Provost Becomes President of CARA

Malcolm Grant, Provost of UCL, has today been named the President of CARA, the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics. CARA was founded by Lord (then Sir William) Beveridge in 1933, and many other leading British academics and scientists, as a response to the closure by Hitler of German universities to Jews and others. Well over a thousand academics from Germany and other countries under fascism were helped by CARA in that first period, including sixteen who went on to become Nobel Prize winners. Many, like Sir Hans Krebs, Sir Ernst Chain, Sir Hermann Bondi, Max Born and Max Perutz, were scientists, but others, such as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, Sir Geoffrey Elton and Sir Karl Popper, were leaders in other fields. This summer's London Paralympics owed everything to the work of CARA grantee and creator of Stoke Mandeville Hospital's Spinal Injuries Unit, Sir Ludwig Guttmann. After World War Two many people assumed that CARA would close, but new crises arose repeatedly. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Greece under the Colonels, Chile, Argentina, Burma, Iran, apartheid South Africa, Biafra, Rhodesia - each new crisis created new exiles, as repressive regimes and extremist groups tried to crack down on free speech and critical thinkers.