PRESS RELEASE Retirement of Professor John Akker as CEO of ...

PRESS RELEASE
Retirement of Professor John Akker as CEO of CARA and appointment of
new Executive Director
The Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA) announces the retirement of its
Executive Secretary, Professor John Akker from 30 April 2012 and the appointment of
Stephen Wordsworth to succeed him from 16 April 2012.
John Akker has served with great distinction as Executive Secretary of CARA since 1999, in
which time the charity has become an international player, setting up projects in Jordan for
academics driven from Iraq by a campaign of targeted assassinations and assisting in the
rebuilding of universities in Zimbabwe with the help of Zimbabwean academics in the
diaspora. CARA has also built up an important Network of 70 UK Universities, which play a
vital role in supporting the individual scholars who seek refuge here, either as temporary or
permanent exiles.
CARA now works with major agencies at home and abroad, including the EU, UNESCO,
UNICEF, the Nuffield Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust and the Open Society Institute
and is one of the partners in the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA).
CARA is deeply indebted to John Akker for his passionate support for these and other
initiatives through which he and his colleagues have saved lives and restored livelihoods and
self – respect for many endangered individuals and their families across the world.
Professor Shula Marks, former Chair of CARA, said, “John Akker has transformed CARA
from a small UK charity to one which now operates globally and punches well above its
weight.”
Mr Stephen Wordsworth, CMG LVO, will be joining CARA as Executive Director on 16
April 2012. He was for many years a member of the British Diplomatic Service, serving
abroad in Russia (twice), Nigeria, Germany and at NATO. His last post was as Ambassador
in Belgrade, Serbia (2006-10). He travelled widely throughout his diplomatic career,
focussing latterly on crisis management and support for post-conflict reconciliation and
reconstruction across the Balkan region.
Anne Lonsdale, current Chair, CARA, said, “John will be hard to follow but we are delighted
to have appointed someone who understands the plight of displaced people and who will
bring such a range of skills to benefit CARA’s work.”
CARA was founded (as the Academic Assistance Council) in 1933. Under the titles Society
for the Protection of Science and Learning and Council for Assisting Refugee Academics
(CARA) the charity has continued to work globally with academics at risk in the UK and also
around the world.

Notes for Editors
1.CARA History
CARA was founded (as the Academic Assistance Council) by Lord (then Sir William) Beveridge and
others in 1933 as a response to Hitler’s closure of German universities to Jews and later to help
victims of fascism also in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Austria. As many as possible
were brought to Britain and found places in labs and university departments. In October 1933 Albert
Einstein spoke at a celebrated meeting in the Albert Hall to raise funds for the work: “Without such
freedom”, he said, “there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no
Pasteur and no Lister…It is only men who are free who create the inventions and intellectual works
which to us moderns make life worthwhile.”
Among the academics who came to Britain before WWII, 18 were to win Nobel Prizes, 16 were later
knighted, and over 100 became Fellows of the Royal Society or British Academy. Under the title
SPSL (Society for the Protection of Science & Learning) the organisation became more permanent in
1937 and, post WWII, helped sufferers from the McCarthy era in the US, the Hungarian uprising in
1956, apartheid South Africa, the USSR, Iran, Chile, the Prague Spring, Uganda, Argentina, Uruguay,
El Salvador, Burma, and Vietnam.
2. CARA’s current work
Troubles in the Horn of Africa still bring academic refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and
Somalia; the DRC and Cameroon are also troubled. In Europe in 2004 a whole university was exiled:
the European Humanities University, founded in Minsk in 1992, was closed by Belarus President
Lukashenko. Its Rector and many academics went to work in exile in Lithuania, where, with support
from the Lithuanian government and funding for EHU from the US, the EU and governments such as
the UK, it is once again graduating students. CARA supports its outreach to the UK.
CARA’s main work lies with Iran, Iraq and Zimbabwe but currently assists scholars from over 30
countries.
3. John Akker
John Akker, formerly General Secretary of NATFHE (now UCU), has been Executive Secretary,
CARA since 1999. He has also served as a Trustee of the Refugee Council 2000 – 2009, Executive
Director, NEAR (Network for Education and Academic Rights) since 2001, a Trustee of the
Immigration Advisory Service 2002 – 2010, and Visiting Professor at London South Bank University,
since 2005.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT CARA PLEASE SEE – www.academic-refugees.org
TELEPHONE: +44(0)207 021 0880