cara Cara and the Royal Society

1. Cara and the Royal Society have a unique shared history. The Founding Statement of the Academic Assistance Council, as Cara was originally known, was issued from the ‘Rooms of the Royal Society’ in Burlington House on 22 May 1933. Cara’s first President, Lord Rutherford, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and its immediate Past President (1925-30). The President of the Royal Society for 1930-1935, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, was a signatory of the Founding Statement, as were four other past or future Presidents of the Royal Society: Sir Joseph Thomson (1915-1920), Sir Charles Sherrington (1920-1925), Sir William Henry Bragg (1935- 1940) and Sir Robert Robinson (1945-1950). Eight other Fellows were also signatories: David Lindsay (Earl of Crawford and Balcarres), Charles Stanley Gibson, Major Greenwood, J S Haldane, A V Hill, James Colquhoun Irvine, William Jackson Pope and Robert Strutt (Lord Rayleigh).

2. A V Hill, Cara’s first Vice-President, was the Royal Society’s Biological Secretary, and worked closely with Sir William Bragg and his successor, Sir Henry Hallett Dale (President, 1940-1945), to help scientists who had been forced into exile by the Nazis to find posts in the UK. Over 70 of the scientists rescued by Cara in the 1930s went on to become Fellows or Foreign Members of the Royal Society, and their contribution helped to transform British science and medicine. Some of the most remarkable, including Ernst Chain, Hans Krebs, Max Born and Max Perutz, were later honoured with Nobel Prizes.

3. That close link between the Royal Society and Cara has continued in recent years. Individual Fellows of the Royal Society have served as Cara Trustees, and the Royal Society has hosted a number of Cara meetings and events, including the Keynote Address by the late Sir Ralph Kohn FRS for Cara’s 75th anniversary conference in 2008, and a meeting in 2017 to help introduce Cara to other learned societies.

4. In November 2013, as part of Cara’s 80th anniversary events, the Royal Society agreed to host the first of the new series of Cara’s ‘Science and Civilisation’ lectures. The original lecture with this title was given in October 1933 by Albert Einstein, at an event to raise funds for four organisations working to support exiled academics and scientists, including the Academic Assistance Council/Cara. Einstein cara spoke forcefully about the importance of intellectual and individual freedom: “If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake, and what we owe to that freedom which our ancestors have won for us after hard struggles. Without such freedom, there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister …”. Cara’s founders defined their mission as ‘the relief of suffering and the defence of learning and science’, and Einstein’s message is as central to Cara’s work now as it was then.

5. Since the launch of the new series in 2013, seven lectures have been held, with the Royal Society providing the venue for the lecture and the subsequent reception free of charge. The speakers and subjects since 2013 have been:

- 2013, Jim Al-Khalili FRS, “Science, Rationalism and Academic Freedom in the Arab World” - 2014, George Radda FRS, “Biomedical Knowledge in the Service of Man: Social Responsibility of the Scientist” - 2015, Lord Rees of Ludlow FRS, “Confronting 21st Century Challenges: Scientists as experts, as campaigners and as world citizens” - 2016, Anne Glover FRS, “And then they came for the experts” - 2017, Timothy Garton Ash, “Free Speech under Attack” - 2018, Margaret MacMillan, “War and Society: the impact of the First World War” - 2019, Baroness Onora O’Neill of Bengarve FBA Hon FRS, “Communication and Democracy in a Digital Age”

6. Attendance has grown steadily over the last six years and now numbers well over 100, predominantly academics. For Cara, this has become its annual ‘showcase event’, a unique chance to bring together its most prominent and active partners and supporters and to update them on its work, at a time when, regrettably, crises and conflicts across the world mean that Cara is busier than at any time since the 1930s. The 2020 lecture, to be given by Professor Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector of the Central European University, on ‘Academic Freedom: Right or Privilege?’, had to be postponed due to the Covid pandemic, but we hope that it may be held in 2021.