academic Assistance Council, founded in 1933. At the time its offices were within the Royal Society, then housed at the Royal Academy. Founders included politicians such as Beveridge and Robbins, and a number of Fellows, including Nobel prize winners Rutherford, AV Hill and Gowland Hopkins. By July 1938 it had permanently placed 550 refugee scholars in 38 countries. Max Perutz, though closely associated with Cara, had not required its support as other funding had been secured. These days, Cara is very involved in helping Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians.

At the outbreak of war Max was interned and sent to the Isle of Man and then Quebec. The internees were poorly looked after and life was miserable, but internment fostered camaraderie and he made many interesting friends. In the 1980s, Robin was interviewed about his work in Oxford by Daily Telegraph science correspondent Anthony Michaelis who said, as he was leaving, “Give my love to Max”. The unusual terminology for those days led Robin to question Max, who revealed that they had been interned together in Canada.

Plenty of human rights work required Max’s attention in the years after the foundation of the IHRN. The Royal Society’s institutional processes often seemed slow and ponderous to Max. Frustrated, he frequently wrote letters personally to the authorities and to the victims. Robin remarked that, as a Nobel Laureate, Max often helped to achieve good outcomes.

 

Quizzed about how human rights activities have evolved over his tenure, Robin first paid tribute to the excellent knowledgeable Society staff within the International Affairs team, constantly vigilant and contributing as part of their international work. They also provide and gain from the group insights generated through IHRN and its UK member UKIHRC, currently working under the auspices of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The Society must always remain informed and ready for action. Robin listed areas in which academic freedom and human rights breaches need to be monitored and counteracted:

 

• Individuals whose science inadvertently challenges governments, or religious groups^1,2;
• Scientists and administrators of science whose work directly challenges their governments or companies may be suppressed or ignored^3,4;

• Individual victims of gender, racial or sexual discrimination^5,6,7;

• Groups which are pressured for political reasons⁸.

Recent additional categories include disregarding and suppressing well-founded scientific evidence and the deliberate spreading of false information by governments, corporations or the media. Direct targeting of individual scientists by the public, using severe threats, is another emerging phenomenon.

Currently, work in the human rights area is part of the Foreign Secretaries’ remit, but, perhaps increasingly, UK-based cases also require vigilance and protections. Some historic UK-based cases have already been referenced, ^4,5 but scientists today may also be silenced in insidious ways, including through withholding of major funding for controversial research areas. Existing scientific evidence may be covered up or ignored when industrial or health-related regulations are drawn up, and attacks on individual scientists through social media and the press are increasingly frequent. The deliberate generation of disinformation is a ubiquitously growing threat ⁹. Experience and concerted effort is often needed to counter false information. The strong interest and structured support now developing at the Royal Society will help to deliver this.

We live in an era of resurgent human rights violations with new requirements for intervention. We plan to address possible future approaches in the second half of this blog, based on the long discussion we had with Robin, and on the ongoing dialogue we conduct with our partners across academies and across the globe.

1. Galileo https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/#GaliChur
2. Oppenheimer https://www.ias.edu/oppenheimer-legacy
3. Rachel Carson https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rachel-carson
4. Michael Marmot https://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/marmot-review-10-years-on/the-marmot-review-10-years-on-executive-summary.pdf
5. Alan Turing https://www.turing.ac.uk/blog/alan-turings-legacy-troubled-times
6. Hans Krebs https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/refugee-scientists/1017376.article
7. Lise Meitner https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/lise-meitner-noble-scientist
8. E.g., Chinese Scientists in the US who suffered intense scrutiny under the China Initiative https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2216248120
9. Royal Society report 2022 The online information environment https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/online-information-environment/the-online-information-environment.pdf