Academics At-Risk Fellowship

From its very beginnings Wolfson has been a home to those without one – be it graduates and academics without a College, or Wolfson’s Founding President Isaiah Berlin, for whom England gave his family sanctuary. Over the last fifty years of our life we have grown and evolved, but that commitment to providing a home has remained very strong. And we now wish to take it one step further.

Around the world there are academics who are at risk in their own countries, through war, persecution, or oppression. Many of them have families, and the situation for both them and their children and spouses is precarious.

The CARA Fellowship Programme supports academics who are at risk in their home countries with two-year fellowships at a British university.  Currently there are about 100 academics looking to escape to a safe place where they can continue their work. The most urgent need is to place families because of the greater cost.

Many academics intend to return home to rebuild their societies when it is safe for them to do so but in the meantime they need a safe place, and the opportunity to maintain and develop the skills and the networks that they will need when they go back.

CARA’s roots go back to 1933, and the Nazis’ expulsion of many academics from their posts. Many CARA Fellows have gone on to have remarkable careers, including sixteen Nobel Laureates, eighteen who received Knighthoods for their work and over 100 who became Fellows of The British Academy or The Royal Society.  Wolfson’s founding president, Isaiah Berlin, was a CARA trustee in the 1960s and 1970s.

With a substantial one to one matching fund from an anonymous donor to Wolfson, our goal is to sustain the funding for an academic and their family to stay at Wolfson in safety. For the Giving Day in November 2018, we would like to raise £15,000 towards our first placement which matched by our donor will provide £30,000 or the cost of supporting a CARA family for one year.  

Donated so far: