Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 16
WELCOMING REMARKS
wiBiam Gordon
Members and guests, as foreign secretary of the National Acade-
my of Sciences, it is my privilege to welcome you to this symposium
on science and human rights sponsored by the academy's Committee
on Human Rights. The symposium attests to the importance that
the National Academy of Sciences attaches to the committee's work.
For more than 10 years the Committee on Human Rights has
worked in behalf of scientific colleagues around the world who are
believed to be prisoners of conscience. Its caseload has grown from
about a dozen in 1976 to more than a hundred active cases today.
New cases come to the attention of the committee all of the time;
many have been successfully resolved over the years.
The term "cases sounds very abstract and legalistic, but each
case is, in fact, a human being, a fellow scientist who is imprisoned or
internally exiled or who has disappeared. The committee tries to help
these colleagues not only by making appeals, but also by reaching
out to them in the prisons, in the courts, and in their isolated places
of exile through letters to them and to their families.
Having three former prisoners of conscience here today as guest
speakers and being able to listen to them directly and freely is reward-
ing, indeed. We welcome each of you and applaud your courageous
efforts in behalf of victims of oppression.
~ cannot talk about the fine work of the committee without
mentioning its correspondents, many of whom are in the audience
today. Correspondents are members of the academy and its foreign
associates and members of the Institute of Medicine who actively
assist the committee by making private personal appeals in behalf
of imprisoned scientific colleagues. They now number well over one
thousand.
I am also pleased to announce that the National Academy of
Engineering has recently decided that its members should also be
invited to become correspondents. We look forward to their help. We
are also very grateful for the vital financial support the committee
receives from the academy and from a number of private foundations.
The committee has had the good fortune of being chaired by
three distinguished scientists over the past 10 years. The first chair
was Robert Kates and the second, Lipman Bers. The current chair
is Eliot Stellar. This symposium was their brainchild, and all three
are participants.
16
OCR for page 17
Eliot Stellar is professor of physiological psychology, Department
of Anatomy and Institute of Neurological Sciences at the University
of Pennsylvania. ~ should also tell you that he is the newly elected
president of the American Philosophical Society, for which we con-
gratulate him. Dr. Stellar has served a three-year term with dedica-
tion and sensitivity. ~ am pleased to announce that he has accepted
our request to serve a second! three-year term.
It is a great pleasure to introduce Eliot Stellar.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
scientific colleagues
